My Music in 2015 - Albums - Part 1

So, with December 2015 almost upon us, it is time to kick off the season-of-lists. I'm not really convinced how important this all is despite the fact that so many of us take part in it. My rather simple reason is that it helps me take stock of the year and also that I rather enjoy putting the effort into doing the same.
I was going to keep this back for the start of December but since it was essentially complete I thought that I would share it now.

There are no systemic changes from last year. The acts in each list are grouped in alphabetical order and the number of entries in each list is ten. There is no attempt to 'rank' acts in each list, or indeed between lists (there will be at least three such lists of LPs). One thing that has changed not a jot is the influence that music I have seen live during 2015 or previously has had on the overall outcome but then perhaps remarkably there are actually four in this list that I have never seen live. Needless to say all those are very much in my sights in 2016.

• Danni Nicholls - Mockingbird Lane
• Don Gallardo - Hickory
• Flo Morrissey - Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful
• Free the Honey - Fine Bloom
• Gwenno - Y Dydd Olaf
• Hattie Briggs - Red & Gold
• The Honeycutters - Me Oh My
• Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free
• Lindi Ortega - Faded Gloryville
• Marika Hackman - We Slept At Last

I am happy if people would like to make comments and suggestions. I will be equally so if this leads anyone to find music of which they were previously either unaware of had forgotten about. If it tempts you to head out and see some live music then that is a real bonus. It is also, truth be told, quite simply the music that I really liked.
Here are the photos that I promised - one each of four artists that I took at four different festivals this summer.

Don Gallardo and Friends - Saloon stage,  Truck Festival - 18 July 2015.

Flo Morrissey (solo) - The Den stage, Cambridge Folk Festival - 2 August 2015.

Gwenno - Far Out stage, Green Man Festival - 20 August 2015.

Marika Hackman - Garden stage, End of The Road Festival - 6 September 2015.

It is fair to say that Jason Isbell comes very close to the top of the list of artists that I wish to see live in 2016. If the recorded music is not reason enough then this is why.

If you wish to look further into the music of 2015 that is in my mind then, following on from these and as I promised, here is Tracks of 2015 #3.
The second selection of LPs will likely be preceded by a selection of EPs and mini-albums sometime later this week.

New Music 2015 - Part 64 - Free The Honey - Fine Bloom

I mentioned this forthcoming release here back in April and on Monday, following my return from Green Man Festival, it was waiting for me in my mailbox.

'Fine Bloom', the début album by Free The Honey, is officially released, independently by the artists, on 12 September and I'm hoping that good record shops here in the UK will see fit to stock the physical release too, because it most definitely deserves that. If I had to suggest a likely candidate then that would be Union Records, Lewes, Sussex.
The original trio of Katherine Taylor, Jenny Hill, Lizzy Plotkin, later joined by Andrew Cameron, weave a seam through Americana - from bluegrass to alt- country via blues and gospel - that makes the whole sound seem quite astonishingly natural.
The track listing is below and the CD comes with an insert that details the lyric to each song, which I think is always a nice touch:

Fine Bloom - Free The Honey:

• take me home
• high peaks
• honey blues
• crooked child
• a beautiful life
• hymn for renewal
• dark and muddy
• wabbit time
• vultures
• waiting for fergal
• go with the light
• jenny caught a catfish
• come up to the mountain

Live and not at all local...

'Thoughts on Music' is taking a time-out for a couple of days. It will return early next week. Rather than mull over last night's BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, which I considered doing, I will hold that comment over until next week.
I decided upon sharing this instead. In a way it is more vital.
I have mentioned 'Free The Honey' before and whilst purveyors of for the most part Appalachian music that is not to say that gypsy fiddle and more beside will not be included, for they are. The four band members - Katherine Taylor, Jenny Hill, Lizzy Plotkin and now made complete by Andrew Cameron (upright bass) come from a wide milieu but are all based in the high mountains - Gunnison, in western Colorado. Free The Honey is working towards a début LP.
This was a support set to further that project. You will have to suffer, or fast-forward, the rambling introduction but that has nothing to do with the band. We have all been there, I'm sure, in similar circumstances. I'd recommend that you start 7 minutes 19 seconds in.

Once you get to the music they play nine songs or tunes; it is a delight.

Free The Honey is currently recording the band's début album, which is scheduled for release in September. As yet untitled it can be pre-ordered here, including signed copies.
The pound Sterling reached a three-month high against the US dollar at the end of the week, so of course I took advantage of that!

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.

New Music 2014 - Part 20 - Free The Honey - In Our Hands EP

Much as I like my music in a physical format, sometimes vinyl, I have to say that (legal) download and the internet has the huge bonus of immediacy sometimes.
This EP is a great example of that. There is probably no physical release and its digital release was only yesterday.

My attention was bought to it by Folk Radio UK and it is one of the most stunning pieces of Americana that I have heard all year. That isn't for a lack of such things. If you like Carrivick Sisters or their more expansive outlet Cardboard Fox then likely you will covet this and, at seven tracks it is more of a mini-album. It is available to download here (in almost any format) and I chose MP3 320. It costs from $4 but that seems so mean when a pint of beer costs more than that and I know I will, indeed probably already have, got more enjoyment from it.

The three young women hail not from the perceived home-ground of Americana or bluegrass rather from Gunnison in the high mountains of Western Colorado but don't let that put you off, and not least for the other sounds that they bring to bear.  


This is 'Iridology', the third track on the EP and one that has touches of gypsy fiddle on it. Given the status that folk, roots and Americana is currently enjoying in Europe don't be at all surprised to see them touring over here in the coming year.