British Folk (and Revival)

Véronique Chalot’s J'ai vu le loup is a good mix of French and British styles, a bit like Comus or Catherine Ribiero in places, but mostly gentle pastoral.

Can't think of much European folk that sounds too similar to British/Irish folk music - Alan Stivell, of course, from 'Little Britain'.

She’s Breton too

I've been listening to Malicorne (amazing) and there's a lot of Scottish sounding stuff in there. I have heard that a lot of Scottish tradition comes from france though (I should know this, could have swore a music teacher told us that bagpipes and tartan were french).

There's bagpipes everywhere - even England!

Been topping up my amazon wishlist and Watersons - Yorkshire Garland isn't on CD.

Malicorne is the one French folk group I am familiar with and the records I’ve heard I absolutely love. The droning quality is blissful to me. If anyone knows more about the French folk scene, I’m all ears.

Re Electric Eden. I haven’t read it but the library has a copy I should borrow. Sounds like a good winter read

I read as much as google books would allow me of a folk/psych-folk book by Jeanette Leech called Seasons They Change - pretty absorbing.

I did a posts search for Malicorne the other day and found a lot of helpful info about French folk. I came at Malicorne more as a prog band but seemingly their early days were more in the classic folk rock mode.

I should watch BBC's Folk Britania again, that was very generous to give us a full 3 episodes because the other ones on metal, prog and synth only really skimmed the surface (although it was nice to see some less familiar faces). I didn't pay close enough attention to all 3 episodes when they first aired.

Electric Eden is a great read. Covers lots of ground - a lot of it probably familiar to many ILMers, but I'd definitely recommend it.

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/folk

Checking all the subgenre charts could take forever but there's a lot of interesting looking stuff there (Warsaw City Folk?). Cant find a Russian category oddly. Charts probably aren't particularly reliable outside of the traditions most familiar to us (Robbie Robertson at no2 of Native American, Okami videogame soundtrack at no1 of East Asian).

How good a guide is the Electric Eden book? I guess it leans more towards the psychedelic side?

Are there any guides that go through European folk that has a similar enough aesthetic to british folk?

How did you guys find your way around?

― Robert Adam Gilmour

electric eden is a great book but i found it unfortunately not very useful as a listening guide. rob young has a real gift for describing music in a creative and tantalizing way that i found in many cases the reality didn't hold up to.

rym charts have some good stuff in them but require extensive filtering to get rid of, say, strasserites.

here i stumbled onto this list copied from holy warbles, probably better to go with lists than charts as a general rule on rym

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/ceesar/holy-warbles/

I bought myself 'anthems in eden' on vinyl as a xmas present. Been digging the other Watersons stuff I got too; was the 'soul cake' song really creepy for people in the past, or is it just modern ears?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ20dtnZG14

It reminds me of a Xmas Carol, which I guess must have been made in the same mode...but I can't remember which.

"Christmas is Coming" has the same "if you haven't got a penny" bit

I can't quite remember what it was I was thinking of. We Three Kings is maybe similar in what seems to me like the 'flatness' of the tune?

Or maybe 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' - I have no clue about music theory, they just have something in common to my ears.

I get you, I was also thinking about the Coventry Carol because of the eerie minor key vibe

It's kind of the old 'minor key = sad' kind of debate. Did the people at the time find these eerie and negative, or do we think they are because of associations we have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5CZHHK2WQQ

I feel a wyrd Christmas coming on

I feel like there's something - maybe deliberate - that folk revival people were doing that generates a lot of the eerieness. Compare different versions of a standard like "Lord Bateman", Nic Jones's for example has a tune that's at odds with the lyric in adding this layer of melancholy to it

https://youtube.com/watch? v=wMI11GaHC00

https://youtube.com/watch? v=0C_wyEpaNP8

https://youtube.com/watch? v=wMI11GaHC00

https://youtube.com/watch? v=0C_wyEpaNP8

I'm in my cups listening to Bright Phoebus, which will probably be the tone of the holidays.

gah, phone links

so this is the one that really sticks in my head and i find myself humming loudly in public.
got good seats for Shirley's roundhouse show early next year and really looking forward to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mazxGlUoSQ8

I think "Winifer Odd" is the best demo on the second disc of Bright Phoebus. It has something a little different from the official version, maybe it's mostly the guitars?

I saw another two copies in Fopp and bought one for a friend. Surprised there's still a bunch sitting around in shops.

Listening to Once in a Blue Moon and Bed of Roses by Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight on this rainy November morning in the office. Lal's lyrics induce a pleasant vertigo, like being next in line for a roller coaster or when you get just a little bit of opiate and a chance to lie down.

i don't think i've heard that one ... will have to check it out.
i've been revisiting the Electric Muse comp in a big way over the past couple months — a really pleasurable and revealing listen.

It's two albums from the 90s that Lal Waterson recorded with her son... she sadly died while Bed of Roses was being recorded in 1998.

Thanks for the heads up, I saw them in Fopp and picked them up.

I rewatched Olivier Assayas's Something in the Air last night and really took notice of Amazing Blondel's "Fantasia Lindum" (1971). Afterwards, was able to order it and another of their albums as a twofer CD.

from Post-Fahey etc. Pt 2 thread:
Just listened to John Rebourn's The Attic Tapes, out Oct. 16. They go back at least to '62---he died before getting all the dates, but his commentary is really fluent, analyzing some of the songs, without getting pedantic, and talking about how several of them came together, incl. ones whose (probable) sources were unguessed way back when he learned 'em: who knew "Can't Keep From Cryin'" was a Blind Willie, and it's one of several familiar titles who sound really different from any version I knew.
He also talks about finding traces of the UK songster Davey Graham in various cities, ideas that lodged in the heads of musos who may well have had no reel-to-reels, or anyway didn't need one to summon the bits that JR puts together here. Mind you, he does give Graham the writer's credit for the opening tightly loose bedsit version of "Anji"(that's from the box marked "1962").
Most are like that, as he says up front, with no thought they'd ever be heard---apprentice JR, but he's already got it, and the audio's a lot better than I expected: just whoosh on the hemp carpet, and You Are There. Ditto the live tracks, where you can tell he knew somebody was listening.
He's an okay-to-good singer, maybe more the former, but we also get a couple of nice jolts from Beverly Martyn, on young Donovan's Jansch-y "Picking Up The Sunshine." JR mentions her being on the cover of a Jansch LP...need to check out more of her stuff; I only know her from the album with hubbie John. She's even better on a tight blues. Though actually most of this is pretty concise--20 tracks in 60'48"---with no lack of atmosphere.
Also a couple guest shots from the Hurdy Gurdy Man, Mac Macleod (vocals and guitar only), and the grand finale teams JR with Graham himself, on "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out": jazzy-bluesy, duh, and rawther magical. What other Graham should I check out?
Oh yeah, audio and more info here:
http://www.worldmusic.net/store/item/TUG1089/
PS: speaking of Jansch, this also has an intriguing solo Renbourn version of "Courtship Blues," which Renbourn says is Jansch's first song--they hadn't met then, and the writer hadn't recorded it yet, but Renbourn heard it when Tom Paley came down from Edinburgh.
Wantin those Graham tips yall.

― dow, Tuesday, September 8, 2015 6:11 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

lots of davy graham releases i've yet to hear but...

the comp that came out on see for miles is a great place to start, picks and chooses from most of his decca albums. not sure if this has been superseded by a more recent collection or not.

favourite dg lp of mine: large as life & twice as natural. stretched out folk blues jazz raga (love the joni both sides now cover that kicks it off), cd reissue has good notes from john renbourn himself.

& if you don't want to hear him sing (i like his voice personally) the collaboration with shirley collins is a+

― no lime tangier, Tuesday, September 8, 2015

This was mostly good too:
Artist: John Renbourn & Wizz Jones
Title: Joint Control
Catalogue No: TUGCD1095
Barcode: 605633009521
Label: Riverboat Records
Release date: 9 September 2016

Wizz is among a host of performers appearing at a special John Renbourn Tribute concert on Thursday 22 September at Cecil Sharp House, London.

Riverboat Records is delighted and proud to be releasing Joint Control whose 13 songs wonderfully embody the fruits of that friendship, capturing the two great artists and consummate guitarists performing together live and in the studio. The album is all the more poignant because it represents the final recordings by John Renbourn, the final tracks made just days before his death on 26 March 2015 from a heart attack at his home in Hawick in the Scottish borders.

At the time of John’s death, Joint Control was almost entirely finished. The pair had been working together since the start of the year in a small studio, about an hour from John’s Hawick home. Alongside the sheer artistry of their playing you can’t but escape the warmth of the camaraderie permeating these performances. Most of the songs are drawn from a repertoire honed through their touring together since 2012; the only original composition, Wizz’s instrumental ‘Balham Moon’, was recorded at the insistence of John, who also gave it a title.

Of course, many of the songs date back to that extraordinary period of the 1960s when Wizz and John first met, reflecting the ideas and techniques that were shared by all the young British pickers and the influences which neither Wizz nor John would have hesitated to acknowledge - Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Josh White and Davy Graham.

The version of ‘Glory Of Love’ here is one of two performances taken from a brace of Edinburgh shows in 2014; it was learnt via a version performed by Big Bill Broonzy rather than the million-selling hit by The Five Keys. Broonzy’s ‘Hey Hey’ also fittingly opens Joint Control. The other song taped at these shows, ‘Great Dream from Heaven’, is from the repertoire of Bahaman gospel singer Joseph Spence. John was a great admirer of Spence’s work but the song was also a staple of Davy Graham’s set. “It was through Davy that we knew it,” recalled Wizz to Peter Paphides whose fine notes grace this collection. “We didn’t know much more about it than that, but then John researched it and went back to the roots of it a bit more.”

Joint Control is fundamentally steeped in the history of British folk music in the 1960s with many songs by Wizz and John’s contemporaries such as Al Jones and Archie Fisher. Another on the scene was Jackson C. Frank who first arrived in London in 1965; his most famous song, ‘Blues Run The Game’, was one Wizz had never got round to recording. It was only in more recent years that he started to play it, albeit it from Bert Jansch’s version.

Bert Jansch himself is appropriately represented on this album by no less than three performances each one bearing the hallmarks of his unique technique and great songwriting. The unreleased instrumental ‘Joint Control’ is an early example of the reflective, intricate filigree work that would dramatically bear fruit on 1966’s Bert & John album. It was actually recorded for Jansch’s It Don’t Bother Me the previous year but inexplicably left off the final selection. Masterfully interpreted here by John with Wizz, it makes it’s presence here all the more special and significant.

The anthemic ‘Strolling Down The Highway’ first appeared on Jansch’s debut which in the hands of Wizz and John - as eloquently described by Peter Paphides: “now sounds like a careworn validation of the bohemian aspirations parlayed by Bert and all the contemporaries for whom the guitar represented an escape route from the expectations of their forebears.” The other Jansch song, ‘Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning’, from his LA Turnaround album, always provided one of the most moving moments in Wizz and John’s shows together; Wizz would usually look skywards at the song’s close. In the wake of John’s death, this recorded version becomes even more heartfelt and moving.

As much as Joint Control is steeped in the celebrated history that its two participants shared, these genuinely historic recordings also sound utterly fresh and contemporary. John and Wizz had only rarely appeared on record together in the past. John produced (and played a little) on Wizz’s 1972 album Right Now, as well as on 2011’s Lucky The Man so we can be particularly thankful that these recordings were made. As Peter Paphides concludes: “Joint Control is a fitting testament to two musicians who never forgot the spirit of joy and exploration which made them pick up their instruments in the first place; two fires of more than fifty years standing. We’re very fortunate that they managed to capture it in time.”

should be tracks from this and The Attic Tapes here:
https://soundcloud.com/world-music-network/

― dow, Monday, July 4, 2016 5:18 PM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Re "Glory of Love," John Martyn used to do a good extended version of it also.

― dow, Monday, July 4, 2016

Oh, here's what I said about it later:
Listening to that John Renbourn & Wizz Jones set, Joint Control, which I posted info about recently. Somehow not yet into the opening and closing instrumentals---though appreciating the latter's it-ain't-over-yet diligent picking-as-digging as an end---but the one in the middle, Jones's "Balham Moon," is pretty cool, and the singing x playing of the others also bring several cycling shades of blues-as-a-feeling vs. purism, even in the Renaissance Faire come-on, "Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning," JR's notes got thee pangs. Mostly, though, it's closer to the relatively expected sort of UK and American rare birds, "Buckets of Rain" aside. Distinct approaches, but very cohesive (think Renbourn plays most of the solos).

― dow, Tuesday, July 12, 2016

And this:

Listened to this---circle of friends on the living room carpet, late night but not too laid back---agreeable vocals, lyrics add roadmarks, guitars keep it moving through my attention (same label that put out those aforementioned posthumous Renbourns, the most recent a live set w Wizz):

JONES, BERRYMAN & JONES
Come What May
Artist: Wizz Jones, Pete Berryman &
Simeon Jones
Title: Come What May
Catalogue No: TUGCD1102
Barcode: 605633010220
Label: Riverboat Records
Release date: 26 May 2017
RIVERBOAT RECORDS PRESS RELEASE
Fellow acoustic guitar innovators and long-time friends Wizz Jones and Pete Berryman have
unmistakable styles that beautifully complement each other. With textured accompaniment
by Simeon Jones on saxophone, harmonica and flute this is an album of great song writing and
seamless musicianship.
Inspired by hearing Big Bill Broonzy and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Wizz Jones learnt his guitar licks from
the likes of Davy Graham and Long John Baldry whilst playing in the coffee bars of London’s Soho
in the late 1950s. He then followed the time-honoured buskers trail from the streets of Paris to the
markets of Marrakech during the early 1960s and returned to Britain with a unique acoustic guitar
style, an eclectic repertoire and a right hand worthy of Broonzy! Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and John
Renbourn have all named him as an important early influence and in May 2012 Bruce Springsteen
opened his Berlin show with Wizz’s song ‘When I Leave Berlin’.
Back in 1960 a be-suited reporter Alan Whicker had filmed a piece for the BBC’s ‘Tonight’ programme
reporting on the ‘beatnik menace’ in Newquay, Cornwall. It included two musical offerings from Wizz,
one of them a song in the style of Woody Guthrie called ‘Hard Times In Newquay’ (if you’ve got long
hair!). The youthful Wizz explained to Alan ‘All I’m interested in is playing the guitar and travelling.’
Unfortunately for the local councillors who spoke about how they were trying to expel the beatniks,
the latter had already had a profound effect on the local youth in the shape of Pete Berryman; Pete’s
first experience of live acoustic guitar was seeing the very same Wizz Jones, barefoot and busking on
the beach in Newquay.
Pete Berryman arrived on the music scene in the 1960s with the Famous Jug Band which also
featured Clive Palmer of the Incredible String Band. At this time, he also recorded with Ralph McTell,
Al Stewart and in 1971 his influential LP with John James,
Sky In My Pie, was released.
Simeon Jones often travelled with father Wizz during the 1960s and 1970s to Cornwall in a variety of
jalopy VW buses and Citroens as well as to numerous festivals in the UK and Europe. Avoiding the
guitar (perhaps sensibly!) he developed into a superb sax, harmonica and flute player and has been
playing since the 1980s a wide variety of music in sessions and on tours with countless blues bands.
The music on this album results from three musicians who have nothing to prove, getting together
for a few days and playing assuredly on a few songs and tunes they all love. There are original songs
from both Pete and Wizz along with Bert Jansch’s ‘Moonshine’ and Fran Landesman’s wonderful
‘Ballad Of The Sad Young Men’.
Wizz’s song ‘Alone In My Car’ perhaps sums up the overall mood; driving through the night, heading
for Cornwall, looking forward to playing some music with Pete and other friends. ‘Playing the guitar
and travelling’ – still doing it after all these years. Long may it continue - come what may!
For more information, visit www.worldmusic.net

― dow, Monday, May 1, 2017 5:08 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

booklet:

01 YOU’RE BLASÉ
(Hamilton/Sievier) pub Chappell Music Ltd
A song composed in 1933 and featured in a
stage musical called ‘Bow Bells’. Hearing this
on a cassette transcription from an old 78
rpm disc played and sung at the piano by that
old rascal Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson reminded
me of musical evenings when as a child at
home in Croydon, listening to the BBC, the
wind-up gramophone and my mother jauntily
playing the piano during the dark winters of
the 1940s.
02 SEE HOW THE TIME IS FLYING
(Tunbridge) Copyright Control
I make no excuses for revisiting this beautiful
Alan Tunbridge song yet again. There must be
so many generations who’ve yet to hear it!
03 POACHER’S MOON
(Jones) pub Year Zero Music
One cold night in November somewhere in
Germany back in the 1970s I was carousing
with the double bass master Danny Thompson.
‘That’s called a “Poacher’s Moon”, Wizz,’ he
said looking up at the Harvest Moon which
was briefly visible between the clouds. I
misunderstood and thought that a ‘Poacher’s
Moon’ meant a dark night with no moon,
hence the lyrics in my song. He then went
on to wax lyrical on his wild times on tour
with the guitarist John Martyn - up to their
waist in freezing water at midnight, fishing
in the Scottish Highlands. I just had to write
something to keep that vision in my mind!
04 A RED PAPER ROSE
(Berryman) Copyright Control
Pete’s imagining the story from another side.
05 BEWARE OF CHARMING FRIENDS
(Jones) pub Year Zero Music
I guess sometimes my songs get too personal!
06 THE BALLAD OF THE SAD YOUNG MEN
(Landesman/Wolf) Copyright Control
Davy Graham, a great inspiration to all
acoustic guitarists in the 1960s, recorded this
Fran Landesman poem on his second album
and I’ve always wanted to sing it.
07 ANOTHER CHRISTMAS WITH YOU
(Jones) pub Year Zero Music
Not to be taken too seriously. A blues riff that
came out of one of my favourite guitar tunings
– EADEBE.
08 COME WHAT MAY
(Berryman) Copyright Control
Pete’s letter to his daughter
09 MOONSHINE
(Jansch) pub Leola Music Ltd
It was the great Bert Jansch who presented
a nine-year-old Simeon with an old wooden
flute, thus starting him off on a never ending
musical journey. When I heard Simeon’s son
Alfie playing Bert’s song, naturally I persuaded
him to come into the studio to play on this
track.
10 SEA SONG
(Berryman) Copyright Control
Some maritime musings from Pete.
11 ALONE IN MY CAR
(Jones) pub Year Zero Music
Heading for my beloved Cornwall for the
thousandth time.
BONUS TRACKS:
12 THE KING OF ROME (BONUS TRACK)
(Sudbury) pub Cloud Valley Music
13 THE NEW MOON’S ARMS (BONUS TRACK)
(Lowe/Sanders) pub Lowe Life Music
14 ALBATROSS (BONUS TRACK)
(Green) pub BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd
MUSICIANS:
Wizz Jones: acoustic guitar, vocals
Pete Berryman: acoustic guitar, vocals
Simeon Jones: tenor saxaphone, flute, harmonica and
vocals
Guest Musicians:
Alfie Jones: acoustic guitar on track 9
Anne Sumner: vocals on tracks 8 and 11
Produced by Wizz Jones and Andy Levien
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Andy Levien at RMS
Studios, London, 2016
Track notes by Wizz Jones
Sleeve notes by Maggie Holland

Visit www.worldmusic.net to hear sound samples of all
albums on Riverboat Records.

― dow, Monday, May 1, 2017

Interesting background, Davey Graham, he was mixed race: Scottish and English, no, seriously, his mother was Guyanese and his father was Scottish. I saw him play once and he was pretty terrible, I'm sure I must have posted about it on here.

I saw John Renbourn playing with Robin Williamson too, which was much better!

Ah, here we are...

Glad to say that I saw Bert Jansch (a few times), Davy Graham (which was, er, interesting) and John Renbourn live before they died, John with Robin Williamson... don't die yet, Robin!

― Betel-chewing Equipment of East New Guinea (Tom D.), Friday, 27 March 2015 07:51 (four years ago) link

Tom, curious about Davy Graham, what was the like? From what I've read he was an intense person

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 27 March 2015 12:27 (four years ago) link

Intensely fucked up on something or other - booze, pills, smack, who knows what. He basically couldn't play anymore but he couldn't play in a bewildering variety of styles and genres, Buxtehude to raga to calypso, his set must have covered about 6 centuries. At one point he brought a guy he was teaching to play guitar up on stage and, to be honest, it was a relief to have someone play without bum notes, fluffs, fumbles etc.

― Betel-chewing Equipment of East New Guinea (Tom D.), Friday, 27 March 2015 12:51 (four years ago) link

... that's all I could find but that's like 10 years after the gig and I'm sure I posted something about at the time. I remember turning up for the gig a bit early and seeing him stood on his own at the back of the venue, bolt upright and completely still, for an unnaturally long time.

See the Ken Russell thread for folk documentary.

I'm devastated by the death of my friend and collaborator Celia Ford Drummond, formerly Humphris, singer for folk band Trees. I was honoured to have her beautiful voice on my Dodson and Fogg albums, to share vinyl space with her, and to know her. A kind, caring lady. RIP xxx pic.twitter.com/ap1kyrrmPU

— Chris Wade (@dodsonandfogg) January 11, 2021

RIP! Been on a major Trees kick since that box set came out. Great voice / vibe.

i missed out on the box, but catching up on all the extra tracks now via spotify. such a lovely band, horrible sad news this

more of a reminder to myself, but there's a big 1991 terrascope interview with celia here that i need to sit down and read:

http://terrascope.co.uk/MyBackPages/The_Trees.htm

gosh, her voice still sounds great on those 2018 live cuts

jesus christ, that bit where they come back in after the fake-out ending on murdoch *always* gets every hair in my brain standing on end

Sad top hear about her passing.
I'm hoping that a copy of the box set is actually going to arrive having now been told taht it was on its way to me as an Xmas present.

I've been listening to a lot of Davy Graham in the last few days and god I'd forgotten how transcendent he can be. Midnight Man in particular is sending me to all sorts of places. Anyone have any experience with the recent Bread & Wine reissues? I can't find much in the way of information about them anywhere (even the Hoffman forums seem empty of news or opinion!).

Been on a Spotify kick of Scottish travelers and some English stuff:

Belle Stewart
Davie Stewart
Jeannie Robertson
Fred Jordan
Sam Larner