more and more and this moved in motion with my growing interest both in folk styles and open tunings. One particular gig I was taken to back home by my family introduced me to two guitarists I’d somehow never heard of before and that developed the way I approa- ched the guitar and the sound I sought from it – Martin Taylor and Martin Simpson. Aſter a workshop of the latter’s I attended and played at, I had the real privilege of being able to take up lessons with him for some time and there I had the chance to study in depth technique, open tunings, and arrangement. One impor- tant and lasting result from this for my guitar playing, composition, and arrangement was that the melody regained primacy.


Aſter my early exposure to folk music it took some time for me to come back around to it and to develop a real interest in and love of it. Over years and as my interests in history, politics, and social change as well as performing music grew I began to recognise with real excitement the potential for folk music to coalesce all these. Te more I listened to folksong – both British and American, traditional and contemporary – the ability of it to tell a story became clearer. I was blown away by the depth and breadth of the great ballads, particularly Scots and Irish, their melodies but also their characters and narratives. And more than that, at its best folksong also seemed to convey a social and historical narrative as well as a personal one; it


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