New Music 2018 - Part 11 - Midnight Skyracer - Fire

Even in this somewhat enlightened age all-female professional bluegrass bands are something of a rarity.
In so as far as I am aware the very first was New York based five-piece 'Buffalo Gals'. In 1974 it released an album 'First Born(e)' - the actual spelling depends on whether you are looking at the front or reverse of the album sleeve(!) - on Revonah Records as 12" vinyl RS-913 and that I have. It cost more to transport and import than its purchase price but I knew that would be the case. It was well worth it.

Fast-forward forty-four years and become acquainted with Midnight Skyracer. Five young women none of whom call the USA home; four are from England and the other from Ireland. Bluegrass has blossomed far and wide these last few years.

Charlotte Carrivick - guitars
Eleanor Wilkie - upright bass
Laura Carrivick - fiddle
Leanne Thorose - mandolin
Tabitha Agnew - banjo

All of them contribute vocals on the album.

Midnight Skyracer - Fire (SKY001, 2 February 2018).

Midnight Skyracer - Fire:

• Fuel to My Fire
• Susan Anna Gal
• Working Girl Blues
• Virginia Rose
• So Long, Goodbye, We're Through
• They Want to Go
• Spinous Shark
• A Little Luck
• Sitting Alone in the Moonlight
• High and Dry

The covers are handled beautifully; Hazel Dickens' composition Working Girl Blues being a splendid case in point, but the original songs and their tunes certainly live up to the company in which they find themselves.

To give you an idea of what to expect should you see them live here is a song that isn't actually on the album at all. 

It is a cover of 'I'm Just Here to Ride The Train' by Mountain Heart from that band's 2006 album 'Wide Open'.

Other acts that feature these artists (an incomplete list):
Cardboard Fox

Carrivick Sisters
Cup O'Joe
Kieran Towers and Charlotte Carrivick

Just today, this:
https://www.facebook.com/midnightskyracer/videos/2004970373056156/

The song 'Virginia Rose' is a co-write by Tabitha Agnew and Laura Carrivick.

My Music in 2014 - EPs and mini albums

Just four out of so many possibilities are included in this list but there could always be a 'part 2'. These are not in alphabetical order either but rather in ascending order of the number of times I think that have listened to them since I came to be aware/it was released and this is not adjusted for the time factor in each case - I don't keep statistics in that detail.  It is also less influenced by that which I have seen live but I have designs on that too.

• Aimée - Codes

Originally the solo project of Aimée Mackenzie from Liphook, Hampshire, Codes is the latest EP and one on which she has been joined by younger siblings Freya (violin and backing vocals)  and Ross (cajón).

The first Aimée LP should appear sometime in 2015 and this is not only something I look forward to because I have never seen this outfit live either. It should not be a problem; Aimée is announced to play at Behind the Castle Festival, Sherborne, Dorset on 13 June 2015. Their music while predominantly acoustic is really quite a challenge to categorize, which is no bad thing I hasten to add, for it jumps styles and genres between, and sometimes even during, songs.

• Cardboard Fox - Cardboard Fox

This is the most recently released of the four in this list and it is a début release of kinds - three of the four members of this acoustic quartet have featured in these pages as the still fully functioning Carrivick Sisters - Charlotte and Laura Carrivick and John Breese are joined by Joe Tozer on mandolin and acoustic guitar in Cardboard Fox.

Still very much folk based and with self-penned songs this is rather less heavily bluegrass influenced than the Carrivick Sisters' recordings.

• The Black Feathers - Strangers We Meet

This is a duo that I have seen live twice in 2014 and I'm planning on making that three times at Nunney Acoustic Café later this week.

I'm rather hoping that Gloucestershire-based Ray Hughes and Sian Chandler's Strangers We Meet EP might presage, in a wholly good way however, an album sooner rather than later. I just have a feeling that it could be the start of something big. 

The Black Feathers, Cheese and Grain, Frome, 24 October 2014.

I have, unusually for me, chosen three acts based more or less in central southern England here. This next, although I was alerted to it by Folk Radio UK, comprises three young ladies from thousands of miles away.

• Free The Honey - In Our Hands

Free The Honey is from Gunnison in the high mountains of western Colorado, USA. 

This EP had, in so far as I was aware until this week, no physical release and so it marked a rare foray into downloads as far I am concerned. 

This it seems is not true any longer. The rest of this shop looks fascinating too!

That it is my most played EP or mini-album of 2014 says a great deal. As I mentioned back in June it is a delight of unexpected twists and  turns. At seven tracks it is the only one in this list that truly counts as a mini-album although as strictly-defined EPs should have only three, not more or less, and all the above fail on that criterion: Strangers We Meet has five and the other two four tracks each. The really key thing and I think it important to the renaissance of EPs and mini albums in the last several years, is that there is no need for filler. New music, even just a small body of work, can be made available in a physical format, as well as on-line, as a unified whole far sooner and at less cost than heretofore.

Carrivick Sisters - Live @ The Lights, Andover

Yesterday evening I thought it might be time to start October as I mean to go on, with live music. I have been intending to see a full set from Bath-based Carrivick Sisters for far too long and The Lights, a small council run arts venue in Andover, is barely an hour down the road. With its adjacent free parking and easy access from home it is less trouble than attending an event in Bath and, even more so, Bristol.
Yesterday the sisters; Charlotte (guitar, banjo and mandolin) and Laura (fiddle, dobro and guitar) were joined by John Breeze on bass.  They started the set without John singing 'You'll Miss Her When You're Gone' a capella.

The balance of their extensive set, which in the absence of a support act was divided in to two parts, featured songs from their most recent LP 'Over The Edge' 2013 with a couple of traditional songs (most LP songs are self-penned) and a couple from 2011 LP 'From The Fields' including sing-a-long encore 'Today Is A Good Day'.

The sisters sing harmony vocals as well as share lead vocal duties.

They finished the set with a tune, 'Pig In The Middle'.