My Music in 2015 - Albums - Part 2

Here we are again, just over a week after my first foray on this subject. The rules are the same as in Part 1. I hope you find something to like or to argue about.
Critical comments are quite as welcome as positive ones just so long they are not offensive or defamatory. A fact is that a credited post always has more gravitas than an anonymous one and that applies even if the content of both were to be exactly the same. I reserve the right to publish comments on this post and will credit them accordingly.

• Ange Hardy - Esteesee
• Chantel McGregor - Lose Control
• Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
• Fara - Fara
• Girlpool - Before The World Was Big
• Heather Crosse - Groovin' At The Crosse Roads
• Mad Dog McRea - Almost Home
• Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Watershed
• The Rosellys - The Barn Sessions
• Stick In The Wheel - From Here

Part 1 was equally divided between acts from the UK and from North America and that only occurred to me after I posted it. This selection is much more UK biased, featuring just two acts from North America and an Australian. Specifically this one...

Courtney Barnett, Far Out Stage, Green Man Festival - Sunday evening, 23 August 2015.

Girlpool, Big Top stage, End Of The Road Festival - Saturday 5 September 2015.

Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin, Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Sunday 23 February 2014.

The Rosellys, Saloon Stage, Truck Festival - Friday 18 July 2015.

Fara, Stage 2, Cambridge Folk Festival - Thursday 30 July 2015.

You may be wondering why I often use links to my earlier comments in these lists; this is because they often contain more back-links to the artist, as well as to other related topics. It saves listing multiple links all over again.

New Music 2015 - Part 67 - Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Watershed

Nothing gives me more pleasure than writing about this. It is a couple of years since I was introduced to this duo by Ian Lyster via North Dorset Folk Festival and Marnhull Acoustic Sessions. I have seen the duo live at least five times now and it can never be once too many.

It is not really so long since Mynd was released (2013).  This is about the new studio album but in the meantime they have released the CD Live At Calstock (2014).

Watershed is released on 25 September by Dragonfly Roots.

Less concerned with historical themes than their earlier work it is indeed a watershed. To assert otherwise would be wrong I think; the track titles alone give lie to that:

• Watershed
• Stones
• Tonight
• Yarrow Mill
• Conkers
• December
• January
• Letter (Unsent)
• Foundling
• Lament
• London
• Taxis

More immediate and intimate it is certainly is, but no less stunning. This is just a sample of it and, amazingly, adding video from FB wasn't quite the total pain that I thought it would be.
Should you want it ASAP then Proper Music have it on a limited pre-order deal for £10.99 and that includes UK delivery and the CD is signed!

Behind The Castle Festival 2015

It is almost 13 April as I write and Behind the Castle Festival is therefore just two short months away.

Get your tickets here and especially if you wish for camping on Saturday for these are very limited and will all be gone soon. The line-up is of course stunning from start to finish. There is nothing not to cherish, which it just as it should be. With three stages there will be some agonising choices to make; I have been promised that. Bring it on, this as a festival compact enough to see part of one set and then part of another without missing much whilst between them.
I'm not saying, because I won't decide until the very moment, what I want to see most.  Here is a Spotify playlist including some, but not all, of the artists that will be there on the day. It is entirely my own choice of songs, of course, but hopefully provides some idea of what is on offer. 
There will almost certainly be additions and updates. I just needed to post something at the point that I had got to. It might just help fend off some of that the Monday feeling too - it is nearly 100 minutes long.
The Spiral Earth Awards 2015 have now been announced and two of the winners, both for albums, are playing BTCF 2015:
Moulettes - best album - Constellations
Larkin Poe - best Americana album - Kin
If that weren't enough another  of the winners -  Blair Dunlop , best solo artist, is playing Marnhull Acoustic sessions this coming Sunday (19 April) and that is not all; Emma Stevens is supporting.

My 2014 in Music - Live Albums & New Music 2015 - Part 2

A few years ago I thought that EPs were a dying breed. I was wrong about that. More recently I thought that live LPs were for the most part a highlight of the 1970s and 1980s; I have plenty of those, almost all on vinyl, that attest to that. My inclination even then was that the costs involved were something that only well established acts, with major label resources both logistical and financial, could really contemplate and that therefore they tended to be recorded at large venues or festivals and where such facilities were more likely to be found in any case, only served to reinforce that idea.
I am happy to report that I was seemingly wrong about this too. Whilst obviously no replacement for seeing the artist actually playing live they have interest. Here, in no particular order, are a few that have caught my attention in 2014.

• Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Live in Calstock

Overlooking the Tamar in far-eastern Cornwall this venue is something of a hidden treasure.

In a wider sense that was also somewhat true of the artists until they won the 'Best Duo' award at the BBC Folk Music Awards 2014. I have been lucky enough to see them live on a number of occasions. Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are confirmed to play Behind The Castle Festival, Sherborne, Dorset on 13 June 2015.

• Rachel Sermanni - Live in Dawson City

I have mentioned this in some detail here. Suffice it to say that Dawson City makes Calstock and Carrbridge seem like accessible places to play and record! The march of technology has had more than a few downsides in music - the ability to make very respectable recordings at reasonable cost in small venues is not one of them. I'm hoping that her follow-up to Under Mountains (2012) will appear in 2015.
That turned out to be more prescient than I could have known when I wrote the foregoing paragraph last week. Sometimes, but rarely, not finishing posts has unanticipated advantages!
It was announced only today. 

'Tied To The Moon'. This, I believe, will be the album artwork. It is due for release in late February 2015.

• Dana Fuchs - Songs From The Road

In the last couple of years the live CD/DVD format presented by Ruf Records 'Live On The Road' has been a major influence and I have mentioned several of these already. This one by Dana Fuchs is the latest to find favour with me and the album artwork is, as ever, totally generic. It was recorded in a single take before a sold-out audience. In this case it was the Highline Ballroom, NYC, March 14, 2014.

The label favours blues but the remit is liberally interpreted and I don't have any problem with that - soul blues, blues rock; whatever and however it comes it is likely to at least catch my attention, to be quite honest. The production is, however, uniformly top-drawer as are the performances so recorded.
I will probably never understand why, as I approach fifty years of age, I like a far wider range of music than I did when I was eighteen or twenty-one. I reckon that I am amongst the lucky ones.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2014

I'm back home from the above mentioned. Was it good? Don't even get me started!

This was the third edition and the second at its current venue of Marnhull Village Hall. I think I have said each time that the latest will be hard to better. Take it as read that it applies here too.
The word bijou applies to this festival more than any other that I can think of. A jewel is usually very small but perfect and, for some reason, in English we borrowed the French word when used as an adjective. As a demonstration of the intimacy of the setting I took this picture from the back row of the seating and without zoom of any kind. The sound desk was perhaps 2 metres behind me and the back wall of the hall immediately behind that.

This is headline artists Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin and I shall return to them.

I'm a big fan of seeing opening acts and as it happens in this case he was the only one on the bill that I had never seen live before. This just shows the strength-in-depth on offer here. 

It was Gavin Davenport and he is hardly unknown, as the link will attest. He played a variety of instruments of which the concertina is a favourite of mine.

The next artist to play may not be known to you unless you were at Behind The Castle Festival in 2014, which is where I first saw her live. That should change very soon and I'm interested to hear how she sounds with backing musicians. Why so? See here.

Lizzyspit releases her first full length recording 'Villains' in January 2015.

I remember the next act, Tinderbox, from my visit to the first North Dorset Folk Festival (NDFF) in 2012. Totally new to me then, seeing them play again yesterday was quite the nostalgia thing.

They were, as in 2012, joined by Bob Burke (right) and he is now the only artist to have played all three editions of NDFF, where he played solo in 2013. Tinderbox release a live album 'Live! At The Cottage' shortly. Indeed, and thanks for the link information, you can now pre-order it here.  I have to say that, while you can take Monique Houraghan out of Dublin you can't take Dublin out of her. Later we were treated, by Hannah Martin, to an apposite Oscar Wilde quote! And that is not to mention the fact that Tinderbox challenged Ninebarrow (see below) to a cover 'duel' - and it seems that both parties freely accepted.

Next was the UK based but bluegrass-influenced and all-round inventiveness of three-piece Jaywalkers - from left to right: Mike, Lucy and Jay. They are working on their third LP.

The old-time Appalachian style, whether the tracks are new or traditional, was just the ticket at this point in the day.

After these four acts there was a longer interval before the next three sets. This was to allow for food, drink and also reconfiguring the stage set-up for what was to come. On the subject of food I'll say only this: Cake was clearly pretty much the only food that the artists coveted.

The music resumed with Dorset duo Ninebarrow that also play a mixture of traditional and new compositions, the latter mostly inspired by history and landscape.

I think that perhaps the most incisive comment in the link above is provided by the duo that were headlining. There is something about their take on music that really matters. They played some new songs and that really mattered too. This was taken during one of those new songs. It is astonishing to remember that their first released recording, 'Kingdom EP', was released in 2013 and début LP 'While The Blackthorn Burns' as recently as April 2014.

First support was an artist who played at the first NDFF in 2012 and that was also the first time I saw Megan Henwood play live although I was well aware of the 2011 album 'Making Waves' before that. I have seen her play solo, as a four-piece and, as here, a three-piece.

Any which way it is an experience.

The vicissitudes on the path of a musician are many and as such have delayed the release of her second LP 'Head Heart Hand'. It is now happening in March 2015 and all the omens are good.

That only leaves me to mention the headline artists - Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin. To be honest they did exactly that which I have come to expect.
They came, they played, they conquered but they are no conquistadors for they do it with guileless style rather than with fire and sword. If there were any present that hadn't seen this live and remain unconverted then I have to say its a bit like cooking mussels - if they haven't opened up after a few minutes then they were probably already dead.

Their latest studio LP 'Mynd' (2013) is excellent but, and it is relevant here, equally so is their 2014 release 'Live In Calstock' and it was recorded at another venue about as small as this. One of the best live acts in the UK today; it is as simple as that.

One more thing is that you can see another of the very best at the same venue on 9 November! Marnhull Acoustic Sessions presents The Moulettes. All six of them accompanied by even more instruments, often large ones, on that same small stage. You can see them supporting Bellowhead too, and you should do that, but I guarantee that it won't be an atmosphere quite like this and you may never be able to see them in a venue as small as this again. Tickets are £11 (including £1 booking fee).

How humans attempt to label and list music (and enjoy arguing about it)...

This became a topic, off-line, yesterday evening.
How are 'folk', 'roots' 'bluegrass' and others actually defined? Indeed are there any clear boundaries at all, when it comes to what may, or may not be included? This is a topic that I just know could run forever.
It came back to mind just now as I am thinking about, and  listening to, the 2014 recorded music I have acquired. Here's a picture of the first tranche (and yes, that is an Island 'pink label' on a 2014 vinyl release)...

It has also made me consider that which I wish to listen to or more problematically regret having missed live, which is a matter of self-questioning.
Above all this, however, it throws up a wider metaphysical question. Why do we tend to favour the process of 'classification' and why is such comfort gained by associating the very diversity (which we also tend to like) of things with a rather small number of 'boxes' in which we aim to 'put' them?
Digital devices are all very good for making and storing lists, assuming we are organised enough to store the stuff on them. Digital devices don't argue about the lists we chose to inflict on them and as an example I can find no reliable report of a digital device that has unilaterally declared that it can't abide U2.
Amazon's algorithm is quite good at suggesting things that I might like but not because it knows me and how I think. It simply knows about other people and what they have purchased or browsed and therefore, indirectly, how they think. What digital networks are not yet any good at is what humans are innately good at. That is spotting apparently curious connections or comparisons that are not within any logically associated domain but which very often our fellow humans can relate to. We humans do so endlessly, much to our mutual delight and annoyance.

This is where we get to the arguing part of it. Folk/roots music does not work by rules - it evolves and it does so unpredictably. That is important because if that were not so then it would be a dinosaur. There would be nothing new, original and incisive about it.
When Bob Dylan was pilloried for going electric others such as Fairport Convention took the idea and ran with it. It was ever thus. One other important point is that until quite recently folk/roots music was seen at best to be a minor genre managing decline as best it could.
In a few years, and due to changing technology as much as changing taste, that concept has altered quite remarkably. It is now possible to record and release music without the expenditure, in equipment, facilities or even travel and other sundries such as it recently was. It is true that many fine labels - Topic Records and Fellside Recordings being just two that spring to mind - had continued to release such music and while it is most certainly still not easy to make even a modest living from it, the balance of power has shifted and also in another very important way - the traffic in folk/roots/Americana has also become fully fledged two-way traffic as the often perceived insularity has broken down.

There are some instruments that have evolved to belong, even though until quite recently they did not. Bouzouki is an instrument from Asia Minor. By the early 20th century it had migrated and evolved and was found in music of the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. One of the first, and the best known to introduce it to Celtic folk music was Dónal Lunny of Planxty. The band spent time behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1970s and this is reflected in several tracks on the 1974 album 'Cold Blow and The Rainy Night', to which I am listening as I write. Also on the album are several other songs that do not come directly from the UK or Irish folk canon - The Lakes of Pontchartrain and The Green Fields of Canada being two of them.
There are several others that are not native to UK folk but I'd find to argue that they are no longer assimilated, to all intents and purposes.
Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are at the top of their game, winning best duo at the BBC Folk Awards 2014, and they headline North Dorset Folk Festival this coming Saturday. They extensively play two instruments that do not feature in the traditional folk canon. Hannah, as well as playing awesome fiddle, is a mean banjo player. Quite when it arrived in UK folk I don't know but it is an essential of bluegrass and also Appalachian 'old time' music, especially when played clawhammer (that is with the back of the fingernails rather than traditionally plucked) in the latter case. Phillip is an amazing resonator guitar player and this instrument although probably of Hawaiian origin entered popular music in the early 1920s via Jazz as it was loud enough to compete (unamplified) with the brass section. Often simply known as dobro this is a brand - it is exactly like calling all generic vacuum cleaners hoovers. Any which way the instrument quickly became a feature of both blues and bluegrass too, as they spread north up the Mississippi. Another Hawaiian instrument to gain traction, because of its general versatility is the ukulele. In all cases these instruments were readily adopted because they were very usable within the existing structure but also bought with them new possibilities. Not everyone welcomed these developments, that much is certain, but this is what a living tradition needs to do to flourish. The fast changing USA absorbed and developed all these influences, including those that came from Africa, whether via the Carribean, south and central America or simply directly and new dimensions took shape.
Inevitably the result was exported once again. There would have been no British blues, in the mould of Free and early Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, had that not happened. An interesting corollary to this is 'Black Magic Woman' - the Carlos Santana version (1970) is so well known that it is often forgotten that it is a cover of a 1968 Peter Green original (but only a single and then only released in the UK). It appeared on the Santana album 'Abraxas' by which time it had acquired new parts influenced by traditional eastern European Roma music and also Latin american rhythm. Plenty of the eastern European tradition had also made its way west across the Atlantic and that is evident in much bluegrass and Appalachian fiddle music.

So where does this find us? In a whirlpool that none of us had imagined, I rather think!
I shall continue in a new post if only because Blogger tells me that I can't add any more 'labels' to this one!
What is more, come this weekend I will also have a whole lot of live music to write about and, if I have my way, plenty of photos to go with that. I can't wait.

New Music 2014 - Part 25 - Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Live In Calstock

Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin were relatively little known until s 2012 when, nominated for, and then winning, 'Folk Duo' at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2013 their public profile changed a little. They seem not to have changed at all.
Less than a week after they were receiving the aforementioned award at London's Royal Albert Hall they were were playing to a capacity crowd of ninety at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions (and they had played Dulverton Village Hall in the meantime).
Somewhere along the line they had hatched a plan to record a live album - a proper live album - recorded in a single take with a real audience in a small venue. This is that album, released 14 July and recorded 14 May at Calstock Arts.

I have mentioned this release before in the 'Something Else To Listen To' section of the blog side-bar. I have to say that if there is a better acoustic live album released in 2014 then it will be truly a year to remember and I'd like that to be true.
For a much more detailed analysis I commend to you this one from Folk Radio UK.

Marnhull Acoustic Session - Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin

This is an important update on my previous post concerning Marnhull Acoustic Sessions and the event this coming Sunday (23 February). Ninebarrow are still supporting and Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are still headlining but the big change is that the latter have just been awarded the 2014 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for 'Best Duo'. That was in The Royal Albert Hall this evening but, if you are quick, you could see them play live in Marnhull Village Hall (capacity ~100) this coming Sunday evening. Litotes is self-defining.
Tickets, while they last, are £6 + £0.60 booking fee on-line and delivered by e-mail. I wouldn't bet on getting one on the door (£7). See you there!
Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin the first time that I saw them live...

Acoustic+, Frome, Cheese and Grain, 25 March 2011.
This an older song, Queen Gwendolen, but none the worse for that.

Phillip on dobro and Hannah on fiddle and vocals here.

Live Music - Marnhull Acoustic Sessions

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions take place in Marnhull Village Hall, a small but intimate and well appointed venue in North Dorset that recently hosted the rather wonderful North Dorset Folk Festival 2013, about which I have already posted (1) (2) (3) and that shares the same organization.

This is simply my thoughts on why I'm so looking forward to the forthcoming artists as the event enters its second year early in 2014.

Tickets are £6.60 (including £0.60 booking fee). This is exclusively secure e-ticketing, so you do not have to worry about the post arriving in time! All the necessary information is on the website linked above.

The next date for your diary is a week tomorrow, Sunday 24 November, and features The Moulettes. If you were at North Dorset Folk Festival 2012, held at Sturminster Newton High School, you will know of them. There's a lot going on.

The Moulettes - North Dorset Folk Festival 2012.
  

If I haven't convinced you that you need a ticket then perhaps this will. Just now the Mike Harding Folk Show Number 47 (on Mixcloud here) also featured 'Songbird'.   In support this coming Sunday, apparently Liz Green. If this is real then what are you waiting for?
The following event is a Ceilidh on 22 December. I have to say that I shall be giving that one a miss. Not only do I have two left feet but it is close enough to Christmas that I shall likely be unavailable in any case.
After recovering from the Christmas and New Year excesses Marnhull Acoustic Sessions return with a vengeance in February.

On 2 February another veteran, although he might not see it quite that way, of North Dorset Folk Festival 2012 returns in the guise of Tom James originally from Falmouth. I seem to have taken few photos of that and this is the only remotely usable one, so hopefully I will be able to take some better ones in February!

Joining Tom on the bill that evening is an artist quite new to the Dorset acoustic scene. Travelling all the way from near Richmond, the one in North Yorkshire, is Pip Mountjoy. She certainly made it as far south as Somerset in 2013, as she played for BBC Introducing at Glastonbury Festival. I saw her live at Deer Shed Festival 2012, up near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. I didn't take any convincing that her star was rising after that and both are certainly ones to watch in 2014.

   
This is followed, just three weeks later, by Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin. In a year that has seen many remarkable albums, and of which more soon, at least from my perspective their latest 'Mynd' is certainly one of them. I have had the pleasure of seeing them twice live, both times at The Cheese and Grain here in Frome.
As of today Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin are nominated in the category 'Best Duo' at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2014.
This picture was taken the first time I saw them play live - at Acoustic+ in the Cheese and Grain, Frome, 25 March 2011.

Hmm... I'm not sure why, but I have a feeling this is going to become something of a regular fixture.

Acoustic+ 25 March - Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin

This was the next problem that led to the travails of The Off Chance, as mentioned in the post below.
When you pay £5 ($8) for a ticket to see four acts live you really have no right to expect one of them to be as good as Barbara J. Hunt and Dizzi Dulcimer. When as a very new band just starting out, as is the case with The Off Chance and the first album just a mirage on the horizon, you end up playing immediately after the former and just before Exeter-based duo Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin it is going to be tough; very tough indeed and this flyer, which was everywhere in the Cheese & Grain, says a great deal about the kind of pressure they were up against:

In my humble opinion they were truly worthy of the recommendation.
    

The term roots music is very wisely used here for Phillip often plays a resonator guitar, in the case below one with an electric pick-up, the concept of which only dates back to 1927.

  

They were originally designed to be a louder version of acoustic, which became lost in big-band music, but soon found a place of their own for their unique sound. There are various modifications of the thin spun-metal cone that acts as the primary resonator (in the version above that is amplified by the electric pick-up in the same way as with an electro-acoustic) and are sometimes all known generically as 'dobros'; this is now a registered trademark of Gibson Guitars but there are many manufacturers of  such instruments.

They are often found in both bluegrass and Hawaiian guitar music. In the former case they partner fiddle particularly well, which has a great deal to do with the music here.  Another very suitable partner instrument is this...
  

Hannah Martin playing 4-string banjo.
  

Or even 4-string banjo accompanied by a standard acoustic guitar.