77 f


scheduling a rehearsal enough of a headache, never mind a tour and trying to marshal every- one into the studio to do their bit. Then toss in the fact that the drummer lives in the US, the band is a twelve-piece and there are guest musicians as well! Some may have thrown in the proverbial towel long before now and been satisfied with live albums, but not this crew, who perhaps don’t always get the credit they deserve just because they’re occasional.


FOF are after all the ideal festival band, they’re a jolly mix of the expected: lots of jigs, the odd nutty cover version –Walk This Way, Black Night, The Magnificent Seven –and plain showing off, James Bond Theme. I’ve seen them face a restless field, threatened by dark clouds and within a few brisk renditions of old dance tunes or Music For A Found Har- monium (always a sure bet,) have the surly masses eating out of their hands and feverish to reel around the place. Obviously, though, the fact that they hadn’t delivered a studio creation niggled with main man and squeezebox-pusher Hugh Crabtree, and his not inconsiderable efforts – as well as a cast of the best fiddle players of a generation, Knight, Leslie, Beer, McNeill, Leary, Cutler with a rhythm section under the control of the redoubtable Dave Mattacks and a splen- didly lively brass trio – meant either it would succeed marvellously or fall flat on its face.


Pleasing to report then that it’s the for- mer as Crabtree has pulled off an excellent production job and at the same time every- one seems to have had a ball doing it. Extra production over the pond, a flexible studio, a bit of technology and the finished 12 tracks bring Feast Of Fiddles right into your lounge with all their diverse creations. Ok, it’s not quite as exhilarating as having them live before your eyes, but it does make you want to catch them next time they set out on the road and Walk Before You Fly is a neat diver- sion from what they do individually. It is after all as much about celebrating the fiddle as the skill of the musicians involved. That and having a good old knees-up. Job done then!


www.feastoffiddles.com Simon Jones JOHN PEARSE


The Lost 1966 Waldeck Audition Bear Family Records BCD 17143 AH


John Pearse (1939-2008), the “musician, author, inventor and record producer” of his Times obituary, came to be better known for his breakthroughs with instrument strings, capos and suchlike, his instrument tutorials and his bon viveur writing than the records that he made. His BBC series Hold Down A Chord was television’s first guitar tuition series and its spin-offs sold handsomely. Although he was best known for acoustic guitar, the territory he covered included ukulele, mandolin, dulcimer, balalaika and the Indian sarod.


The Lost 1966 Waldeck Audition is a flashback to a previous era. Its repertoire is a snapshot of the period, an irreplaceable snapshot. Here Pearse is captured routining 18 British- and American-inspired pieces into Jürgen Kahle’s reel-to-reel REVOX tape recorder. Pearse is just flowing and firing off material that was often core to the period. He acquits himself admirably with Mississippi John Hurt’s take on Candy Man and (arguably) the Rev. Gary Davis’s Cocaine Blues and slides into folk jollyisms with Blow Away The Morning Dew and nudge-nudge, wink- wink Rapatatap. The Lost 1966 Waldeck Audition is a mini-documentary of the British and German folk scenes, a time capsule of an inspirational musician as entertainer.


www.bear-family.de Ken Hunt VARIOUS ARTISTS


Højbystævnet 2009 GO’ Danish Folk Music GO1110


Every September in Højby in Denmark there’s a festival for dancers. The one-time village is now part of the city of Odense but for a few days it returns to its rural roots. This double CD, recorded at the 2009 Højbystævnet festi- val, captures dance music played by musicians from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Unsur- prisingly, the Danes predominate, with Jensen and Bugge (and Kristian Bugge seems to have been everywhere in Danish music in 2010) and Bøg, while Norway offers the twin fiddles of John Ole Morken and Jørgen Nyrønning and Sweden has Gässbiköllor.


While there’s delicacy to the Norwegian contingent, the others are much more about the people out on the dancefloor for a rol- licking good time. While most of the pieces are short, Bøg do offer one lengthy set – at over 12 minutes, guaranteed to tax all but the hardiest dancers, who seem to love it. Overall it’s an object lesson in the different ways the Nordic nations make music. Norway is introspective, Sweden a bit more shad- owed but still able to kick up a leg, while Denmark is ready, smiling and eager to cut a rug. In the truest sense of the word, this is folk music. Not for everyone, admittedly, but most definitely Nordic roots.


www.gofolk.dk www.folkshop.dk Chris Nickson


Æ æown label æ 01


Aurelia Lucy Shrenker and Eva Salina Pri- mack –æ – are based in Brooklyn, NY, but you wouldn’t know it from this album, as much of their repertoire is based on Primack’s Balkan roots and performing history and Shrenker’s Georgian research and musical traditions. Together, they both sing, with panduri (Geor- gian lute) and accordeon the only accompani- ments, bar some echoing, spare fiddle from Jesse Kotansky on the Albanian Dardha Rrumbullake and Appalachian Wind And Rain; this latter is a bleak traditional song whose mood is also apparent in the other Appalachian offerings, The Day and Idumea, and even the more upbeat Across The Blue Mountains has that high mountain sound. And that’s where æ excel: whether singing songs from Georgia (Tu Ase T’urpa Iqavi and


John Pearse, 1965


Sat’rpialo), Greece (Thalassa or Beno Mes T’abli), Albania, Bulgaria or the Ukraine, the purity of the two voices and understated but always right accompaniments focus attention on the emotions of the pieces; in this vein, the Corsican Tota Pulchra Es Maria is gem-like in its intensity, and the Yiddish Di Sapozhke- lakh combines lyricism and minor-key sad- ness, and there is even a very small hint of the blues throughout, although never more than a fragment here and there.


This is a lovely album that demands the


listener’s attention in every track; æ know the musics featured inside out, it seems, and their atmospheric treatments bring out the songs in a narrative that transcends language and gets to the heart of traditional music.


www.aesings.com Ian Kearey SONDESEU


ORQUESTRA FOLK Barlovento Boa/ Do Fol FS00210


Big, strong traditional Galician tunes played and sung with full-blooded gusto by the Vigo folk orchestra, Galicia’s first such ensemble, in mighty rich, tune-enhancing arrangements, mostly by ex-Milladoiro Rodrigo Romaní with a couple by Berrogüet- to’s Anxo Pintos, that really communicate the variety and alegría that makes this music so attractive and involving.


One might think that with such a big band – from a count of the booklet photos five gaiteiros, thirteen pandeireteiras (female singer/ tambourinists), seven fiddlers, seven harpists, seven hurdy-gurdyists, three flautists, four percussionists on pandeiros, pandeiretas, caixa and bombo, plus on one track, guest vocalist Rosa Cedrón – things would get mushy and muddled, but they don’t; it’s beautifully put together, a jubilant, refreshing, singing, dancing, enlarged version of the thrill of a trio de gaitas or spirited bunch of pandeireteiras.


www.sondeseu.org www.dofolmusica.com Andrew Cronshaw


VARIOUS ARTISTS More Miles Than Money Ace CDCH2 1266


During the few times I’ve visited the United States, the radio I’ve heard has been disap- pointingly bland, dull and corporate. But in the ideal world (one which up until now has existed only in my imagination), it would sound pretty much like this CD soundtrack to the book of Kiwi writer and DJ Garth Cartwright’s trip to the USA. 38 tracks of roots music of various persuasions, old and new, well known and obscure, country, blues, soul, Native American, mariachi and more.


Crucially, Cartwright’s programmed the material through mood and feel, rather than genre or region, so you never know quite what’s coming next, but it always sounds just about right. The first disc, titled Tequila Slam- mers, focuses on the more upbeat material; disc two, Distilled Moonshine, has the stuff that’s slow, soulful and sometimes snaky. There are oft-heard but always welcome genre staples from Bessie Smith, Hank Williams and Jimmy Castor, but also a lot that represents Cartwright’s idiosyncratic taste: Queen of Tejano Lydia Mendoza (see fR261 for his excel- lent piece on her first published in this maga- zine), modern keeper of the honky-tonk flame Dale Watson and tough Mississippi blues vet Big George Brock, to name but a few.


One to stick on the shelf between the Arhoolie box set and Charlie Gillett’s Honky Tonk compilation. I know no higher praise for such a venture. www.acerecords.co.uk


Jamie Renton


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100