Live music may still be a distant dream but from a battered and bruised sector some of us regard as vital to humanity has come a stream of virtual events to ease a little of the pain of Covid-driven deprivation.... Read more →
March 2021 update: My tribute to Who Knows Where the Time Goes?, a great song by an even greater departed heroine of folk and folk-rock, Sandy Denny, first appeared when I was living in Abu Dhabi in 2008. It was... Read more →
"John and Michi were getting kind of itchy, just to leave the folk music behind." As every 1960s schoolboy probably knew, the line opened Creeque Alley, a quirkily pleasing Mamas and Papas song which, when not bidding farewell to folk,... Read more →
Feb 20 2021 update: the great Buffy Sainte-Marie is 80 today. Hard to believe (until you remember your own advancing age) but today's the day. I hope she is in robust health and realises how revered she continues to be... Read more →
In my first job, I laboured with tedious clerical duties in the offices of the railway wagon works in my home town of Shildon, County Durham. After starting in a small office deep into the yards, in the “new construction”... Read more →
Feb 15 2021 update: WEFT-FM's Valentine playlist can be found here https://spinitron.com/WEFT/show/116412/Celtic-Music-Go-Bragh-Go-Bragh. It's a two-hour programme so the list is long but expect to run, for example, into Siucra (as described below), Altan, Karen Matheson, the Tannahill Weavers and, um,... Read more →
The power of photography is well known. From the Northern Echo's curmudgeonly old Bill Oliver, with his huge box camera, to the brilliant men and women who capture war, humanity and style on film, probably every photographer I have worked... Read more →
As we approach the 60th edition of Cover Story, here's something of a novelty for the series, a song that was among the first I found seductive as I become interested in folk music but for which I recently struggled... Read more →
