Intro: Fairport Convention - Medley: The Lark in the
Morning/Rakish Paddy/Fox Hunter's Jig/Toss The Feathers - Liege & Lief - A&M Records
Gren Bartley - Undone - Magnificent Creature - Fellside Recordings www.grenbartley.com/
The Casey Sisters - Dark Lochnagar - Sibling Revelry
- Old Bridge Music www.thecaseysisters.com/
Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Yarrow Mill - Watershed - Dragonfly Roots www.philliphenryandhannahmartin.co.uk/
Bob Dylan - Queen Jane Approximately - Bob Dylan 1965-1966 The Cutting Edge
Sampler - Columbia Legacy www.cuttingedge.bobdylan.com/
Joe Ely - Coyotes Are Howling - Panhandle Rambler - Rack 'Em
Records www.joeely.com/
Jon Brooks - Son Of Hamas - Delicate Cages - borealis records www.jonbrooks.ca/ video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLV4a2vtl-0
Gren Bartley - Fair Share - Magnificent Creature - Fellside Recordings www.grenbartley.com/
video:www.youtube.com/watch?v=TncJSQ6l0lI
The Casey Sisters - The Bandonbridge Suite: c) The
Earl Of Cork's Allemand/ d) The March From Irishtown
- Sibling Revelry - Old Bridge Music www.thecaseysisters.com/
Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin - Letter (unsent) - Watershed - Dragonfly
Roots www.philliphenryandhannahmartin.co.uk/
Bob Dylan - It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry - Bob Dylan
1965-1966 The Cutting Edge Sampler - Columbia Legacy www.cuttingedge.bobdylan.com/
Joe Ely - Burden Of Your Load - Panhandle Rambler - Rack 'Em
Records www.joeely.com/
Jon Brooks - The Lonesome Death Of Aqsa Parvez -
Delicate Cages - borealis records www.jonbrooks.ca/
Gren Bartley: "has released three albums in the
last three years, each one revealing an increasingly prolific and exceptional
writer and musician. Now touring with a string section, three part harmonies
and driving percussion he is creating something truly original in the
underground folk scene. Already described as "enthralling, persuasive and
masterly" (fRoots magazine), if you think you've
heard something like it before… then think again. Gren
is a prolific and exceptional songwriter. Releasing a new album in 2015 from
producer Gavin Monaghan (Robert Plant, Ryan Adams, Nizlopi,
Paolo Nutini etc...), the new record has already been described as “A superb piece of
work” (FATEA Magazine). Stunning harmonies, driving percussion and
intricate string arrangements for cello and violin, Bartley’s new band
line up has been captivating audiences across the UK. Showcasing his
“phenomenal” guitar playing and poetry driven lyrics, the Gren Bartley Band will be touring at venues and festivals
throughout the UK and Europe. Gren is truly the
future of folk songwriting, using his influences from folk and world music
traditions to bring something unique to this modern day troubadour. He is an
artist not to be missed.
The Gren Bartley Band are: Gren Bartley - vocals/guitar/banjo; Julia Disney -
vocals/piano/violin; Sarah Smout - vocals/cello;
Lydia Glanville - percussion" - artist's website
The Casey Sisters: are Nolaig Casey, Maire Ni Chathasaigh and Mairead Casey. "Nollaig is one of Ireland's most
gifted musicians, with her own unique way of playing traditional Irish music on
the fiddle and such a distinctive sound that it would be impossible to mistake
it for that of anyone else. This “sound” is so attractive to other
musicians that there exists hardly any major Irish artist of the last thirty
years with whom she has not worked - and many international artists have been
equally entranced. Máire Ní
Chathasaigh (pronounced Moira Nee Ha-ha-sig) is
"the doyenne of Irish harp players" (The Scotsman) and one of
Ireland’s most important and influential traditional musicians, described
by the late Derek Bell as “the most interesting and original player of
the Irish harp today”. She grew up in a well-known West Cork musical
family who were active in the Cork Pipers' Club and was already proficient in a
variety of other instruments by the time that she began to play the harp at the
age of eleven. Using her knowledge of the idiom of the living oral Irish
tradition, she developed a variety of new techniques, particularly in relation
to ornamentation, with the aim of establishing an authentically traditional
style of harping - “a single-handed reinvention of the harp”.
Multiple All-Ireland, Oireachtas- and
Pan-Celtic-winning Mairéad Ni´ Chathasaigh‘s sweet soaring voice and subtle, very
traditional fiddle-playing ground the music deeply in its roots. Mairéad has a deep knowledge of the Irish singing
tradition and a special interest in the Sliabh Luachra fiddle repertoire and style. She has toured in the
USA, Canada, Italy, Belgium and France, given traditional singing workshops in
Ireland and the UK and is a regular adjudicator at Fleadhanna
Cheoil throughout Ireland and at Fleadh
Cheoil na
h-Éireann." - artists' website
Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin: "“Phillip Henry and Hannah
Martin’s victory at the 2014 BBC Folk Awards, where the two musicians
picked up the gong in the Best Duo category, was such a refreshing outcome.
Although this duo are very much a part of the British folk music scene, their
music often borrows from American roots, especially in their use of the dobro,
played in much the same style as Jerry Douglas, whose work forms a blanket of
influence covering what’s good about the current bluegrass and Americana
scene. The dozen songs here are almost universal in their feel…If you
have a voice like Hannah Martin though, why not use it and use it often.
Sharing writing credentials throughout, the duo’s self-penned songs are
often brooding, slightly melancholic but with a vibrancy unique to them. If
Phillip’s instrumental December showcases the duo’s handling of
arrangement, then Hannah’s a capella January,
boldly demonstrates the singer’s handling of unaccompanied singing,
stripping everything back to essentials and very much a companion piece
to the former winter-themed instrumental. All the songs on WATERSHED are
written with a specific person in mind, which I should imagine is fantastically
humbling. Watershed was written for all of us, so I’m glad to be counted
in that tribute. A really fine album. ****” -
Allan Wilkinson Northern Sky, - artists' website
Bob Dylan: his Bobness...
Joe Ely: "Panhandle Rambler is Joe Ely back home, returned to the always
dusty, perpetually windy, generally arid, frequently smoldering, and seemingly
barren landscape around Lubbock where he grew up and first began playing music.
A place that has hosted generations of dry land farmers and
wildcatters. It’s where Joe found his calling as a writer and
performer. First located that unmistakable voice.
Learned to carry himself upright and open, to move
with determination. In the rock’n’roll
era, the vast spaces of west Texas have been filled with great music. Joe Ely
stands in a tradition born out on these gritty plains. It includes Roy Orbison,
Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Guy Clark, Delbert McClinton, Don
Walser, Terry Allen, Lloyd Maines, his daughter Natalie Maines, and Joe’s
enduring musical partners, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. It is a land
where you can see for miles and miles and miles. Only those who don’t
know it find it barren. For it’s full of stories if you
know where to seek them. And it has customs and amusements all its own.
Even the forever dipping oil wells have their role. “In high school, we
used to get somebody to buy us a six pack and go out there to the fields and
ride the front part of those oil pumps all night long,” Joe remembers.
Now, Ely lives in Austin and spends much of his life on the road. But when
he’s accumulated enough song ideas, Lubbock is where Joe heads.
“Somehow, just driving for hours down those country roads is still the
best place for me finish my songs.”
Panhandle Rambler is one of the most personal albums Joe Ely’s ever made.
It brings forth this terrain, the spirited people it produces and that special
sense of destiny, be it terrible or glorious, that its
very vastness creates. “Wounded Creek” starts the album with what
you might call a Western fantasy, except that the “bushes and the
brambles,” the traffic light, the stray dog and the cold wind are all
completely brought to life. “Sometimes, when I was a kid, you’d
look outside and the only things you’d see would be these huge radio
towers, must have been fifty of a hundred feet tall, just swaying in the
wind,” Joe said. “Wonderin’
Where,” perhaps Panhandle Rambler’s most beautiful melody, pays
tribute to those trembling towers, the railroads which carried other things
equally unimaginable distances, the “cross between a river and a
stream” where he played, and the dreams and nightmares that flitted
across that kid’s mind and heart, and the loneliness of bearing such
secrets. If it is possible to write a love song for a place, this is one of the
great ones, “trying to find a verse that’s never been sung to
hearts that need relief.” “Here’s to the Weary” is the
story of all the great musical refugees, from Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills and
Muddy Waters to the rockabillies—Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins,
Jerry Lee Lewis, the shadows of the others—who soothed our “weary
and restless souls” with nighttime musical magic. It’s also typical
of all the songs on the album. The place doesn’t necessarily always win,
but, as in “Magdalene” and “Coyotes are Howlin’,”
it’s the one thing that carries a sense not so much of permanence as of
inevitably. The two sides are fully summarized in the almost giddy
“Southern Eyes” and the fatalistic “Early
in the Mornin’.” Of course, every Lubbocker album needs its legendary tales. Here that
territory is covered by “Four Ol’ Brokes,” which combines a hobo yarn with the ballad
of a gambling scam, and “Burden of Your Load,” in which true love
triumphs over evil, if just barely, we hope. Equally legendary, but true in
every respect, is the closing song, “You Saved Me,” which is a love
song to Joe’s wife, Sharon. The lyric never mentions her name, but no one
who’s known Joe Ely longer than about a day could mistake her. Legendary tales and legendary musicians. Panhandle Rambler,
largely recorded in Austin, features some of the most respected local
musicians: drummer Davis McClarty, guitarists Lloyd
Maines and Robbie Gjersoe, Jeff Plankenhorm,
and Gary Nicholson, bassist Glen Fukunaga. There were
also Nashville sessions, with Music City’s usual superb playing, led by
guitarist Gary Nicholson. Joe wrote all but two of the songs:
“Magdalene” by Guy Clark and Ray Stephenson, and “When the
Nights are Cold” by his original Flatlanders
sidekick Butch Hancock. This is a classic Joe Ely album. It has moved me, every
time I’ve heard it, with a certain kind of
awe. One reason is that, long before you hear “You Saved Me,” he
put everything he has into telling the world about a place in the world, and
through that, reaching his own emotional center. It’s beautiful and
it’s inspiring." — Dave Marsh, July 25, 2015 - artist's
website
Texas magic from a master of the art!
Jon Brooks: making his Little Rock Folk Club debut on Sat Dec 7th 2015 (tho not his Little Rock debut having played a brilliant
house concert ~14 months ago) Canadian singer/songwriter and guitarist Jon
Brooks is a powerful performer with a catalog of songs from his 5 CDs capturing
the human condition in all its brilliance and squalor with unflinching
descriptors not for the faint-hearted or those who like musical wallpaper.
"Delicate Cages takes its title from the Robert Bly poem, TAKING THE HANDS:
Taking the hands of someone you love/You see they are like delicate cages...
Delicate Cages aims to reveal the complicit natures of good and evil, love and
fear, and freedom and imprisonment. The DELICATE CAGES we live within are forms
of enslavement - and not all 'cages' are necessarily bad. On his latest and
most urgent and accessible collection of songs, Jon Brooks promises freedom to
all who choose love over fear. Delicate Cages was released by Borealis Records
in May 2012. The album earned Jon his third ‘Songwriter of the
Year’ nomination in 5 years from The Canadian Folk Music Awards. Like its
predecessors, Delicate Cages’ songs were inter-woven by themes of love
and fear; and freedom and imprisonment. The idea was inspired by the Robert Bly
poem, Taking The Hands: ‘Taking the hands of someone you love,/you see they are delicate cages.’ Also consistent
with Jon’s albums, the song subjects were as wide ranging as they were
topical and controversial: the Alberta tar sands (Fort McMurray); Bill 101 and
Quebec’s language laws (Hudson Girl); Palestinian suicide bombers (Son of
Hamas); Bosnian child soldier turned Canadian mixed martial arts fighter (Cage
Fighter); and so-called ‘Honour Killing’
(The Lonesome Death of Aqsa Parvez). Morally and
politically ambiguous, Delicate Cages, offered what Jon has since called,
“necessary and alternative understandings of ‘hope’ and
‘grief’ that are neither sanitized, dumbed down, nor degraded by
the modern lie of ‘closure.'”" - artist's
website
Streaming live Sat 2100h CMT/Sun 0300h GMT at http:
www.kuar.org/
Archives on line at
http://www.littlerockfolkclub.org/FAAB/faabindex.html
Program Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Fromalbionandbeyond