PodcastDirectory.com's listings of the English and Appalachian folk songs Podcasts

Building a new repertoire

One of my greatest concerns when beginning to work seriously at the piano again was whether or not my hands would regain their former fitness. After all, the muscles used in playing the concertina and various other free reed instruments are very different from those used for diving through a Chopin Étude. With something as [...]

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This song’s a couple of years old now, and was played frequently by my former group. When I wrote it, it was arranged for acoustic guitar, fiddle and mandolin, but I thought it was high time for it to rise phoenix-like from the ashes and change shape somewhat. So, gone are the nice lilting rhythms [...]

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A Place In Space, the new compilation from Invisiblegirl Records features Will Beckett’s March (reprise) from the album Mother’s Thinking Bath. The album will be an iTunes release; here’s a trailer featuring all the artists.

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Here’s a song I was reminded of, in a roundabout way, by performing “On Ilkley Moor ‘Baht ‘At” to the tune of The House Of The Rising Sun last weekend at the Wolverley Summer Of Love festival. And, just like The House Of The Rising Sun, it’s a song in which a gambler laments his ruined [...]

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I thought it might be an interesting exercise to record several completely disparate versions of the same song, and as I played a version of “The Cruel Mother” at the Traditional Song Session at the Midland Arts Centre last Thursday, May 3rd, I decided to go for that one. It’s an unpleasant little tale, that’s for [...]

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And so to another version of The Cruel Mother, this time collected from Elizabeth Wharton, a gypsy, in Shropshire, by C.S. Burne, on the 13th of July, 1885. This is again taken from the “Songs of the Midlands” book edited by Roy Palmer. Palmer offers the following notes: The clerk in the ballad was no doubt a [...]

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Here’s another song I’ve recorded just for the fun of it.It occurred to me that I seldom, if ever, bother to record songs that I sing without any instrumental accompaniment.So I thought it was about time I did.I never really understood why “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” was [...]

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Who said folk songs had to be quiet, anyway?This is a song I wrote a couple of years ago, which, now that the Telecaster has been dusted off, I thought I’d revisit with guitars turned up to 11. I normally play this song on concertina, but this version is just electric guitars, a drum loop, [...]

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