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A two time Grammy nominee, a career spanning 50 or so years, Duke is a master of the blues, but as this trawl through his back pages displays he is a multi-faceted player who can traverse many styles. No surprise really for a guy who has recorded with the likes of Bob Dylan, Tom Waits… Read more »
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After the rapturous reception that was afforded their 2017 debut we are treated to another helping of southern fried soul by this young quintet from Memphis. Here the band continue their journey through the past recalling the heady days of the Stax label with a fusion of soul, blues and R & B that may… Read more »
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Fifth album from this LA based combo who fall somewhere between Chuck Berry and the Ramones this is rock’n’roll meant to be experienced in a hot sweaty club with a beer in hand. You kinda know what to expect from these guys from the get go. The US punk scene spawned a host of bands… Read more »
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Grace Morrison began as a backup singer for rock icons like Eddie Money and Joey Mollard (of the band Badfinger) became a regular on the USA festival circuit. She has won many awards and nominations and the Big Break contest where her music video was played on the season finale of American Idol. This new release ‘Reasons’… Read more »
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Back in 2017, reviewing FolkEast for Spiral Earth, I said the festival was “muscling its way through the crowds to become one of the most enjoyable folk music festivals of the summer”. The Guardian has also said that “FolkEast feels more like a very English village fete than a festival”. So, what happened in 2019?… Read more »
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In 2017 Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris; wrote & illustrated a book of poems called ‘ The Lost Words’ aiming to reinstate words associated with nature such as acorn, conker and kingfisher that had been dropped and replaced by attachment, broadband and pixel in the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Now the album which brings together… Read more »
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As gazebos flew away, tent poles twisted into impossible shapes, intriguing mysteries abounded, who was that bloke in the purple wizard hat? Simon Jones ventures to once more to the mystical fields of Cropredy. Cropredy is forty years old, over that time it’s taken various guises, had a slipstream of continual organisation and grown from… Read more »
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In 1998, the Luaka Bop label was started by David Byrne of Talking Heads fame in order to release a variety of music from around the world. Their path has taken them to far off lands and often a few releases are framed around a musical theme. ‘The Time For Peace Is Now’ is the… Read more »
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Sandra is a long time contributor to the of the folk music community beginning with performing and recording with Ewan MacColl’s Critics Group. An accomplished multi – instrumentalist playing guitar, dulcimer, autoharp and also teaching English concertina, she is probably best known as the co- writer, with John Faulkner, of the music for Bagpuss the… Read more »
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Long gone are those days when new folk music releases were largely dominated by arrangements of traditional songs. Since Dylan arrived as a singer songwriter inspired by folk but willing to take music in different directions, there has been a flood of new songs written that lend themselves to an acoustic folk style. The inspiration… Read more »
