A live recording to assuage the January blues.

It is not the best time of year for new music, or indeed much else to be quite honest. Here is a live recording by a band that has exercised my mind much over the last five years or so but has recently declared hiatus.
Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo 'Live at Swindon Arts Centre' in 2011 and recorded during the tour that followed the release of the LP Almanac is now available to download. I certainly love live music and thus also have a soft spot for live recordings convincingly done. This newly affordable recording possibility is one of the virtues of the digital world.

That is not to say that 2015 will be without interest: all four members are still very active in music. Emily Barker is playing Behind The Castle Festival 2015. There is however a great deal more than that to come.

Old Music. New Music. - Photos. Fires. Fables.

I know that, as Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo embark on their tour and it is likely to be the last for a little while as the various members pursue their many other projects, Photos. Fires. Fables (2005) is soon to be re-released on CD and this news will please many people. It is in no way a curiosity simply because it was her first release as a solo artist. It still stands as an incredible record.
I am one of the lucky ones: I snapped up the very last copy at the Rough Trade pop-up shop at End Of The Road Festival back in 2009 - and I knew absolutely nothing at all about the artist until this point - about ten minutes after I heard her play live. When music does that to me then it really matters; it is history in the making.

Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo headlined North Dorset Folk Festival in 2013.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2013 - Part 3

I was sold on North Dorset Folk Festival 2012 pretty much from the get-go and was quite happy to buy a ticket for 2013 without knowing any artists - just as I do for End of The Road Festival (EOTR) - I simply trust that it will be excellent and I have never been let down yet. On the other hand, when I discovered that Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo was to headline NDFF 2013 I could hardly believe what I was reading - and I checked that it wasn't 1 April. It certainly wasn't, and I wasn't dreaming about it either. I first saw them, previously quite unknown to me at EOTR 2009 and was totally taken. Here is that occasion:

No drummer back then. The kit was there for other bands on the stage to use as required.

Other than that the line up remains the same. Here is how it turned out at Marnhull Village Hall on 26 October.

L - R (in both pictures): Anna Jenkins, Jo Silverston, Emily Barker and Gill Sandell.
  

Emily Barker and Gill Sandell in an acoustic guitar and piano accordion duel.
It is easy to forget in the seamless sound the individual contributions of each member.

Anna Jenkins on fiddle.
  

Nostalgia really doesn't get much better than this.
  

If percussionist Nat Butler thought that he was not going to be mentioned on account of his very recent inclusion in the Red Clay Halo then that is not so.

Percussion and bass underpin much of Dear River. Jo Silverston on electric bass.

That two of the artists have also recently released music as side-projects is very worthy of note. Gill Sandell's second solo album, Light The Boats, in September 2013 and the second after Tarry Awhile (2010 and which is also excellent). Emily Barker also participates in London-based collective Arctic Circle that released its first five-track EP 'Lantern Waste' today. Here, taken from it, is 'Hushabye Mountain' to stream and the EP to buy. I have to say that I have a particular fondness for track 4 ' Unreasonable Dreams'.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2013 - Part 2

So there. That (as in Part 1) was the lower half of the running order and how good was that, I thought to myself a week ago yesterday, sometime mid-afternoon. My only concern, though I dismissed it, was whether it was possible to maintain this momentum.
The next to play was again a duo - Jack McNeill and Charlie Heys. This is the point at which folk, or folk inspired music, actually becomes quite challenging both in subject and treatment. They played a number of new tracks from their forthcoming LP (due early 2014) too.

One to watch, for sure, and so NDFF 2013 powered forward with Boat To Row as the next act to take to the somewhat small stage. I had heard a short section of a Boat To Row set at an outdoor festival earlier this year and I wanted more. This was my chance to put it right.

All five of Midlands-based Boat To Row. North Dorset Folk Festival 2013.

Deriving from a university solo project this has developed quite some momentum.  Hannah (far left above) is the latest addition and, just a few weeks in, she is a fully integrated band member - which is as well as they have a distinct tendency to swap instruments, some of them rather unusual.

Faye Haddon on table-harmonium.

The first support needed no introduction in so far as I was concerned. Emily Baker is the the only artist to play both editions of North Dorset Folk Festival as a named artist and this was also the fifth time that I have seen her play live.
This time she did so live and unplugged - never fear - you could hear it all perfectly from the back of the hall. The highlights, some of which she previewed at NDFF last year, are songs from her 2013 album All At Sea.

Emily Baker, playing as first support, at North Dorset Folk Festival 2013.

Headlining was Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo and this was the first time that I had seen them live since End Of The Road Festival 2009. They amazed me then and proved more than equal to the task of doing so again last Saturday night. The same four as back then but recently with Matt on drums too. The 2013 album Dear River was just a part of this.

'Nostalgia' live. This set actually deserves a post all its own. It will happen sooner than later.

Just a thought... North Dorset Folk Festival

This is what you are missing as I write and, indeed, so am I.

O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire is an all-seated venue of approximately 2000 capacity.  It is now too late to go to this concert anyway. On the other hand the very same are headlining North Dorset Folk Festival on 26 October. The venue, Marnhull Village Hall, is much more intimate and as of an hour ago there were about twenty tickets still available. See you there? 

More New Music for 2011 - UK acoustic

Having yesterday purchased my ticket to see Martha Tilston live at Rook Lane Chapel, Frome, that I mentioned in a recent post I thought it time to mention some more new English music in a broadly similar genre, which has recently been released.
  
Tarry Awhile -- Gill  Sandell

This is actually the first released of the three, by Rowan Tree Records in November 2010.  I had first become aware of Gill Sandell when I saw Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo at EOTR 2009, with which she plays piano accordion and contributes backing vocals.  This is her first full recording as a solo artist and, as far as I can tell, is currently only available as legal d/l. It comprises twelve tracks, all but two her original compositions, with backing provided by Red Clay Halo members amongst others. It also shows a true multi-instrumentalist as she predominantly plays guitar or piano on this outing, which has been six years in the making.
  
Songs Lost & Stolen --  Bella Hardy

Although this is Hardy's third album (after 'Night Visiting' and 'Lost In The Shadow of Mountains') it is the first released by Navigator Records and also first to consist of entirely self-written material; the previous two having been at least predominantly intriguing re-workings of traditional material.  I saw her live towards the end of last year and it was an excellent performance and given this new material I would not be at all surprised if she were a whole lot better known by the end of 2011.

  
Time Travel -- Alessi's Ark

It was a bad start to 2010 for Alessi Laurent-Marke.  Following her 2009 début album 'Notes From The Treehouse' she was dropped by ever-insolvency-defying EMI.  It is true that Laura Marling remains with EMI, at least as far as I know, as her third album release nears but it has always struck me as an odd home for the new folk movement.
Cast adrift, the eponymous Ark soon found a new haven and one that to me at least seems a far more spiritual home and so she was back in the business of releasing her music that can probably never simultaneously be assigned a place and a time. Bella Union, for it is they, wasted no time in releasing the 2010 EP Soul Proprietor.

For her part she has wasted no time in coming up with her second full-length album and a scattering of covers, including Lesley Gore's 1964 hit 'Maybe I Know', only serve to show how good the new songs and their arrangements are.  This is, freed from major label meddling with content and style, all EMI's loss and our collective gain.
If there is one place that this sort of music should fit in just perfectly it is a sunny afternoon in the English countryside. To that end Alessi's Ark is appearing at Truck Festival 2011.

New Music 2011 - Part 7 - Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo

OK, I was planning on doing more on new music this weekend.  It would certainly have been tomorrow, rather than just now, were it not for this.  In all probability you have already heard at least a snippet or two of the work of this artist even if you were quite unaware of it...

It is released (in the UK) on February 7, 2011 and Almanac is their third album.

This is the track list for Almanac:

• Billowing Sea
• Reckless
• Ropes (which was in the live set at EOTR 2009)
• Little Deaths (also in the live set at EOTR 2009)
• Dancers
• Pause
• Openings
• Calendar
• Light
• Witch of Pittenween
• Bones

Further posts on New Music 2011:
Part 1  ---  Esben and The Witch

Part 2  ---  Yuck

Part 3  ---  Duke Spirit

Part 4  ---  Low Anthem
Part 5  ---  Go!Team

Part 6  ---  Rhosyn
Part 8  ---  Those Dancing Days
Part 9  ---  Some things I am looking forward to.
Part 10  ---  More things I am looking forward to.
Part 11  ---  New Heads On Old Shoulders?
Part 12  ---  Snowglobe - Jesca Hoop
Part 13  ---  Queen of the Minor Key

Nostalgia - Emily Barker

To whoever asked, I like lyrics and so thank you for asking. This is the best I can do.

Nostalgia

Tram wires cross Melbourne skies
Cut my red heart in two
My knuckles bleed down Johnston Street
On a door that shouldn't be in front of me.

Twelve thousand miles away from your smile
I'm twelve thousand miles away from me.
Standing on the corner of Brunswick
Got the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek.

Oh whisper me words in the shape of a bay
Shelter my love from the wind and the rain.

Crow fly, be my alibi
And return this fable on your wing.
Take it far away to where gypsies play
Beneath metal stars by the bridge.

Oh write me a beacon so I know the way
Guide my love through night and through day.

Only the sunset knows my blind desire for the fleeting
Only the moon understands the beauty of love
When held by a hand like the aura of nostalgia.

Link to earlier posts on this artist:
http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-new-what-is-not.html

What is new, what is not?

This is an interesting question right now... I'm thinking about all the new music I have heard - live, recorded and in some cases both - in 2009. That has also made me think more about the music, regardless of release date, that I have listened to most frequently in the last two months.

Much of it falls into both categories and a yet a considerable proportion does not. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that even when it does I have never explicitly mentioned it. 'The Local', at EOTR 2009, might not be the most prepossessing tented venue in festival land but, for everything it lacks in that regard is more than made up in other ways. It is not particularly well appointed...

...and, if you are playing, you need to fix it for yourselves. It was also home to many artists that you simply don't yet know, but needed to see and hear, and this is is one of them.

Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo, live at EOTR 2009 and...

...this is the set-list for it.

These tracks come from two albums: Photos, Fires, Fables (2007) and Despite The Snow (2009), both of which I bought after seeing this live performance, and have played countless times since. An act that employs piano accordion always stands a good chance of getting my attention and, as my luck would have it, this was just one of several that I have seen this year. Yesterday someone ended up here searching for "unusual musical instruments", a category that is in some ways in the ear of the beholder. I have seen a few played live this year, including bassoon, auto-harp, stylophone, several xylophones and also a few toy instuments too...

Related links:

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-is-how-its-meant-to-be-lyrics.html

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2009/12/nostalgia-emily-barker.html

http://rpgreenhalgh.blogspot.com/2010/05/theres-blackbird-singing-it-is-coming.html