Live and local - Frome Folk Festival 2012

This is going to be a 'work in progress', quite likely over the next fortnight or more. I once (in 1990 to be precise) swore blind that "I would never write a 'book' again". Some sixteen years later blogging had come along and I fell into the trap;  the rest is the history of what happened thereafter.
This weekend's little place in the history of me goes to the first ever Frome Folk Festival.  The first thing I'm going to say is a huge thank-you to all the people that made it happen - from concept and organisation to the management of all aspects over the weekend and the artists who were willing to subscribe to a start-up. Yes, there were the inevitable niggles of almost any kind you can imagine, but that happens at any festival every time. Everyone is quite entitled to their own perspective but one of my blog philosophies is to concentrate on what I like (it's written down in one of the early posts) and I don't see any reason to change it now.
  
A few of my pictures are in the side-bar already (and I can't wait to see those from the pros!) but here is another one:

 Miranda Sykes, Rex Preston and Damian O'Kane.

Cheese and Grain, Frome Folk Festival, Sunday 19 February 2012.

She recently received a '2012 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award' for this song.

Bella Hardy, 'The Herring Girl', Westway Cinema, Frome Folk Festival.

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.