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In darkest Wiltshire, several trillion light years ago (1974 to be precise), an interesting bunch of characters who congregated at the Village Pump Folk Club hit upon the mad idea of organising a festival. Originally intended to be held at a barn in Bradford-on-Avon, the council pulled the rug at the last minute and that… Read more »
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Does the prospect of a new album and tour set you itching to get out there and share the new material? Absolutely! We’re always keen to play, but in this case there’s an added excitement, as a lot of the material is brand new for us as well as or audiences. So our tour gigs… Read more »
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We have an exclusive track ‘Til Next Market Day’ from the great new album by Damien O’Kane – ‘Areas Of High Traffic’
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Gretchen Peters recently released ‘Blackbirds’, which is widely perceived as one of her best albums to date. We interviewed Gretchen on her recent UK tour and you can see her at Cambridge Folk Festival 2015. I began by asking about the way the new album questions a lot of the things we face as we… Read more »
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Categories: Features
I’ve been to a few 80th birthday parties lately. Well, when I say a few, I mean two. And they were more concerts than actual parties. Yet they were both joyous, humbling experiences honouring two of the most iconic and most enduring influences from the early days of the British folk revival. Both are singers… Read more »
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Categories: Features
These are the winners of the Spiral awards 2015, celebrating the music featured on this site from January to December 2014. This has been our biggest ever year for the awards, with just over 34,000 votes cast it has been amazing to see the interest it has stirred. So here are the winners, you can… Read more »
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Categories: Features
These are the nominations that received the most votes in the Spiral Awards 2014, in a few cases it was a very close run thing. The winners, and the nominations speak volumes for the breadth of music that we have covered over the last year – check them out, everything here is wonderful! Best Album… Read more »
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Categories: Features
Every year we agonise over nominations, asking a wide range of ‘industry professionals’ (code for old soaks) to give us their considered opinion. But then the danger is it ends up being just like all the other awards out there, and that’s just dull. So we have grabbed the bull by the horns and made… Read more »
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Categories: Features
The awards celebrate the wide range of music we cover, always grounded in folk and roots but willing to go wherever it takes us. This year we have decided to make a few changes to the categories. Increasingly over the past couple of years we have been covering more and more ‘Americana’, by UK and… Read more »
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Categories: Features
So to Cardiff. Which is in Wales. That’s the one where they didn’t get to vote for independence. Yet. The Millennium Centre. Lovely place. Lovely people. Lovely music. Lovely ambience. Lovely BBC Folk Awards. A right good do it turned out to be too. An exceedingly warm welcome greets us in the hillsides – and… Read more »
