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.