Propergander 8.psd

THE SPRING TOUR 2008
with MIRANDA SYKES
Mar
Fri 21 GOSPORT & FAREHAM Easter Festival 01329 231942
Apr
Wed 02 LEICESTER The Y Theatre 0116 255 7066
Thu 03 POCKLINGTON Arts Centre 01759 301547
Fri 04 SETTLE Victoria Theatre 01729 825718
Sat 05 ST HELENS The Citadel 01744 735436
Sun 06 OXFORD Carling Academy 0844 477 2000
Wed 09 DURHAM Gala Theatre 0191 332 4041
Thu 10 KENDAL Brewery Arts Centre 01539 725133
Fri 11 SHEFFIELD Montgomery Theatre 0114 276 7093
Sat 12 DERBY Guildhall Theatre 01332 255800
Wed 17 WIMBORNE The Tivoli Theatre 01202 885566
Thu 18 SALISBURY City Hall 01722 434434
with special guest MARTIN SIMPSON
Fri 18 DARTFORD The Mick Jagger Centre 01322 291100
Sat 19 CANTERBURY Gulbenkian Theatre 01227 769075
Sun 20 LONDON UCL Bloomsbury Theatre 020 7388 8822
with special guest MARTIN SIMPSON
Wed 23 PONTADAWE Arts Centre 01792 863722
Thu 24 EBBW VALE Beaufort Theatre 01495 355800
Fri 25 TAMWORTH Folk Moot 01827 709618
Sat 26 BIRMINGHAM St George’s Day Festival 0121 780 3333
May
Sun 2 MILTON KEYNES The Stables 01908 280800
TOUR
OF
TOPSHAM
DVD HMDVDO2
RELEASE: 31 st March
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Roots – The Best Of
HMCD28
Witness HMCD23
As You Were HMCD22

CONTENTS
Contents
MAIN FEATURES
Page 7 Cover Feature: Kathryn Williams & Neil MacColl
Page 12 Allison Moorer
Page 16 Karine Polwart
Page 18 Cake Records
Page 20 Heidi Talbot
Page 21 Benji Kirkpatrick
Page 24 Folk Awards 2008
Page 27 Blurb – Songlines at 50!
Page 28 Coming Soon…
Page 31 Competition. Win everything reviewed this issue.
REVIEWS
Pages 4–11 Folk
Ruth Notman, Chris Wood, 3 Daft Monkeys,
Chumbawamba, Landermason, George
Papavgeris, Bella Hardy, Ember, Catriona
Macdonald, Show Of Hands, Martin Carthy &
Dave Swarbrick, The Queensbury Rules.
Pages 13 – 14 Country/Americana
Rhonda Vincent, The Steeldrivers, Blue Rodeo,
Amanda Shaw, Steve Gifford, Shawn Mullins,
Tim O’Brien, Alan Lomax, Ricky Skaggs,
Kathy Chiavola.
Pages 15 – 19 Jazz
Liane Carroll, Portico Quartet, Tineke Postma,
Sue Richardson, Humphrey Lyttleton,
Gwilym Simcock, Nicola Conte,
Porpoise Corpus, Django Reinhardt.
Page 23 World
17 Hippies, Africa Scream Contest, Svang,
Ukrainians, Rembetika 2, Boban Marcovic,
Lee Perry.
Page 25 Blues
Blind Boys Of Alabama, Dani Wilde, Smokin’
Joe Kubek, Eddy ‘The Chief’ Clearwater, Buddy
Whittington, Elmore James Junior
Page 29 – 30 Review Round-Up
Levon Helm, Mary Hampton, Brian Kennedy,
Blabbermouth, Altered States, Temple Of Soul,
The Drift Collective, Spirits In The Material
World, Swans In Flight.
HELLO
Blimey, it’s been a while!
You may have noticed the, ahem, extended break since our
2007 Beth Nielsen Chapman extravaganza. What can we say?
Christmas kind of took us by surprise once again (who knew
it would happen in December again?) but we’re back once
more to bring you all the best in the kind of music that led
you to us in the first place.
If this is your first Properganda experience, welcome on
board! We’re a quarterly publication dedicated to the
shameless promotion of Folk, Americana, Jazz, Blues and
other types of Roots based specialist music that tends to fall
off the flat atlas of the mainstream musical map. You’ll find us
in record shops, music venues, libraries and festivals all over
the UK and we guarantee the magazine will always be free.
We’re published by Proper Music Distribution, the largest
indie distributor in the UK and recently nominated as one of
the best four retailers and industry types for the forthcoming
Music Week Awards.
If you’re into the kind of music we feature in these pages, you
can find out more by signing up for our bi-monthly newsletter
at www.properdistribution.com where you’ll also find new
release and tour info for all of the artists here and more, or
visit us on myspace at www.myspace.com/propermusic. It’ll
all help fill the gaps between issues!
We promise we’ll be back sooner next time, but to tide you
over ‘til then, check out our ‘Coming Soon’ section on page
28 where you’ll find details of just a few of the things we’ll
be covering during the next year.
Enjoy…
Proper Music Distribution
The New Powerhouse
Gateway Business Park, Kangley Bridge Road
SE26 5AN England
Tel Int ++44 (0) 20 8676 5100
Fax ++44 (0) 20 8676 5169
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The Properganda Team
Properganda 7 3

Ruth Notman
Nottingham's rising star.
“A stunning
piece of work”
Mike Harding BBC Radio 2
RUTH NOTMAN
Threads
Mrs Casey Music
MRCD7003
"Trespasser is my
album of the year"
Billy Bragg
OUT NOW
CHRIS WOOD
Trespasser
R.U.F Records RUFCD11
OUT NOW
Ruth’s debut CD arrives with prominent endorsements
from John Tams and Kate Rusby, and with justification,
for there’s no denying this 18-year-old singer and
songwriter from Nottingham is a sparkling new talent
on the British folk scene.
In 2006 Ruth reached the finals of the BBC Radio 2
Young Folk Awards, since which time she’s toured
the UK extensively, the nation’s folk festivals
especially, making a considerable impression
wherever she performs. For Ruth’s a charismatic
performer who definitely makes you sit up and take
notice; she’s blessed with a striking and commanding
confidence in her singing as well as an admirably individual
approach to her chosen material – a mixture of traditional
songs and her own compositions – with a keen ability to
extract and capitalise on the threads of emotion and
narrative from within a song lyric.
On this CD, she accompanies herself primarily on guitar and
piano, occasionally moving over to the harp, and her
playing is delicate and thoughtful but with no loss of
presence. Throughout the disc, though, she also makes
good use of a small complement of extra musicians. Saul
Rose’s driving melodeon is a key element of the backing on
several tracks, as are the sweeping gestures of Hannah
Edmonds (cello) and Roger Wilson (fiddle), while Bella
Hardy contributes some strong harmony vocals and Ich
Mowatt and Joe Heap bring useful rhythmic impetus (and
more besides on occasion).
Chris wood
Wood trespasses beyond the bounderies of the imagined village.
The trouble with making an album hailed alike by
critics, fans and peers as a classic is that once the
acclaim fades you then have to start thinking about
recording a follow-up to match it. In Chris Wood’s
case, how do you follow an album as sublime,
provocative and magnificent as the award-winning
The Lark Descending?
The answer is with great difficulty, but with
Trespasser Chris Wood has unquestionably pulled it
off in some style.
“It was daunting making Trespasser but I’m pleased with
the reaction,” says Wood of his new meisterwork. “Most
reviews say it’s as good as, if not better than, The Lark
Descending. People understand the spirit in which it was
made. Whether I like it or not I’ve got to accept that I’m a
grown-up now and this is an album for grown-ups…”
Trespasser, which veers from his epic study of the
mummers play tradition England In Ribbons to the bouncy
singalong John Ball in a general theme of English
enclosures, never goes quite where you expect it. “It’s
designed to make people think, but I hate the suggestion
that it’s in any way worthy,” he says. “It’s very personal to
me. It’s my journey. It’s not supposed to be rubbing anyone
else’s noses in it. It just so happens that I got bound up
with Englishness.
“Of the albums I grew up listening to the ones I love most
are those you can keep returning to and find something
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Ruth’s own arrangements of traditional material are
refreshing and airy, daring to be different and in the end
quite challenging in their own way (while aiming for neither
the intense atmospherics of the Unthanks and their
Winterset, who often employ a similar instrumental
complement of piano, violin and cello, nor the intentional
radicalism of Lisa Knapp). Inevitably there are quirks of
interpretation and phrasing to chew over, but Ruth has
clearly thought hard about how to convey best the
messages of the songs.
There’s plenty to admire here, with an enchanting fleetfootedness
to the gaily-tripping Heather Down The Moor
contrasting well with the resigned yet determined air of
Fause Fause. Elsewhere, Limbo receives an unusual but
effective treatment, while – probably most successful of all
– a brooding inevitability offsets the disturbing quality of
her Dark-Eyed Sailor. Ruth also turns in persuasive takes on
Dougie Maclean’s Caledonia and Richard Thompson’s
sublime Farewell, Farewell. Ruth’s self-penned compositions
(of which there are four here including the more popinflected
bonus track) are attractively passionate pieces in
the contemporary-folk idiom which should appeal to
admirers of Kate Rusby’s own songs, for instance. Ruth’s
clearly got much to offer already as a performer; equally
clearly, her CD is well worth your time and investment, for
she’s destined for even greater things before long.
DK
different each time, another extra little layer. I think there
are lots of little layers to Trespasser, but it’s accessible too.
John Ball (written by Sydney Carter) is a lovely song that’s
all in the groove, Jehovah is very upbeat and there’s no
sleight of hand with Cottager’s Reply.”
Another key track is Summerfield Avenue, on which he
recalls the innocence and wisdom of childhood. “I suddenly
felt everything I was hearing from all these wise people on
TV and radio I actually knew already. See, I was born in
1959. I’m part of that baby boomer generation and so
many people have said to me they’ve had exactly the same
experience. Pre-school kids have so much wisdom before
adults mess them up.”
Wood - whose CV includes Wood Wilson & Carthy, the
English Acoustic Collective, duo work with Andy Cutting and
the stage shows Christmas Champions and On English
Ground – has become one of folk music’s most influential
sons. His own richly imaginative songwriting blends
seamlessly with his quietly dramatic interpretations of the
folk tradition on both his albums and in his uniquely subtle
live performances. His reputation has grown immeasurably,
too, since last year’s album and tour with The Imagined
Village which climaxed when his duet with Eliza Carthy on
Cold Haily Rainy Night won this year’s BBC Folk Award for
best traditional track.
“It’s been busy alright,” laughs Wood, “but very rewarding.”
MCC
PHOTO: ?
PHOTO: ?

MARTIN HAYES &
DENNIS CAHILL
GEORGE
PAPAVGERIS
SHOW OF HANDS
BELLA HARDY
EMBER
MARTIN CARTHY &
DAVE SWARBRICK
Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill
Welcome Here Again
Green Linnet GLCD1233 DK
Welcome here again indeed for Co.
Clare-born fiddler Martin and his longtime
guitarist partner Dennis. Ten years
on from their last studio album The
Lonesome Touch and eight since their
stunning Live In Seattle set comes a
fresh studio offering on which the
exquisite musicianship and gentle
virtuosity of this dream-team are the
pre-eminent features.
On first hearing the duo’s music may
seem understated, even leisurely, but the
musicians empathically communicate
their joyous true understanding of the
music’s character through a myriad of
nuances in their playing. Dennis also
unassumingly rings the changes
sometimes by exchanging guitar for
mandolin, Martin fiddle for viola. The
delicate, intensely poised music-making
and the resultant beautifully artistic,
almost classical purity of texture and
expression make for a breathtaking – yet
also refreshing and relaxing – antidote to
the more overtly dazzling note-spinning
of the “session brigade”.
To be sure, this disc is in a class of its
own: for Martin and Dennis engage the
ear so wonderfully subtly and their music
amply repays concentrated listening.
.....................................
“Sparsely accompanied fiddle music has rarely
sounded so complete and so essential.” Q
George Papavgeris
Life’s Eyes
Wild Goose Recordings WGS349 SH
Where do you begin to tell the story of
this highly regarded troubadour, who
even Martin Carthy regards as
“Something special.” We’re starting here
with his seventh album as he only really
started writing songs in 2001, although
since then he has been prolific.
Born in 1953 in Greece he has absorbed
his native music and played in bands in
his teenage years. He first came to folk
music in England during the 70s and
started to perform on the circuit. He cites
Tom Leher, Jake Thackery, Pete Atkins
and Clive James as influences and there’s
something of Thackery in his disarming
vocal style.
But with all songwriters it’s the content
that counts. George seems equally adept
at the personal and the geopolitical, so
childhood memories (Tsamiko), global
warming (Upwind Of Me), the burden of
responsibility (One By One), friendship
(For A Friend) and loss of a loved one
(Regrets) are handled with eloquence,
the knowledge of experience and an eye
for the detail that makes these subjects
common to us all. Without doubt Mr
Carthy has nailed it.
.....................................
“The best thing to happen in UK song writing for
many a year.” Harvey Andrews
George
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Show of Hands
Roots
Hands On Music HMCD028 JTR
With a career stretching back to 1991
and a solid reputation as one of the
most acclaimed and hardest-working
duos on today’s music scene, this double
CD retrospective arrives not a moment
too soon. Long time fans will need no
coercing here - indeed, the entire second
disc was compiled by the band’s loyal
online fanbase, the Longdogs. Coupled
with a disc of the band’s personal
favourites, this is the perfect introduction
to a group who can headline festivals
and sell out the Albert Hall while
simultaneously maintaining contact with
their folk club roots.
And what an introduction! From the
pounding roar of a remixed Roots to the
closing strains of the epic Tall Ships,
these 30 tracks display SoH’s dramatic
grasp of England’s past and present with
stunning clarity and above all, accessible
and uplifting music. Add to this the
band’s most extravagant packaging to
date – a hardback gatefold book sleeve
with lyrics and notes on each of their
albums – and you have the ideal entry
point for those who aren’t sure where to
start. Essential.
.....................................
“One of the great English bands.”
Peter Gabriel
Bella Hardy
Night Visiting
Noe Records NOE01 DK
This stunning singer and fiddle player
nominated for two separate categories
at this year’s BBC Folk Awards, reduces
audiences to silence with her dynamic
performances. Her debut solo CD both
showcases her musical talents and
demonstrates her serious ability to select
and arrange material which really suits
her performing style. Bella’s singing is
intrinsically strong and maturely
characterised, with a bold confidence in
both expression and interpretation.
Night Visiting is a convincing and
enterprising sequence of “journeys of
love lost and found”. Kristina Olsen’s
poignant Heart Hill forms a passionate
and hypnotic centrepiece. Molly
Vaughan, sung unaccompanied, displays
a striking mixture of decorated grace and
forward momentum. Bella’s “poppier”
side surfaces on her own Brontë-esque
riposte Alone, Jane?. Bella’s also enlisted
some helpers including Chris Sherburn
(whose darting concertina counterpoints
the high drama of Young Edmund),
Helen Bell and Debbie Chambers’ darkly
sensuous string-section and Corrina
Hewat (whose harp embellishes the stark
standout Three Black Feathers). An
impressive disc, lingering far longer than
just a night visit.
.....................................
“Brit folk’s new young guns just keep coming… An
imaginative writer who can do rousing as well as
melancholy.” **** Mojo
FOLK reviews
Ember
Open All The Doors
Salt & Slate SALT004CD DK
Hailing from deepest Wales
(Machynlleth) and the US (Utah)
respectively, Emily Williams and Rebecca
Sullivan have together been delighting
discerning audiences over five years and
three albums with their quirkily individual
brand of acoustic magic that’s been
variously compared to Be Good Tanyas,
Pooka and Indigo Girls. The girls’ striking
and intuitive vocal harmonies and sparse
but considered instrumental work create
their personal magical world where
feelings are conveyed with depth and
sensitivity yet often also with an edgily
whimsical sense of humour.
Ember songs may nod in the directions
of home-grown nu-folk and Americana,
but manage to retain their own
distinctive, attractive, if occasionally
idiosyncratic voice. Their simple yet mildly
enigmatic poetry mostly expresses
romantic desires and attendant
complications, but this time there’s even
a quasi-traditional murder ballad too! The
duo’s augmented on this CD by (among
others) Dylan Fowler and percussionist
Job Verweijen, but skilfully and selectively
so, with the result that the girls’ unique,
intimate charm remains intact. This
fabulous disc will, I’m sure, “open all the
doors” for Ember.
.....................................
“One of the UK's hottest underground folk acts.”
BBC Wales 2007
Martin Carthy &
Dave Swarbrick
Both Ears And The Tail
Topic TSCD572 SH
Eleven traditional tunes and songs and
two Scott Joplin rags make up this seatof-the-pants
live recording from 1966.
Recorded by the soundman at the Folkus
folk club in Nottingham and presented
here in loving CD-verite (you can even
hear them calling the changes and
chuckling at bum notes– although some
judicious editing of applause was
necessary). The CD booklet reveals that
they got the train to the gig, which hit a
cow on the line giving rise to nervous
jokes about finding “both ears and the
tail” for the clearly shocked driver.
Most of the material contained herein is
to be found on the early Martin Carthy
records on which Swarbrick played so
that familiarity runs through the
performance, but they have a developing
chemistry that moves things up a peg or
two. It’s also great to hear Swarb on the
mandolin and Carthy in such fine voice -
although he claims no adequate
explanation for the English country
accent that he adopts, it suits the
material and the sense of discovery and
adventure in capturing the folk traditions
and claiming them for a new generation.
.....................................
“It’s a corker. The natural chemistry between
them is irresistible” Record Collector
Properganda 8 5

FOLK reviews
Chumbawamba
The Boy Bands Have Won
No Masters NMCD28 AL
Oh but they haven’t. Chumbawamba set
out to disprove the title of their latest
album. The theme is cultural recycling –
taking things from the past (in this case,
folk music) and fashioning it into
something new. Respecting where things
have come from but not being
constrained by the traditions. Musically it
ranges from sparse to lush – some songs
are performed acappella, or have only a
couple of acoustic guitars, while others
have full-on strings and French horns
painting an epic soundscape.
The wit and passion are still much in
evidence – the radio-friendly Add Me is a
gentle dig at the creeps who clutter up
cyberspace, guaranteed to raise a smile of
recognition in anyone who has dipped a
toe into the world of social networking,
while Waiting For The Bus is a poignant
song about Gary Tyler, wrongly convicted
of murder in 1975, and still behind bars.
And let’s face it, only Chumbawamba
would write a song called Lord Bateman’s
Motorbike with the eponymous hero
recast as the landlord of ‘a pub out on the
A65, the sort of place where everybody
drinks before they drive’.
.....................................
“Quiet insurgency with a broad smile on its
face” fRoots
3 Daft Monkeys
First rate monkey business and a little social tree climbing.
“A brilliant band...
I think this is
absolutely amazing”
Mike Harding, BBC Radio 2
3 Daft Monkeys
Social Vertigo
3DMO 3DM6
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
The Queensberry Rules
Landlocked
Fellside FECD210 DK
This feisty Stoke-on-Trent trio (Phil Hulse
and brothers Duncan & Gary Wilcox)
made big ripples with The Black Dog…,
and album number five, Landlocked,
consolidates their stance with more of
the same – affectionate but hard-hitting
commentaries on things that matter (the
state of the nation) set alongside stories
from their own local heritage which
provide historical perspective.
Echoes of Show Of Hands, Bragg,
Chumba, Lindisfarne, Tom Bliss provide
both reference points and inspirations,
but QR have their own identity. As
instrumentalists all three men have a
keen feel for idiom and dynamics, while
their vocal harmonies are well managed.
Their songs are well crafted, with catchy
hooks and singalong choruses. Highlights
include Molly Leigh (the Stoke witch’s
tale), the leaving-song Farewell and I Still
Believe In England (discontent tempered
with hope).
Likeable, punchy and clear-sighted, the
Queensberry Rules display a breezy
confidence, lightness of touch and
scaled-down texture while retaining an
un-pushy kind of immediacy so that
neither the angry conviction nor the
integrity of their vision gets diluted.
.....................................
“A dazzling brand of contemporary roots
with pop and rock immediacy” Rock’n’Reel
Last issue, you may remember the praises we sang
of a certain Cornish DIY Folk 3-piece who’s Go Tell
The Bees EP had got us feeling all unnecessary. Fast
forward to Febraury 2008 and their brand new
Social Vertigo long player - an album which makes
good on the promise of both the EP and the hyper
live shows they’ve been turning in at the clubs and
fields of Europe over the past year.
Like their champions and touring pals The Levellers,
3 Daft Monkeys are one of those groups that seem to
have been born and raised to play at music festivals. To
these ears, they’re direct descendants of the euphoria and
communal spirit triggered by the early 90s rave culture,
which has evolved into the open-minded and cosmopolitan
mix of music and people at today’s festivals.
Marrying original songs to the good-time elements of folk
and dance music from around the world, their carnival
fusion sound and energy packed live shows are a treat both
for the seasoned music fan and the ever-growing legion of
devotees leaping around at the front of their gigs.
The socio-politically conscious subject matter in some of the
songs affirms guitarist and songwriter Tim Ashton’s Punk
history, with Eastern tinges and fiddle jigs coming via
violinist Athene Roberts’ Folk and Classical background,
while Bassist Jamie Waters’ Reggae past provides a boon on
the low end.
Catriona MacDonald
Over The Moon
Peerie Angel Productions PAP002CD JTR
On her long awaited second album,
award-winning Shetland fiddler Catriona
MacDonald applies her undisputed folk
chops to a series of tunes underpinned
by the rhythms and forms of a genre all
too often overlooked in traditional music
– Jazz.
On listening to the results, it’s difficult to
see why these genres don’t cross paths
more often. The dense, offbeat piano
chords and the jump and swing of the
spritely double bass and brushed drums
are the perfect springboard for the
acrobatic reels and jigs on display here.
Particularly successful is Souper Caper, a
tune that would sound equally at home
in Ronnie Scotts or Brecon Jazz as it
would at the Cambridge Festival.
This however, is all unmistakably folk, as
Catriona blends traditional tunes with
compositions from Shetland luminaries
past and present, as well as her own
pieces which are steeped in the island’s
sound. From the beautiful slow air of
Wonderland, to the exuberant
Five Reel Set, her rich, dexterous
command of the fiddle leads the rhythm
section from basement club into the
fresh, open air of Scotland.
.....................................
“Fantastic” Mark Knopfler
CHUMBAWAMBA
THE
QUEENSBERRY
RULES
CATRIONA
MACDONALD
And it’s amazing how much they get out of such minimal
instrumentation… With just Acoustic guitar, fiddle and bass,
most trios would be exhausted for ideas after one album,
but 3 Daft Monkeys have enough ingredients in their
collective musical pantry to infuse each tune with wildly
different spices. With its insistent foot-drum pulse, album
opener Paranoid Big Brother comes on like a pumped-up
dance anthem a la the Afrocelts, while recent single Go Tell
The Bees’ cheeky pizzicato intro gives way to a rich, languid,
Mediterranean sway. Eyes Of Gaia expertly connects the 3
Daft Monkeys musical dots by fusing a hyper-Ska rhythm
and dub bassline to an exotic violin motif (which pops up
again as a tune in it’s own right at the end of the album).
Though there’s a melancholy and justifiable paranoia in
much of the subject matter, the overall feeling of the music
is one of defiant jubilation, and it’s this that comes across
on the album and especially in their live performances. Like
the travelling sideshows of the past, 3 Daft Monkeys provide
entertainment with a sinister undercurrent creeping out
from the threadbare seams. The band even look the part on
the CD inlay; a backstage burlesque collage of music hall
placards, top hat and tails, vintage gowns, candles, dreads
and red wine. Who says Vaudeville is dead?
JTR
OUT NOW PHOTO: NIALL X.

Colin Irwin meets two for tea and offers a sympathetic ear.
KATHRYN WILLIAMS
AND NEILL CHAPMAN
Two
Caw CAW013
OUT NOW
Click on ALBUM COVER to buy now
Few can view the vagaries of the record industry with more of a
sense of irony than Kathryn Williams. Seven years ago she was
a timid Newcastle-based singer songwriter from Liverpool trying
to put together enough money to self-release her second album.
When she did, that finished album – Little Black Numbers –
caused a minor sensation.
A
s head (and sole employee) of her record label Caw, she
was invited to the announcement of the 2001 Mercury
Music Prize nominations and, happening to be in
London at the time, decided to pop into the ceremony
for her lunch. When the shortlist was read out and her
name was on it, they had to pick her off the floor. Another shock
awaited at the Mercury finals later that year when East West Records
offered her a major record deal.
Yet, by her own admission, she was a wreck at the time, suffering
from agoraphobia and practically suffering a nervous breakdown
every time she had to step in front of an audience. She went on to
release three albums for East West – all of them going gold or
thereabouts – but it was a fraught time.
Properganda 8 7

“It was a bit daunting
for me to sing it with Neill,”
“Being inside a major label is not good for your
mental health,” she says in the chummy manner of
one passing cooking recipes to her neighbour over
the garden wall. “People are always around you
saying ‘it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen…oh it
didn’t happen!’ It’s all about throwing money at this
and that and it really makes you look inward and
view your music as a product because you have to
go through all these marketing ideas about how you
can change and how the market is changing. The
whole time I was there I was thinking it was
ridiculous you had to go through this for music. It’s
commercialism at its most concentrated and if you
go inside the machine it whips you into a frenzy of
feeling inadequate.
“It was a licensing deal and I handed them the
finished record and they would either put it out or
not put it out but they put out three records. I
think it changed me musically because I was in the
environment of thinking about where things were
going. I had a terrible time emotionally and
mentally but I’m proud of the records. I had stage
fright for six years, I had agoraphobia, I was in all
sorts. I was a wreck. I used to faint on stage, throw
up, had the shakes, everything. Now I look forward
to going on tour.”
Not that it was all bad. “They were good to me. I
earned money from them and the publishers which
has meant I’ve been able to put out my own records
ever since. So thank you very much…and goodbye.”
Post-major record deal, life for Kathryn Williams has
been good. She’s now the adoring mother of a twoyear-old
son Louis, she no longer gets stage fright
(she believes the two things are related – “when I
was pregnant I felt invincible”) and she’s teamed up
with guitarist/singer/producer Neill MacColl and is
making the best music of her life. That’s the
consensus of opinion anyway about her and
MacColl’s first album together Two, rammed with
beautiful melodies, heartfelt lyrics, spare
arrangements and the sort of intimacy usually only
found in the snug of bars after hours.
“It’s the realisation of a dream for me,” says MacColl.
“I’ve been working for such a long time as a guitarist
and side man and put my own thing on hold while
the kids grew up and it’s great now to be doing this
with Kathryn. Her whole method of working is that
it’s got to happen immediately or it doesn’t happen.
There’s no wasted space.”
Williams and MacColl met at the Daughters Of
Albion show at Cork Opera House put together by
Kate St John in 2005. Kath sang a Vashti Bunyan
song Winter Is Blue (“when I introduced it I called
her Vashti Onion as a joke, which was a bit
embarrassing when she heard a recording of it”) and
Neill played guitar in the house band. They hit it off
immediately and, with plenty of downtime to share
ideas, talked vaguely of putting a project together.
When the show transferred to London’s Barbican the
following year, Kath came up with the slightly
impudent idea of performing First Time Ever I Saw
Your Face, the iconic love song reputedly written in
20 minutes by Neill’s father Ewan MacColl in London
and taught over the phone to Neill’s mum Peggy
Seeger who sang it at a gig in San Francisco the
same night.
“It was a bit daunting for me to sing it with Neill,”
laughs Kathryn, not sounding remotely daunted. “I
thought it would be nice to do it because every time
you hear the song it’s always really histrionic and
ridiculous. I was really pregnant at the time – it was
about two weeks before I had Louis – so I was
thinking about the baby when I sang it.”
Neill MacColl, familiar with hearing First Time
emoted within an inch of its life – one E. Presley
springs to mind – was bowled over by Kathryn’s
interpretation. “She whispers it in your ear like a
lover rather than shouting it in a gale, Heathcliff
style.” It is also, he reminds you gleefully, the only
time it has been sung to the accompaniment of a
musical saw!
When they played it at the Barbican it was so
successful that Kathryn and Neill pursued the vague
promise they’d made in Cork to try and do more
work together. Kath sent him a CD of ideas for
songs, Neill went up to Newcastle to stay with
Kathryn and her husband to work on them. A couple
of hours in Kath’s garage-cum-studio and they knew
it they were working on an album together. All the
demos Kath had originally sent Neill were ultimately
jettisoned – “it was kind of folkie, sea shanty type
stuff” – but such was the musical chemistry between
they wrote 22 songs together in six days.
“It was alchemy really,” says Kath. “I write stuff down
in books all the time and we used those for the
basis of the lyrics. Neill would play some stuff on
guitar and it would form between us. Whereas I can
hold my guitar in front of me and know maybe
seven or eight chords, Neill can really play the guitar
and make a chord progress. Which makes it really
interesting when you’re writing songs. I don’t really
know anything about music and I’ll sing a melody
and it goes somewhere, but Neill knows exactly how
to get it there. We talked quite a lot about the story
of the songs so we were both completely in the
same frame of mind when it came to putting them
together.”
She certainly credits Neill with saving the gorgeous
single Come With Me Darling from an early grave.
“We’d just had dinner and quite a few glasses of
wine so we were hammered and went in to do
some stuff for an hour. I started to do it but I felt
stupid singing the word darling and I was all for
giving up with it but Neill said no, it’s fine, so we
carried on. If he hadn’t said that, the song would
never have been written.”
After years of being a sidekick to the likes of David
Gray, Boo Hewerdine (in The Bible) and Eddie
Reader’s band, Neill credits Kathryn with giving him
the confidence to step into the front line and start
singing again. His first gigging experiences were
playing guitar behind his parents Ewan MacColl and
Peggy Seeger (“it was good training, my dad sang so
idiosyncratically that anyone who could accompany
him could accompany anybody”) but rejected his
folk pedigree to embrace other music. “I tried for a
while with my own band but I didn’t enjoy it
Properganda 8 9

PHOTOS: SUPPLIED BY THE ARTIST.
particularly – I didn’t have that thing that makes you want to
stand up in front of everyone else and say look at me!
I completely lost confidence in singing and I hadn’t done it for a
long while before I met Kathryn. Your confidence goes. It’s like a
muscle that you don’t use any more.”
But warming up his chords to sing backing vocals with Kathryn
one day he went into Innocent When You Dream, the Tom Waits
song from Frank’s Wild Years that has also been covered by
Spiers & Boden. She instantly ushered him into the studio, added
her own subtle backing vocal and with very little else done to it,
the track was ready to appear on Two and Neill MacColl was a
lead singer again.
They collaborated again to potent effect on Grey Goes, perhaps
the most unusual track on the album, with its slightly off-kilter
melody. “When I write I like to amuse myself playing with words
and I was trying to bring to life the images of colours of someone
who felt there was no colour in their life,” says Kathryn of the
track. “It just all came together with the instrumentation.”
Without a major label marketing department constantly in her ear,
Kathryn says she has no idea how her new music fits into the
current scene, what it should be called or whether anyone
bothers about categories any more anyway.
10 Properganda 8
UK Tour 2008
March
16 BRIGHTON Komedia
19 CARDIFF Level 3
24 PERTH Red Rooms
25 EDINGBURGH Cabaret Voltaire
26 GLASGOW Classic Grand
28 LONDON Queen Elizabeth Hall
29 LEICESTER Musician
31 CHESTER Telfords
April
01 CARDIGAN Thetr Mwldan
04 ABERYSTWYTH Arts Centre
05 DURSLEY Prema Arts Centre
06 WOLVERHAMPTON Wulfrin
08 NORWICH Arts Centre
10 LEEDS City Varieties
11 GATESHEAD The Sage
12 POCKLINGTON Arts Centre
13 BRISTOL St Georges
15 CAMBRIDGE The Junction
16 NOTTINGHAM Rescue Room
17 BEDFORD Civic Theatre
19 MORECOMBE The Platform
27 BIRMINGHAM Symphony Hall
(Daughters Of Albion)
May
13 BRIGHTON Dome
(Daughters Of Albion / Brighton Festival)
“It’s not genre specific any more and I think that’s a really good
thing. People find it hard to label music not geared to a certain
market and it does music a disservice if you don’t let the songs
be what they naturally are. I’ve never shunned folk music or pop
music but folk people think I’m pop and pop think I’m folk. See,
the making of music is a very different thing to the cataloguing of
it. The only way you can be true to the music is as a servant of
the song and that’s what dictates it for you. If people want to
label it folk or whatever that’s up to them, but we make songs in
a pure form.”
Neill: “Everyone has a different idea of what folk is anyway. If you
went to Cambridge Folk Festival and watched for the whole three
days you’d be mystified what folk is – and that’s fine. We just play
acoustic music. Come With Me Darling is a classic Burt Bacharach
construction. Acoustic pop music.” A light goes on in Kathryn’s
head. “Maybe it’s one on from folk. What comes after F? G? Okay,
let’s call it Golk music!”

PHOTO: SUPPLIED BY NEW LINE.
12 Properganda 8
allison moorer
Songs of feminity, songs of strength; Allsion tells us all about the new album.
"T
he running thread - and I didn’t notice it at the time is
strength… Even if they’re not hitting you over the
head, they are strong songs, coming from a worldly
place, yet the language is really feminine… And
people lose sight of that strength, courage and dignity that
is womanly.”
When Allison Moorer decided to make a record of other
people’s songs, you know she wasn’t just going to grab a
handful of whatever and set her slow burning alto to them
like a low flame to dry twigs. No, the woman whose very
first single was nominated for an Academy Award, whose
albums have been marked by an artistic restlessness and
passion and whose willingness to expose her deepest truths
has yielded some of pop music’s subtlest, but most
enduring treasures wanted to do something special. In
looking around the vastness of American music, she realized
how much of the glory of women songwriters was
overlooked and oversimplified.
“I think true feminity is not encouraged,” she says in that
smoky drawl. “In the music business, you have two little
boxes. Either you’re a whirly twirly girl or you’re a too-angry
raging woman - and that’s just not even close. Men face
their own share of problems, but they don’t face that.”
But that said it’s a business in which she has thrived.
Moorer’s 1998 song, A Soft Place To Fall, was included on
the soundtrack to the feature film The Horse Whisperer,
which led to an appearance in the film itself, as well as an
Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. The
opportunity gained her worldwide attention and set the
stage for her career. Since, she has been featured on
releases by Joan Baez, Kid Rock, The Chieftains, Los
Straightjackets and most recently, the critically acclaimed
album, Washington Square Serenade, by her husband Steve
Earle. Mockingbird is also her sixth studio recording in her
own right.
It sees her - working with producer and acclaimed roots artist
Buddy Miller - conjuring a rich pastiche of the phases of
women’s hearts, lives, needs and yearnings. Whether it’s a
dervish take on Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot, a stoic, proud
embrace of Kate McGarrigle’s Go, Leave, a winking nod to the
naughty that is Nina Simone’s I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl
or the elegant survival of her sister Shelby Lynne’s She Knows
Where She Goes, the songstress demonstrates diversity,
eclecticism and the range of the XX chromosome set..
“I wanted to do this record to become a better
writer. I have spent years and years in my own
head and my own little world, and this was a
break to explore how other singer/songwriters
experience life.”
“I was talking to my manager about what songs
I was thinking of including on the record and
he said ‘well you’ll write something for it right?
I mean, you are a female singer songwriter.’
And yes I am.” Thus the confident and
impeccably arranged title track lifts off
Mockingbird
New Line NLR39106
OUT NOW
Click on ALBUM COVER to buy now
proceedings and rightly sits proudly amongst the well
chosen songs that Moorer so admires.
The rest wasn’t quite as straightforward as you may think.
Moorer started with a list of almost 50 songs that all made
a strong case to be included. A little pre production saw the
list whittled to 24 at which point, she put faith in Buddy
Miller to help make the final cut. “Buddy’s instincts about
the songs and what would suit me were great… He knew I
could do more than I did, actually! He definitely kept it from
being a really quiet record… He brought a lot of dynamics
to it, and made it kick in places.”
Then there were challenges and delights, some spontaneous
and some carefully crafted, like learning to play acoustic
guitar in open G for an elegiac take on Joni Mitchell’s
knowing beyond-her-years Both Sides Now, putting husband
Steve Earle’s thumb to good use on Ma Rainey’s swampy
Daddy Good-bye Blues, the hushed string section and
French boite accordion that bathes Go, Leave or embracing
the Gershwin-esque beauty of Cat Powers’ Where Is My
Love. It is the interpretation that ignites the subtlest
possibilities within the songs… And that also open up
caverns of nuance in Moorer’s and the largely organic
band’s performances.
“People might wanna make women singer/songwriters
these 2-dimensional, what’s defined as ‘hot things in the
marketplace,’ but just like real life, female artists are so
much more interesting than that. If you can capture the
intelligence, the emotions, the rest of it… which is what we
tried to do… well, you’ve got something.”
Listening to Mockingbird, you do. It’s an album of subtlety,
sensuality, smoulder and grace. For a woman who’s always
walked the line between slow burning erotic charge and
being both tender and aware, what else would there be?
“I wanted to do this record to become
a better writer.

LANDERMASON
LÚNASA
FREDDIE WHITE
“The man is a
songwriting
colossus.”
fRoots
Landermason
The Reason
Lama Records LAMA004 SH
With an a capella intro, it’s perhaps
entirely natural that the first thing to
strike you about Landermason is just
how well they sing. Fiona Lander has a
clear-toned, unselfconsciously English
voice and Paul Mason is equally adept.
They harmonise beautifully. But as I Know
The Reason takes shape, the
instrumental palate also demands
attention. Fiona’s ability at the keys and
also with recorder, whistles, clarinet and
sax takes this a step beyond your
standard acoustic duo. The way that they
slip effortlessly between the folk tradition
and jazz is also impressive.
The tune XYZ sees them inspired by and
teaming with the Jones siblings who are
previous Young Folk Award Finalists. But
it’s When The Boat Comes In/Dance To
Your Daddy that forms the centre piece
of the album and is given a stunning and
highly original treatment. Equally
impressive is Somalia that manages to
speak volumes in a few carefully chosen
words. A special mention is also due for
Fiona’s mum and dad who wrote the
jaunty tune First Past The Post during a
rain drenched holiday.
.....................................
“Great album.” Lucy Duran BBC Radio 3.
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
“She said ‘hello’, I said ‘hello’,
she said ‘it’s me’, I said ‘I know!’
She said ‘it’s me’, I said ‘I know!’
She said ‘My battery’s running low’
She said ‘We need to talk’, I said ‘We talk’,
she said ‘We don’t, we never talk’
She said ‘I mean, COMMUNICATE’,
I said ‘Okay, but can’t it wait…’”
And so, with characteristically barbed observational
waspishness, Leon Rosselson opens his brilliant new
album A Proper State, with a funny/sad/jaundiced view of
the mobile phone society that doubles as a highly original
depiction of the way relationships break down in the
modern world.
Lúnasa
The Story So Far…
Compass COM44742 DK
During the course of the rest of the album we get a good
insight into what has made Rosselson such a unique
performer – revered by his peers, feared and avoided by the
mainstream – for over 50 years. He’s been the irrepressible
scourge of the establishment pretty much since he first
came to national attention writing satirical topical songs on
the legendary BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was in
the early sixties; and he’s still at it, attacking often unlikely
targets with acidic verse and subtle parables. In a parallel
universe Rosselson would be a national treasure, feted as
one of Britain’s greatest songwriters, but when you say
things people in positions of influence can’t abide to hear
then they prefer to brush you under the carpet.
Lúnasa have for the past 11 years been
one of the hottest of the Irish bands
taking traditional music forward, their
splendid musicianship allied to driving,
energetic arrangements often built
around thrusting, jazz-tinged bass lines.
To celebrate Lúnasa’s achievements over
that time, founder member doublebassist
Trevor Hutchison spent much of
2007 casting a detailed backward glance
over the band’s recorded output with the
aim of putting together this retrospective.
It presents key moments from each of
Lúnasa’s six previous albums while
showcasing the individual sound and
special strengths of the current lineup.
The 16 items chosen also give a
persuasive illustration of the distinctive
Lúnasa style of arrangement and organic
approach to composition within the
tradition. All selections are re-mixed from
the original recordings, while two tracks
(Aibreann – now renamed The Last Pint
– and Morning Nightcap) are brand new
recordings of established Lúnasa classics.
If you’re thinking that now’s the time to
find out what you’ve been missing, this
scintillating collection will definitely do
the trick.
.....................................
“Earthy, soulful, and instinctive…” Mojo
Leon Rosselson
“He has the passion of Brel, the commitment of Brecht and the wit of Lehrer.” Songlines
FOLK reviews
Freddie White
Storm Lullaby
Little Don Records LCD115 AL
Freddie White is known in his native
Ireland for his delivery of heartrending,
troubled love songs in a manner
guaranteed to stop you in your tracks. It
is often said of him that he does not
merely ‘cover’ great songs; more often
than not he improves on the originals.
Indeed, if this were not the case, he
would surely be more highly revered for
his own songwriting accomplishments.
His keen ear for quality songs,
undisputed talent for interpretation and
exemplary songwriting skills stand out in
this, the newest and most intimate
offering from Freddie White, to date.
.....................................
“This is a superb return to form... trademark
sharp-toothed guitar licks... smoky, languid
voice... there's still nobody to match White
at his best.” Irish Times
“Freddie White shows again class is
permanent… well worth seeking out.”
Mail on Sunday
“‘Stormy Lullaby’ maintains a lifelong
undertaking... to get to the essence of a
worthy song... a genuinely transcendent and
inspiring sound.” Examiner
Incredibly, Rosselson is now 73 but he still sounds like a
college kid who, with great relish, gets up the noses of the
grown-ups. He’s made over 20 solo albums now (and
written 17 childrens books), but A Proper State – which also
features Roy Bailey, Martin Carthy, Sue Harris and John
Kirkpatrick – must rank as one of his best and most
momentous, including an epic and truly moving tribute to
the importance of song as a vehicle of protest in the Tridentinspired
Faslane 365. A master stroke to follow it, too, with
the Sheffield Socialist Choir singing an operatic overview of
music of dissent in The Power of Song.
In an increasingly bland mainstream music environment
where fewer and fewer songwriters have anything remotely
relevant to say, let alone offer any of the razor-edged social
commentary he’s specialised in for so long, Leon’s work
really should be cherished. There are no taboos with
Rosselson – this is the guy, after all, who stirred the wrath of
Christians with the song Stand Up For Judas – and on A
Proper State he tackles the thorny old subject of death in
When They Ask Me, which includes the classic selfdeprecating
line: “Now I know it’s not good manners to be
singing about dying/But the melody at least you must admit
is adonyne.”
WEBSITE.
Leon needn’t worry about dying. His lyrics are immortal.
ARTIST’S
MJC
Leon Rosselson
FROM
A Proper State
Fuse Records CF024
OUT NOW PHOTO:

RHONDA VINCENT
THE STEELDRIVERS
SHAWN MULLINS
Rhonda Vincent
Good Thing Going
Rounder ROUCD592 ES
This is Rhonda Vincent’s 8th album in a
long line of superb releases, maintaining
the standards she has set. It is probably
her most personal collection to-date,
featuring five self-penned songs, dealing
with love found and love lost, as well as
the everyday occurrences of life.
Opening track, I’m Leavin’, catches your
ear instantly and each track that follows
has something to say, while getting the
feet tapping. World’s Biggest Fool is a
swing number that although sounding
traditional, it contains a modern take on
things and could easily be what the late
Patsy Cline would sound like if she were
still with us.
Guests include bluegrass crooner,
Russell Moore, on I Give All My Love to
You, a beautiful ballad Rhonda wrote for
her friend’s wedding that perfectly sums
up what a relationship should be; and
Keith Urban provides guest vocals on
the traditional Irish piece, The Water Is
Wide. She closes the album with
Bluegrass Saturday Night, a tribute to
being on the road and loving playing
shows every night.
.....................................
“Get her riled or break her heart, and
Rhonda Vincent sings with a sting.”
New York Times
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
The Steeldrivers
The Steeldrivers
Rounder ROUCD598 ES
He plays guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki,
mandocello and any other damn instrument you
care to put in front of him…so why wouldn’t Tim
O’Brien record an entirely solo album? It’s essentially
what he’s been doing at gigs since his bluegrass
band Hot Rize split in 1990 and he’s now decided
that less is more. “I did some stuff with my sister
Mollie a while back which was very sparse and
intimate and it really worked and I think this new
one is the same – the less stuff you have in the mix
the bigger you can make it sound. The guitar and the
voice on here is giant.”
The Steeldrivers consist of some of
Nashville’s best and most in-demand
songwriters and musicians – Michael
Henderson, Tammy Rogers, Richard
Bailey, Mike Fleming and Chris Stapleton.
Between them they have had songs
record by or played with the Dixie Chicks,
Travis Tritt, Neil Diamond, Buddy Miller
and Pam Tillis to name just a few. So it
will come as no surprise when I tell you
that the hype surrounding this, their
debut release, is well and truly deserved.
The opening track, Blue Side of the
Mountain, could not possibly be more
aptly titled. The Steeldrivers have
returned to the blue side of the
mountain, the roots of bluegrass. Chris
Stapleton’s voice is passionate and raw,
backed by Rogers and Fleming’s
harmony vocals; there is a definite Tim
OBrien-esque feel to the album.
Stand-out tracks include Drinkin’ Dark
Whiskey, the gentle tale of Sticks That
Make Thunder and closing track, Heaven
Sent. The album is wholly original and
looks set to become a classic.
.....................................
“An early contender for album of the year?
Most certainly!” ★★★★★ Maverick
COUNTRY/AMERICANA reviews
Shawn Mullins
Honeydew
Vanguard VCD79830 SC
I must confess that 9th Ward Picking
Parlour from 2006 was a first encounter
with Shawn Mullins, which intrigued with
its alt-country/old timey/Kris
Kristofferson/literate boho collision. I
completely missed the Souls Core (hit
single Lullaby) and Thorns (with Matthew
Sweet) eras.
But I’m glad to say the intrigue is further
piqued by the excellent new Honeydew.
Perhaps fuelled by the personal tragedy
of the death of his mother and other
setbacks along the way, Mullins has
crafted an album of striking depth,
populated with characters and conjuring
atmospheres that resonate across
American life. The scared, the scarred, the
rootless, the homeless, the fondly
remembered, lovers, heroes and villains
take centre stage through a cycle of
outstanding songs.
So travelling salesman, Harry, finds
himself a Fraction Of A Man; the Ballad
of Kathryn Johnson tells of urban squalor
and tragedy; there’s isolation and
separation in Nameless Faces; but these
dark themes are matched with hope and
Song To The Self and Rewind The Years
search for love and redemption through
the tears and fears.
.....................................
www.myspace.com/shawnmullins
Tim O’Brien
Superb new album from this Grammy award winning, self-taught multi-instrumentalist who has made a lasting mark on Americana music.
The Guthrie influence on the album is unsurprising as Woody’s
daughter Nora has asked Tim to follow in Billy Bragg’s
footsteps and set some of Woody’s unpublished songs to
music. “It’s a great honour. I think Woody’s most effective
songs were things like the Dust Bowl Ballads when he used
humour and poked fun to make a point. There are three
political songs on my album where I’ve tried to do the same.”
O’Brien has also been involved in putting together another
wonderful album, Always Lift Him Up, paying tribute to a
fellow West Virginian musician, a fiddle playing preacher
called Blind Alfred Reed, who briefly released records in the
The new album is called Chameleon and includes
songwriting collaborations with old buddies like David Olney
nineteen twenties but reputedly starved to death a couple of
decades later. “A lot of people assume he was a black blues
singer but he was a white guy who wrote these amazing
and John Hadley (a former Smothers Brothers scriptwriter, quirky funny songs and preached against hypocrisy and
triv fans!) but essentially features O’Brien in true Woody racism. He was very poor and died before the fifties’ folk
Guthrie troubadour mode. “I like it a lot,” he says. “I like the revival so is relatively unknown
characters in tracks like Hoss Race and Phantom Phone Call but we got him into the West
and there’s a few things that are kinda love songs.”
Virginia Music Hall of Fame.”
Kinda is right. One of them, the old-timey Where’s Love Come O’Brien sings Reed’s most famous
From includes a verse about his mother’s death three years song How Can A Poor Man Stand
ago. “She said the kidney machine wasn’t working and with Such Times And Live on an album
our permission she wanted to go, though it was the hardest of West Virginia artists (including
decision she’d ever taken. On New Year’s Eve she said ‘let’s all Connie Smith and Kathy Mattea)
Tim O’Brien have a drink’ and the next day she went to sleep and never that deserves cult status.
Chameleon
woke up.”
MJC
Proper American
PRPACD007
Release Mar 31st WEBSITE
ARTIST’S FROM PHOTO:
“All music is folk
music. I ain’t ever
heard a horse sing
a song”
Louis Armstrong

COUNTRY/AMERICANA reviews
Blue Rodeo
Small Miracles
Continental Song City CSCCD1045 SC
It’s tempting to think of the music
industry as a production line with an ever
evolving product making the last model
obsolete. There are of course acts that
buck the trend and are in for the long
haul. Canada’s Blue Rodeo is one, having
carved out a 23 year career and recorded
11 studio albums.
Based around the song writing
partnership of Jim Cuddy and Greg
Keelor, Small Miracles is another finely
crafted set. Filled with a sense of
yearning these songs offer up hopes and
dreams to the ravages of time with love
remembered, lost and won. Mystic River
suggests that the choices are not always
our own, “She takes you heart and you
will forgive her.” The title track also hits a
nerve with “Nights I fall back again, back
to an easier time.”
The keening pedal steel and occasional
strings add to the sense of longing. But
it’s not all sorrows as the closing
Beautiful leaves us with the haunting
“It’s almost as beautiful as you.”
.....................................
www.bluerodeo.com
Ricky Skaggs
& Kentucky Thunder
Honouring The Fathers
Of Bluegrass
Skaggs Family SKFR1008 TM
Skaggs has just won his 13th Grammy
and any betting man or woman can lay
solid odds that it won’t be his last. He
is after all an acknowledged master of
his instrument and a great song writer
and performer, being able to surround
himself with the equally talented
musicians that make up Kentucky
Thunder.
This new recording does exactly what it
says and pays tribute to the founding
fathers of bluegrass. It’s a surprisingly
mid 20th century musical development,
although has its roots in the old timey,
folk/country jams and dances of the
melting pot of American immigration.
Its history is defined by the end of WWII,
as rationing had limited recording, but
in 1945 Bill Monroe’s band with Earl
Scrugg’s three finger, rolling banjo style
set the style, which others quickly
followed.
And it’s this era that Skaggs focuses on as
the title suggests. It will be immediately
familiar to anyone with even a passing
interest, mixing high octane picking and
plucking with tight harmonies and tales
of devotion, broken hearts and lonesome
livin’, all immaculately realised and
brought to vivid life with electrifying
performance.
.....................................
“A level of picking not heard since Flatt &
Scruggs” ★★★★ Uncut
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Lomax-The Songhunter
A Film by Roger Kappers
Rounder/David DVD (DAVID6) KS
In 2002 Rogier Kappers set out to make
a celebratory film of legendary folklorist
and collector Alan Lomax but when he
visited the old warrior, he sadly found
him incapacitated by a brain
haemorrhage. Undeterred, Kapper
decided to re-visit the people Lomax
recorded during his European tour in the
1950s. In the Scottish Islands, Spain and
Italy, Kapper captures them talking about
their music and Lomax’s visit while
Shirley Collins, Peter Kennedy and Pete
Seeger supply informed opinions on his
work and side-visits to the Library of
Congress archives help to demonstrate
how Lomax went about his epic quest to
record folk music the world over.
This DVD has an abundance of riches but
the most thrilling moments come when
you see the wide-eyed delight of the
original performers when Kappers plays
the music they sang half a century ago.
The reaction of the villagers of Canizo,
Galicia is priceless. In 1952, Lomax said
“the villagers transformed when the
music began. When I left at 3am, they
were still dancing like satyrs”. Well Alan,
55 years on they’re still dancing!
.....................................
“Legendary folklorist’s life as a road movie.”
★★★★★ Uncut
Kathy Chiavola
Somehow
My Label KC1004 SC
There can’t be too many American artists
who name check Kenilworth,
Warwickshire, on their websites. And,
unusually, Kathy also claims to have
played the first bluegrass gig in the Faroe
Islands. Her roots, however, are Kansas
through and through, where she grew up
singing, playing country and blues and
eventually gravitating to the local rock
scene. Her vocal talents eventually
earned her a scholarship and after some
serious training of a raw talent she
decamped to Nashville in 1980.
A hugely successful career as a backing
and session singer means that this is
actually her first album of her own
material, although she has toured
extensively around the world. As befits
someone so much a part of the studio
scene she is able top call on a band of
some class, delivering an impassioned
modern country record that occasionally
hints at her bluegrass past.
Songs like the bluesy, driving You Blew It
Baby and the flamenco tinged Girl With A
Mission break from the format, given her
the room to stretch her voice, which is in
fine fettle indeed.
.....................................
“Time and time again her stunning
performance raised the roof...” CMP
Amanda Shaw
Pretty Runs Out
Rounder ROUCD3257 ES
Amanda Shaw may only be 16 years old,
but her debut album for Rounder
Records, sees her tackle a wide variety of
styles with ease, showing an eclectic
taste you may expect only to find on an
album by someone twice her age.
The title track is also the opener,
reminding listeners that pretty does
indeed eventually run out. The lyrics are
simple and get the point across easily –
“Read between the magazine pages, they
don’t tell you that supermodel ages.”
French Jig is where you first get to hear
the impressive talent that Shaw
possesses when a fiddle is placed in her
hands, and it occurs again on McGee’s
Medley and Reels.
Although throughout the album Shaw
never abandons her roots, she also
acknowledges the many other influences
that surround her. Brick Wall could be
bluegrass’ answer to Gwen Stefani,
with the up-front lyrics and funky use
of a horn section; her arrangement of
Jack Johnson’s Gone is blissful; and the
self-penned Wishing Me Away makes a
nod to tradition and is the highlight of
the album.
.....................................
“Highly recommended” Billboard
“Another in a line of precocious country
talen.” ★★★★ CMP
Steve Gifford
Boy On A Beach
Smokey Rooms SWG/BOY1 SC
There are a number of UK performers
who seem to have their sights set across
the Atlantic when it comes to writing
songs. Like Michael Weston King, Gifford
is another who takes US influence but
still has a distinctly UK edge.
Steve is a seasoned performer having cut
his teeth in bands throughout the
eighties with a solid stream of gigs under
his belt. After a marital hiatus, Steve
returned to performing, releasing the first
of three solo albums so far in 2002. This,
the latest finds Steve and his trusty
acoustic guitar supported with subtle
washes of pedal steel, strings and with
occasional bass and drums adding to the
dynamics of tracks like Cold Heart. The
songs cover the everyday and find the
poetic in the mundane with songs like
Tescos At 8. But there is emotional
turbulence and a creeping sense of
nostalgia that surfaces through the title
track, Long Time In The Rain and Heart
In These Stones.
Steve has a number of UK dates this
spring and summer to support the
release, check him out if you can.
....................................
“Inspired songwriting enhanced by a simple
but honest vocal approach” Maverick
BLUE RODEO
RICKY SKAGGS
& KENTUCKY
THUNDER
LOMAX-THE
SONGHUNTER
KATHY CHIAVOLA
AMANDA
SHAW
STEVE
GIFFORD

PORPOISE CORPUS
GWILYM SIMCOCK
TINEKE POSTMA
Portico Quartet
Dang! Hang doodle all night long...
“Jazz World and
Folk Album of the
year.”
Timeout 2007
Porpoise Corpus
Porpoise Corpus
Fire FIRECD19 SH
The realization that this young combo
takes their name from the psychedelic,
sci-fi, opus The Illuminatus suggests both
fierce intellect and a sense of the arcane,
that when mixed with a time slipping
fearlessness goes some way to explaining
this marvellous CD. That the band are in
the full flush of youth underlines a
paradox: this record could easily be
contemporaneous with the 1975
publishing date of that book, but equally
sounds brand spanking new.
If there’s something of a Brand X meets
Headhunters vibe to some of these tunes
then the jazz rock/fusion suggested
should not be deemed pejorative. There
is great skill on offer here both in the
playing and the writing. Sinewy sax lines
warp around the funk and squelch of
bass, drums and keyboards on tracks like
Severage On All Other Lines, The
Seventh Trip and the concluding bookend
of Neverending. Leader and composer
David O’Briens piano leads with a shifting
palate of lyrical and angular lines,
bringing moments of calm and teetering
experimentation in equal measure,
Bratoeff’s guitar ranges form spitting and
anxious to mellow chimes and the twin
sax attack is simply inspired. Marvellous
stuff indeed.
.....................................
“Pianist-composer Dave O'Brien, who did the
arranging, can take a bow. Beneath his overgrown
Beatle haircut ticks a jazz brain of unusual vision
and originality.” ★★★★ Evening Standard
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
The Portico Quartet are a young jazz ensemble that
have gone from busking on London’s south bank to
busy gig schedule in the blink of an eye. They have
already played the Barbican, Queen Elizabeth Hall,
the London Jazz Festival, Gilles Peterson’s
Worldwide radio show and have been lined up for
the 2008 Big Chill. Attracting enormous interest and
attention wherever they play, part of the reason is
an unusual percussion instrument played by leader
Nick Mulvey called a hang.
Sounding a bit like a tabala, a bit like an udu, a bit like
a steel drum and a bit like a gamelan – although not all at
once – and looking a bit like a wok, the hang’s exotic
timbre and rich tonal colour set the group apart. A
melodious hand drum that produces seven to nine notes
tuned harmonically around a central deep note, the
instrument was developed in 1988 by Swiss instrument
makers Felix Rohner and Sabina Scharer.
Gwilym Simcock
Perception
Basho SRCD242 SH
Gwilym Simcock’s debut album more
than matches the media brouhaha.
Opening with a Township lilt A Typical
Affair, it suddenly casts free of its
moorings and the vivid brilliance of the
improvisation is one of several jaw-drop
moments on this exceptional CD. The
core trio is tested to the full and Phil
Donkin (bass) and Martin France (drums)
match Gwilym’s ambition note for note.
They also expand beyond the trio format,
with Stan Sulzmann’s sax and John
Parricelli’s guitar pushing the envelope.
With some extra percussion from Ben
Bryant across half of the 10 tracks, the
poly-rhythmic bed also takes on
additional colour.
Mood shifts constantly form the funky
Sneaky or the lovely, melancholy of And
Then She Was Gone, the almost mystic
qualities of Time And Tide, with Affinity
the most overtly classical composition. It
concludes with two covers, The Way You
Look Tonight is another shape-shifting
trio workout that runs rings around the
Kern/Fields song, while the live, solo
piano take on My One And Only Love
rightly finishes with a round of applause.
.....................................
“Simcock is an awesome original… If this is just the
beginning, the coming years defy imagining.”
★★★★ The Guardian
JAZZ reviews
Tineke Postma
A Journey That Matters
Foreign Media Jazz 93524 SH
At just 26 the lovely Tineke Postma is
already inspiring international critical
superlatives. She is very clearly a highly
talented and individual saxophonist and
composer and this new CD is exciting,
subtle, complex and graceful by turns.
Postma weaves soprano and alto lines
over a tight trio, with fire in its belly
thanks largely to the exceptional
drumming of Terri Lynn Carrington. The
post bop textures are beautifully
arranged. Ballads like Ellington’s Fleurette
Africaine are spacious and breathy, with
Tineke drawing extended notes and
phrases that are wonderfully wrapped
around the extra guitar, flute and
woodwind and restrained rhythm.
Travelling Circus in contrast is all urgent,
quick-fire dexterity and splashing drum
patterns. The title track again makes use
of the additional instrumental colour to
great effect.
Melodically there’s something Of Wayne
Shorter and Miles in Tineke’s playing and
she can be playful and angular, but there
are also moments of real beauty like the
opening Bar Celta. She is undoubtedly
one to watch and this CD is a real find.
.....................................
“She is an intriguing new arrival.”
★★★★ The GuardiAN
appeal, prompting The Guardian to say, “Their subtly layered
music is tailor-made to find friends everywhere.” As
beguiling as they are hypnotising, this is music that has
found an intersection of world music, contemporary jazz and
contemporary classical music that nobody knew existed.
Some have drawn comparisons with fellow genre-busters
e.s.t. and the electronica band the Cinematic Orchestra while
others point to the influence of contemporary classical
composers Steve Reich, Phillip Glass while their melodic
rhythms have also prompted references to the Penguin Café
Orchestra. But the truth is that this is global music from
another world.
Praised by none other than The Sun, for its “refreshing
debut” for Knee Deep in the North Sea, the Portico Quartet
are first signing for Babel-Vortex, the new label set up by Will
Gresford, manager of the Vortex in Dalston, London as an
offshoot of the highly successful jazz indie Babel.
WEBSITE.
ARTIST’S PHOTO:
On their debut album Knee Deep in the North Sea Mulvey’s For a band that can get a review in The Sun anything must
hang together with bassist Milo Fitzpatrick, drummer
seem possible. Already the future looks incredibly bright for
Duncan Bellamy (who is also given to occasionally doubling this talented group. But they are not getting carried away
on his own hang) create a backdrop of exotic romanticism with their newly found success. Saxophonist Jack Wyllie still
for Jack Wyllie’s elegant soprano sax on tracks with
hasn’t given up his day job, going around cheese shows in
evocative titles such as The Kon Tiki Expedition or Monsoon: the West Country selling Raclette cheese and the kit for
Top To Bottom.
melting it. But just at the moment, nobody is taking bets on
Portico Quartet
how long this career is going to last.
Knee Deep In The
There isn’t a band that sounds remotely like them in jazz,
SN
North Sea
Babel/Vortex BVOR2769 world music or pop and this is part of their broad based
OUT NOW

PHOTOS: DAVID ANGEL
Colin Irwin gets to grips with the two sides of Scotland’s finest songstress.
Back in the hazy crazy daze of 2004, Karine Polwart took
a momentous – and to most outsiders – ludicrous
decision. Long adored as one of Scotland’s finest
interpreters of traditional song with a blossoming career
in a variety of outlets - notably Malinky, Battlefield Band
and MacAlias - her dabbles in songwriting appeared to
most an intriguing sideline to the main event.
Karine, though, didn’t get where she is today by following her head
rather than her heart. She left MacAlias and Battlefield, served notice
on Malinky, took a deep breath and announced she was forming
her own band and would concentrate in the foreseeable future
entirely on her own original material. As gambles go, the odds
looked steeply stacked against her and the smart money was on a
swift return to her old job in social work… though those who’d kept
a close eye on the original songs she’d contributed to MacAlias
might have thought differently.
“It was just something I felt I needed to do,” she laughs. “I hadn’t
done many solo gigs and I didn’t have gallons of self-confidence,
but in any band situation you have to make compromises and I
wanted to be able to go out and sing whatever I wanted. If you
gamble and really go for it the worst thing that can happen is you
have to give up and try something else.”
History now shows Karine’s bold decision to put her faith in her
own songs and go her own way was an inspired one. That first solo
album Faultlines tottered under the weight of the awards heaped
on it at the following year’s BBC Folk Awards – including the
coveted gong for best new song for her compassionate tale of death
and alcohol, The Sun’s Comin’ Over The Hill (“no, it’s not
autobiographical”) – and the Polwart band became bankers to
make all that summer’s festivals go with a zing. The album’s
successor Scribbled In Chalk enjoyed similar success and acclaim –
including another BBC Folk Award for best song of the year, for the
cute Daisy – and apart from gaining the freedom to create the
music she wanted, she built her own idyllic self-contained infrastructure
to support it. With Shetlander Inge Thomson on accordion
and her brother Steven on guitar, she made it even more of a family
affair by marrying her Cape Breton-born drummer Mattie Foulds.
Last year she became pregnant and everyone assumed the Polwart
bandwagon would grind to a halt while Karine put her feet up to
prepare for motherhood. They underestimated the resilient Ms
Polwart. Far from taking time out, she immediately set about
recording not one, but two new albums.
“It was,” she says somewhat ruefully now, “the height of foolishness.
Making two albums while you’re pregnant… I didn’t really think it
through. I’d watched Kathryn Williams and Thea Gilmore go through
the same thing and they seemed very organised and made it all
seem smooth, though it probably wasn’t!”
The original intention was to make one album before the baby was
born. Having fought so hard to establish her credentials as a
songwriter, Karine now felt confident enough in her own solo
identity to again embrace traditional song and the grand plan was
to record an album that mixed her own contemporary songs with
trad material. But when it came to the crunch she found new songs
were pouring out of her and piling into a box already brimming with
traditional songs she was desperate to record and the only sensible
option seemed to be to turn them into two completely separate
albums. So now not only is she the adoring mother of a nine-month
old son Arlo, she’s also the proud parent of two brand spanking
new albums – Fairest Floo’er (the trad one) and This Earthly Spell
(the contemporary one).
16 Properganda 8
“They’re very different, but I’m really happy with both of them,” she
says, seemingly amazing herself. “Last year was very full-on and I did
overstretch myself, but I’m pleased with the results.”
She was in the studio recording Fairest Floo’er a week before Arlo
was born and, not surprisingly, found herself “knackered” and
breathless. “Being pregnant did change my voice,” she says. “I felt I
had to sing out more, it forced me to make more of an effort and I
think it sounds a little more ballsy as a result. And I enjoyed it.
Singing makes you feel good anyway and it’s specially good when
you’re pregnant.”
Surprisingly in the circumstances, Fairest Floo’er is a very dark album
in the grand manner of the folk tradition of ballads about death and
broken hearts, accentuated by boldly sparse arrangements. Brother
Steven on guitar and banjo and Kim Edgar on piano are the only
other supporting musicians as Karine gets her teeth into some
seriously meaty tragedy like Dowie Dens Of Yarrow, The Death Of
Queen Jane and The Wife Of Usher’s Well on an album she
describes as “homespun.”
Most of her work on This Earthly Spell actually pre-dates Fairest
Floo’er, although a couple of songs were written later and Rivers
Run, especially, is the moving (but non-cloying) anthem of a new
mother (“I cross my heart and hope to live/Just long enough that I
can give it all to you my darling one/Rivers flow and rivers run…”
Most artists who follow the contemporary song route start simple
and evolve into more complex and more sophisticated
arrangements as they go along, but Karine has followed the
opposite path and This Earthly Spell is far more stripped down than
either of its predecessors. This partly represents a new-found
confidence that her own material is now strong enough to stand on
its own merits and is partly due to her sense of fulfilment touring
with her compact four-piece band. “There doesn’t feel like an awful
lot missing when we’re on the road so I did try to keep it restrained
on this album.”
Working with Chris Wood, the master of understatement, has also
influenced her greatly. She first sang with Wood at the Folk Britannia
shows in London, sang on his (wonderful) latest album Trespasser
and has gigged with him. “Chris Wood completely blew me away
and his version of Thomas The Rhymer had a big impact on my
writing on this album. For me he’s the most inspiring person on the
British folk scene.”
One of the songs on the album, Sorry, she describes as “a bit of a
rant” and she’s already had some complaints from people offended
by its religious imagery, though she’s reluctant to discuss the
specifics of what inspired it. “It’s more a general idea – sorry is a
word used far too easily. It’s offered to a higher power by people
looking for redemption and I don’t buy it.”
Better Things, however, isn’t as cryptic, eloquently expressing her
distaste for Trident and nuclear power. “It’s a song of
disappointment more than anything else,” she says. “It’s all about a
massive squandering of energy and brains on weapons when they’d
be better used on other things. You don’t have to be an out and out
pacifist to see that – it’s a matter of being pragmatic.”
She doesn’t quite know how to balance touring with her new
responsibilities (“this year will be a bit of an experiment”) but if
there’s a way of making it work for the benefit of all parties
concerned you can be sure she’ll find it. “It’s all a new adventure,”
she laughs.
CI
Karine Polwart
This Earthly Spell
Hegri HEGRICD04
OUT NOW
Click on ALBUM COVER to buy now
Fairest Floo’er
Hegri HEGRICD03
OUT NOW

PHOTO: NCT - MATT CROSSICK, THE BLEESING - SUPPLIED BY AIR.
Cake Records
The contemporary, forward thinking label set up by the highly successful and enduring Candid.
Loud…Louder…Stop! and All Is Yes are two exciting new
albums from the brand new indie label called Cake.
On the face of it they have nothing in common. The
first is by the THE NEIL COWLEY TRIO and second is by
THE BLESSING – one a piano trio and the other a quartet
of trumpet, sax, bass and drums. As different as chalk and
cheese you may think. But you’d be wrong. Both bands are
blood-brothers under the skin since they both share roots in
dance culture.
Cowley was formerly keyboard player in Zero Seven and the
Brand New Heavies before forming the electronic chill-out
group Fragile State, while The Blessing’s drummer Clive
Deamer and bassist Jim Barr’s are members of the trip-hop
supergroup Portishead. Their experiences have given them a
fresh new musical perspective to your average jazzer, who is
often weighed down with the baggage of jazz history.
Both bands have powerful rhythms at their core. You only
have to listen to His Nibs by the Neil Cowley Trio or Bleach
Cake by the Blessing to realise this music is inspired the
spirit of the dancefloor. “The Blessing do play very
rhythmically,” agrees bassist Jim Barr. “The rhythmic aspects
Both bands are blood-brothers under the skin
of what we do are very important, when we’re playing rock,
funk, drum ‘n’ bass, hip hop and trance things are constantly
popping out because we’ve done such a lot of music.”
Equally, Neil Cowley says, “I’m very aware of the collective
spirit of the dance floor, I’ve experienced it many, many
times. I understand what makes people dance, I understand
that feeling when people dance in a club or a room and
they all get off on the same collective spirit, so I do
understand that, I know how it works.”
Their dynamic approach has sparked the interest of not
only jazz fans but indie kids, surf dudes, dance nuts and
punks who have found themselves at a jazz gig for the first
time in their lives. After a live in session for BBC 6Music,
London’s Metro said of Cowley’s trio, “It’s impossible for
music lovers of any stripe not to get drawn in – funk, soul,
house, rock and trance thread through these joyful,
exuberant workouts.”
Both Cowley and The Blessing have discovered a new
audience for their music that nobody knew was there. Midway
through touring their new albums when they spoke to
Properganda, both said how struck they were by how
young their audiences were, “We’ve been very pleased to
find the audiences we’ve been playing for have largely been
twenty-somethings,” says Jim Barr. “They’re the people we
like to play for; people who aren’t necessarily jazz fans but
don’t have any preconceptions because they seem to be
open-minded and take the music at face value.”
“What I love,” agrees Cowley, “Is when younger audiences
come around the bandstand and start dancing. They
constantly come up and ask, ‘What is that music? I never
18 Properganda 7
knew jazz was like that. If that’s jazz, then I like it.”
It’s an experience that The Blessing also regularly
encounters. “When they ask, ‘what kind of music is that?’ It’s
best not to explain; we try and say we’re having fun playing.
Although we’ve got a line-up that looks like a jazzband,
we’re trying to break out of that mould as much as possible
and not be pigeonholed.”
Both Cowley and Barr attribute much of their success in
reaching out to new fan base to their presence on MySpace
where they have active pages and loyal and enthusiastic
fans that grow after every gig they play. “It really does work
that internet presence. People come and check-out what we
sound like,” says Jim Barr.
Neil Cowley is equally enthusiastic, “There was one gig we
did and I asked those who came through MySpace to put
their hands up and it was about 50%. I look at MySpace on
a daily basis, it’s a feel-good factor when someone comes
along and says something nice about your music or just
requests to be a friend, sends you a nice message, puts on
a nice comment, great!”
Look on Neil Cowley’s site on MySpace and you’ll see
among his friends are The Blessing. And look on The
Blessing’s site and you’ll see one of their thousand or so
friends is The Neil Cowley Trio. It’s no coincidence they love
each others music, and no coincidence too that young
audiences are gravitating towards their music – exuberant,
rhythmic and swimming with subtle references to club
culture rhythms.
As London’s Metro magazine said of The Blessing, “Put on
your dancing shoes…and prepare to have a freewheeling
good time.” It could just as equally be said of the Neil
Cowley Trio. Two bands to watch – they’re going places.
Neil Cowley Trio
Loud Louder Stop
Cake CACD551
Release 31st March
The Blessing
All Is Yes
Cake CACD78550
OUT NOW
Click on an ALBUM COVER to buy now

VARIOUS
DJANGO
REINHARDT
HUMPHREY
LYTTELTON
& HIS BAND
Splash Point Records
Home to world class Liane Carroll and Sue Richardson.
Liane Carroll
Trio Live DVD
SPR007DVD
“Slow Down is this worldclass
singer's world-class
record.”
**** John Fordham
Liane Carroll
Slow Down
SPR004CD
Various
Nicola Conte Presents Viagem
Far Out Recordings FARO126CD ET
Leading Brazilian record label Far Out
have teamed up with Blue Note
recording artist Nicola Conte for this
compilation of Brazilian jazz music from
the 1960s.
To those unschooled in Brazilian jazz the
role-call of artists probably reads like a
list of too cool-for-school South American
playboys - Baden Powell, Vinicius Moraes
and Tenorio Jr - yet they are legendary
within Brazilian jazz circles.
Whilst in the 60s the likes of Sergio
Mendes were intent on taking bossa
nova out of Rio and into the world,
Baden and co. were keeping it real in Rio
- unswayed by the lure of commercial
success, their only interest was in
developing this music for music's sake.
Whether it's a frenetic bossa such as
Tenorio Jr's Nebuloso or Ana Lucia's
strung-out Balanco Do Mar, this is an
invaluable collection of some of the most
interesting and progressive jazz music
that was made south of the Equator back
then. Influenced in part by Afro-Brazilian
rhythms as well as Afro-American
sensibilities, this music is leagues above
the breezy and bland stuff that is many
people's idea of bossa nova. Viagem is
simply essential jazz music.
.....................................
“This is the first volume in a DJ-compiled
series of bossa nova discs from Far Out
Recordings this year and it's hard to imagine
that any will be better than this one. Go on,
treat yourself.” -BBC website
Based in East Sussex and brainchild of pianist, singer and
producer Neal Richardson, the Splash Point record label has
been making something of … er, a splash in the Jazz world
since it’s inception in 2003. Taking great pride in the crystal
clear sound of a production style two years in the making,
Splash Point’s signature bell-like clarity has reached a peak
on the label’s most recent two studio albums.
Trumpet player and singer Sue Richardson’s Emergence is an
elegant portrait of an artist at ease with many different
musical threads, and one who’s able to pull them all into her
smooth style with natural panache. These fourteen mostly
self-penned tunes and songs often draw on elements of
Latin rhythms - and on Spotted Cat, a definite New Orleans
feel - but the sparse, uncluttered arrangements make this a
great, unwinding listen, in spite of Properganda contributor
and triangle virtuoso Brian Showell’s cameo appearance on
I Just Can’t Help Myself!
As the label’s flagship artist, Liane Carroll’s reputation and
longevity on the UK Jazz circuit is unrivalled. Winner of the
2005 BBC Jazz Awards for ‘Best Vocalist’ and ‘Best Of Jazz’,
her last album Slow Down once again showcased the ‘upclose
and faultless’ Splash Point sound on a heartfelt
collection of reflective ballads.
Alone at the piano, Liane’s
performances on Slow Down
highlight her ability to get inside
standards like All Of Me as well
as contemporary songs such as
Tom Waits’ Take It With Me.
Sue Richardson
Emergence
SPR006CD
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Django Reinhardt
Django On The Radio
JSP JSPCD953 CW
This competitively priced 5CD set
showcases all the best air shots by the
legendary guitar genius, post-war
recordings when the man was even
better than on his classic and hugely
revered 1930s sides. This is Django still
the consummate jazz guitarist - swinging
and adventurous - but also a man who
was taking on board bebop and, on
some of these sessions, proving to be
equally adept and individualistic on
electric guitar.
These broadcasts have never before been
collated together. Most are from French
radio or AFN (with both French and
American accompaniment) but also
include four tracks from the 1946 U.S.
collaboration with Duke Ellington. Legend
has it that the two men were at odds on
a personal level but the ’clash of cultures’
produced some wonderful music.
Django’s post-war trip to the U.S.
deserves this re-evaluation.
All of the performances have been remastered
by award-winning engineer
Ted Kendall, who is also responsible for
JSP’s Complete Fats Waller series, so the
sound is up to TK’s usual remarkable
standard given the original source
material. A masterclass in Djangology.
.....................................
“I’m the greatest guitarist in the world... well,
there’s that gypsy guy in France.”
Emmet Ray, Sweet And Lowdown
As she says herself in an
interview on this year’s Liane Live
JAZZ reviews
Humphrey Lyttelton & His Band
Classic Live Concerts
Lake LACD253 BS
What a joy recorded sound is, we can
peel back the years to over a half a
century ago, to a time when jazz was an
important part of popular culture and
listening to these wonderful recordings
you can see why. Not only was Humph’s
Trumpet full of authority and confidence,
the band also boasted two world class
reed players, Bruce Turner and Wally
Fawkes.
The first disc, from Conway Hall in 1954
features a superb clarinet lead by Fawkes
on Wally Plays The Blues and the
glorious alto of Bruce Turner on St. James
Infirmary Blues. The latter part of disc 1
was also recorded in 1954, at The Royal
Festival Hall and features the same
personnel, with the addition of
trombonist John Picard.
Disc 2 was recorded again at the Conway
Hall in 1951 and also includes 6 studio
recordings by the band and special
guests in 1954. This is a double CD for
the price of one. (Get this if you
remember when to shout “Onions”, if not
get it for someone who does, they will
love you forever.)
.....................................
“His own playing, bright and fiery, reached a
high plateau some time in the mid-Fifties
from which it has never descended."
The Observer
DVD, the exhilaration of live performances
means that she rarely gets the chance to
concentrate on the slower material,
preferring to whip the audience into a
frenzy with the energy of her more rousing
repertoire. This is the side of the Liane Carroll
live experience that the BBC captured with their broadcast of
her 2007 Brecon Jazz set, and which prompted viewers to
demand the resulting DVD release.
Beloved by fans for her barnstorming live shows, it’s a
wonder that a DVD was this long in arriving, but it’s certainly
worth the wait. With assistance from drummer Mark Fletcher
and husband Roger Carey on bass, Liane leads the way
through an hour’s worth of showstoppers, as usual blending
Jazz standards with less obvious selections from the likes of
Donald Fagen and Joni Mitchell. The men get a chance to cut
loose with some incredible improvisation on Caravan and
Laura Nyro’s And When I Die, while Ian Shaw swings by to
duet on You’ve Got A Friend, but with her soaring vocals and
dazzling piano work, Liane’s the star of the show.
In a bonus feature, Helen Mayhew drops in for a chat at
Porters wine bar - Liane’s Hastings local - where the singer
talks through the making of Slow Down and also treats us to
an impromptu rendition of Three Sheets To The Wind.
Keep up with all of Splash Point’s news and releases at
www.splashpointrecords.com
JTR
“Sue Richardson’s second album Emergence provides
the ideal showcase for her versatility as a sweet-toned
vocalist, dynamic trumpet player and classy arranger.”
-Jazzwise

PHOTO: LOUIS DE CARLO.
I
20 Properganda 8
Heidi Talbot
A stunning, second, solo album marks her as a talent to watch.
f ever there was an album that delivered on the back of
early promise then the sophomore release by Heidi Talbot
and her debut for Navigator is it. You may not as yet be
carrying her name in your heart, but it’s only a matter of time.
After all she comes with some pedigree that traverses the
Atlantic at least twice and she will already be familiar to
some of you as lead singer of the Irish-American girl group
Cherish The Ladies who have previously wowed audiences
at Celtic Connections and the Return To Camden festivals.
The well regarded Woman Of The House released via
Rounder did much for the band’s profile over here, but now
stepping into the solo spotlight she suddenly finds herself in
demand with a host of collaborations as artists as diverse as
Radiohead’s Philip Selway, John McCusker, Kris Drever and
Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble all queuing up to work with her.
There will doubtless be others.
But first the album In Love And Light and a small series of
dates to support. McCusker and Drever are amongst a host
You may not as yet be carrying her name in your
heart, but it’s only a matter of time.
of guests that make this the triumph that it is. New label
mate Boo Hewerdine produces and Neill MacColl (one half
of our cover star duo) also appears, as do Eddie Reader and
Capercaillie’s Donald Shaw to name but a few. Boo
Hewerdine contributes a couple of songs and there are also
versions of Tom Wait’s Time and the Tim O’Brien penned
Music Tree. Three traditional tunes also suggest her heritage
and once again refer to both sides of the Atlantic of which,
the simply performed, mournful Blackest Crow makes an
early claim as a standout.
But frankly the providence of the material becomes a
secondary concern when Heidi wraps her expressive voice
around the words. She’s already drawn comparison to
Norah Jones and Properganda favourite Mindy Smith, with
perhaps a touch of Victoria Williams or Melanie. In fact,
borrowing from The Village Voice magazine, a cross
between Bjork and Enja was suggested, which is neither as
daft nor scary as it sounds.
Growing up in the rural village of Kill, Co. Kildare, Talbot
sang in the church choir, meanwhile absorbing the vibrant
array of music that filled the family home. The middle of
nine children, Heidi listened to whatever was playing in the
house. Nana Mouskouri and Dolly Parton would be coming
from one direction, but then there’d be
Guns’n’Roses and the Pogues coming from
another.
At sixteen, Talbot enrolled at Dublin’s
celebrated Bel Canto singing school, studying
under its founder and director Frank
Merriman - „the best teacher in the universe,“
according to Sinead O’Connor, another
former student. Adapting the classical Bel
Canto technique, mainly associated with
opera singers like Maria Callas, for vocalists of
any style, Merriman’s method focuses on
Heidi Talbot
In Love And Light
Navigator NAVIGATOR6
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using the voice as naturally as possible to communicate a
song’s narrative elements, teaching that certainly tells in
Talbot’s intuitive, eloquent phrasing.
Perhaps the pivotal juncture of Talbot’s early career, though,
was when she moved to New York aged eighteen - despite
her total lack of any defined plan in doing so. And yet,
thanks to a hefty dollop of good fortune - within three days
she had landed a job, singing in a wedding band. After 18
months on the circuit, Talbot moved into Queens where she
spent several years working the Big Apple’s bars and clubs.
It was in the city’s thriving Irish musical community that a
chance meeting with Cherish the Ladies’ founder and front
woman Joanie Madden took place. Talbot asked her to play
on a demo she was recording and the pair hit it off. Shortly
afterwards, during 2002, Madden invited Talbot to join the
band as replacement for the recently departed lead singer
Deidre Connolly. Suddenly Hiedi moved from playing small
venues, pubs and bars to 2000 seaters. She overcame her
initial shyness with help and support from Joanie and soon
grew into the role.
It proved a great experience but after moving back to
Ireland in 2005 and having recently relocated again to
Edinburgh, Talbot decided that 2007 would be her last year
with the band and a new chapter unfolds.
The sound of In Love And Light provides a great tapestry for
Heidi to weave her magic, intoxicating us with these
carefully chosen tales. Subtle use of strings, backing vocals
and changes of instrumental timbre keep things fresh and
interesting, but there is no doubting the star of the show is
Heidi herself. Like I said at the top it’s just a matter of time.
And I even nearly made it through Whispering Grass
without saying “Sing it Lofty!”
SC

D
benji Kirkpatrick
escribed in Time Out as a ‘fretboard wizard ‘, Benji
Kirkpatrick is a highly gifted guitarist and an engaging
and experienced performer. Over the decade or so that
he has been working on the folk scene, he has honed a
distinctive style, which is both memorable and energetic.
Boomerang is Benji’s third solo album. Though the new
album is inspired by the folk scene in which he grew up,
most tracks are original and self-penned. The subjects
explored are varied and many of the themes contemporary,
ranging from problems experienced by living in small rural
backwaters (Rocky Brown), to songs which make reference
to conflicts in the Middle East (Willow Weeps). The title
track Boomerang showcases Benji’s effecting, driving guitar
style, whilst Wallbreaker is a riddle song, about the
overriding power of nature, regardless of human efforts to
control it.
Boomerang features Ben Nicholls (bass) and contributions
from mother and father Sue Harris and John Kirkpatrick as
well as Seth Lakeman and Stu Hanna, (who also produced
the album). It’s only one strand of three demanding projects
that he’s fully committed to for this year. He’s an integral
part of Bellowhead who are artists in residence at The
South Bank this year and he has also put the finishing
touches to a new Faustus album, due for release through
Navigator later this year.
So, how does he keep all the plates spinning? “The main
problem is diaries, dates and coordination, you have to be
“Over the years, however, I’ve steadily accumulated
songs that I feel happy performing on my own.”
An object lesson in the wearing of many hats.
Benji Kirkpatrick
Boomerang
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really disciplined and keep a close tab on commitments.
Artistically each project is quite distinct and pretty well self
contained. Obviously my solo album is very much about my
own songs, whereas Faustus concentrates more on the
English tradition. Whilst we might write the odd tune or
change a melody, it’s more about interpretation than actual
song writing. It’s a different discipline and I really like
playing tunes as well as songs. With Bellowhead it’s a bit
more difficult, because of the size of the band and everyone
has side projects going on, so it takes a lot of coordination.
The complexity of the arrangements also means that
everything has to be scored. Once we have the dots in front
of us we knock the songs into shape. I’ve recently
contributed an arrangement for a new tune working with
Andy, the trumpet player. It was a great experience and we
really managed to combine our different strengths. But I
also guess that each thing I do informs the other things, it’s
all about experience, learning and getting better as a
musician and writer.”
Benji explains that it’s not just the multitude of hats he
wears that lead to the gaps between his solo records, “This
record has taken it’s time to come together. I’ve always
written songs, but I’ve pretty much always had bands going
and much of what I’ve written fits that format better. Over
the years, however, I’ve steadily accumulated songs that I
feel happy performing on my own. This record has really
taken shape in my head during the last four years.”
He’s also quick to acknowledge the help of one half of
Megson in the creative process, “Working with Stu was
great. We demoed all of the songs and then picked over
them and tweaked them, before coming up with a final
selection to finish for the record. Stu has a great sense of
structure and what works, so we were able to extend some
sections, knock others out and find a chorus where there
wasn’t one originally. I like to think I’m always open to
ideas, but it always helps to know someone as a musician
and have a mutual respect.”
Stu took over production duties when Sean Lakeman’s
commitments to his brother’s touring schedule
overwhelmed the original sessions and echoes that
claiming, “Benji was overflowing with ideas and it was more
a question of filtering them down to a core of songs. We did
the whole thing on home equipment mostly at Chateau
Megson, but we even did a bit at Ben Nicholl’s place in the
middle of his house move. It was chaotic, with boxes
everywhere but it turned into a right laugh and it’s good to
change the setting, otherwise cabin fever can set in.”
With a number of solo shows booked up, Benji
chuckles about taking the new material out on
the road. “The only down side of touring a one
man show is the getting there and leaving on
your own, especially if it gets late and you have
a long drive ahead. But I know I shouldn’t
complain, as I actually really enjoy being in
complete control and I am really committed to
the record and this direction. I’m very proud of
it and want to get that across to an audience at
every opportunity.”
Properganda 8 21
PHOTO: HUGO MORRIS.

Nigeria Special
Modern Highlife. Afro-Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970 6 (Soundway Records)
“an aural and
design classic”
★★★★★ Mojo
“magical collection of
Nigerian recordings”
★★★★★ Observer Music Monthly
Nigeria Special
Various
Soundway Records ?
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17 HIPPIES
Heimlich
HIP012
Given the UK’s colonial links with Nigeria, it’s
surprising that Nigerian sounds aren’t more widely
appreciated by world music fans. The incendiary
Afrobeat of the late Fela Kuti is probably the best
known style to emerge from that country, but you
won’t find anything from such a big name on this
lavishly packaged double CD. Dedicated to
unearthing the finest and rarest tropical funk, the
Brighton based Soundway label here follow their
recent Latin American musical adventures, by
returning to West Africa for this typically left-field
selection of vintage Nigerian tunes. As label boss / compiler
Miles Cleret explains in his sleevenotes, the focus here is on
the music made east of the capital city Lagos and falls into
two broad camps: the highlife of the suited and booted
older guys and the Afro-rock made by the young hipsters
sporting denims and Afros. Only this doesn’t really do
justice to the full range on offer. There’s afrobeat, Afroblues,
screaming funk and Latin flavoured workouts to be
found in amongst these 26 tracks. Made by the local
legends, obscure names and one record wonders
discovered by Cleret on his quest for vinyl gems. The
opening ‘Ayamma’ by The.Anambra Beats is a good
illustration of quite how obscure this music is. Who are The
Anambra Beats? A band from Anambra state who cut one
single for a Nigerian Decca subsidiary back in 73. Listening
to ‘Ayamma’s loping guitar line and fiery trumpet solo,
you’ve got to wonder why they didn’t get to record more.
Nigeria Special is littered with such magical moments: the
rolling highlife of Celestine Ukwa & his Philosophers
17 Hippies
Serious music not for the good times, but for the best of times.
“The 17 Hippies are
ridiculously underrated.
They should be in the front
rank of European world
music artists …”
Charlie Gillet, BBC London
17 Hippies are the most remarkable musical
collective to come out of Berlin since the Berlin
Philharmonic. Says one man but many in the know
would agree without rattling on. Habitually protean
in their line-up, inherently light-fingered when
shanghaiing time-share Hippies, the number 17
therefore is about as relevant to Hippiedom as The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s 42 – aside from
the spooky meaning of life congruence. Next, the
nearest they come to Hippie is in their new album’s
The Moving Song and its referencing of hippy
slipperiness in a post-psychedelised Beatles way with
added jew’s harp twang. They have rarely done 17 Hippies
better than with Heimlich, their umpteenth album, yet only
their second studio release since their formation in 1995.
Thrillingly multicultural but in a good, natural and organic
way, whatever they touch comes out wholly 17 Hippies.
The collective was fledged and flew out of one of the
watershed eras in Europe’s turbulent post-WWII history –
the nach-der-Wende era. Since you listless bastards at the
back of the class look like you skipped German, let’s back
up. Wende (noun, feminine) just means ‘turn’ or ‘change’.
Find it in the expression nach der Wende and its meaning
explodes. It then delineates the before from the after (nach)
exemplified by the Berlin Wall coming down in the autumn
of 1989. 17 Hippies could have only come out of Berlin’s
post-Reunification scene. And are probably the only band
that could shanghai the likes of guitar wizards Marc Ribot
and Jakob Ilja to make the 2005 live 17 Hippies Play Guitar.
Click on an ALBUM COVER to buy now
National and St Augustine & his Rover Dance Band, the
wah-wah and organ fuelled ‘Akula Owa Onyeara’ by the
(aptly named) Funkees, The Tony Benson Sextet’s
simmering Afro-jazz, Opotopo’s Cuban influenced ‘Belema’
(featuring the venerable Nigerian legend Fatai Rolling
Dollar), Hykkers rock guitar heavy instrumental ‘I Want A
Break Thru’ and George Akaze and his Augmented Hit’s
diamond hard Afrobeat thumper ‘Business Before Pleasure’.
Best of all are those tunes that don’t fit neatly into any one
musical genre. How best, for example, to describe
‘Nekwaha Semi Colon’ by the oddly named Semi-Colon, a
one-of-a-kind band from East Nigeria’s Ibo region, led by
the clearly eccentric Lasbrey Colon. It’s blend of Afrobeat,
rock and funk needs to be heard (preferably at very high
volume) to be believed!
Or what about The Sahara All Stars of Jos, Yoruba speakers
from the north of the country, whose ‘Fese Jaiye’ starts out
in typically languid highlife style, all easy rolling guitar and
old time trumpet, before sliding into snaky Afro jazz
territory. According to Cleret’s sleevenotes, other musicians
believed the band deployed some kind of witchcraft. All
good myth making stuff to be sure and just the sort of
detail that makes this package such a delightful artefact.
(Jamie Renton)
Musically and attitudinally, they riff and spliff, wine and dine,
dance and prance the Reunification fandango mash-up.
Long toasted by broadcaster Charlie Gillett, they flip the
finger at perceptions and preconceptions of German music
being, well, Teutonic. If you threw their passports into a pile,
there is no telling what secrets might emerge. The band’s
easy familiarity with English, French and German is revealing.
Just as their musical palette is revealing in the ways it ducks
and dives between the torchy-mystique chanson of Son
Mystère (‘His Mystery’) and film sonorities of Apache (they
are veterans of OST work for Halbe Treppe and for Berlin’s
Deutsches Theater), Balkan and Cajun elements, a filigree
touch of Ornette Coleman here, brass stabs and hammer
dulcimer ripples there.
Hey, now look, there must be a number of you whose
gonads or private bits contract at the very thought of
listening to music coming out of Germany. Wean yourselves
off prejudices with Heimlich. Long overdue a proper release
here, Heimlich (it thwarts a one-word translation but
summons ‘secret’/‘secretive’, ‘clandestine’/‘furtive’,
(something) ‘not shown outwardly’/‘held within’) is one of
the year’s finest silvery artefacts. It demonstrates the Berlin
Bombshells’ utter command of more idioms than you could
sensibly shake a drumstick at and band arrangements of the
tightest, most scary kind.
Ken Hunt writes and broadcasts in English and German and
is the author of the Germany chapter in dem (STET or im)
Rough Guide to World Music (1999 and 2008).
PHOTO: ANDREAS RIEDEL

LEE ‘SCRATCH’
PERRY
BOBAN & MARKO
MARKOVIC
SVÄNG
REMBETIKA 2
AFRICAN SCREAM
CONTEST
THE UKRAINIANS
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
Chicken Scratch (Deluxe)
Heartbeat HBCD7839 TM
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is rightly revered today
as a true originator, an innovator and
shaman. His Black Ark studios changed
the face of modern music in the late 70s.
This handsome set puts that success in
context by collecting some of his earlier
work and vocal recordings for Clement
Dodd’s Studio 1. His break came after a
fall out with the rival and more powerful
Duke Reid, who shamelessly stole a song
from this wiry country boy and had
someone else record the vocal. Perry
was incensed and a fracas ensued, but
luckily Dodd was on hand to save Perry
from a serious beating and took him
under his wing.
Perry was employed as a dancer, gopher,
then percussionist and songwriter, before
eventually being allowed to cut his own
sides. Dodd never entirely trusted him as
a vocalist and to be fair he’s hardly
premiere league. But his energy, humour
and the fabulous backing win through
with tracks like Chicken Scratch from
whence his nickname comes. The extras
and superb booklet make this a
fascinating insight into a man taking the
first steps to genius.
.....................................
“Some of the finest early reggae talent
Jamaica had to offer” ★★★★ Mojo
Boban & Marko Markovic
Go, Marko, Go
Piranha CDPIR2121 GQ
Serbia’s Boban Markovic is to Balkan
brass what, say, Miles Davis was to
African American jazz: the trumpet player
so individual, so powerful, that his name
tends to dominate the genre. Marko is
Boban’s teenage son, joining his father’s
12-member orkestar on the road aged
13: the Markovics’ come from a Balkan
Gypsy tradition where outstanding
musical talent is championed early on.
Boban Markovic has previously released
three superb albums on Piranha: the
scorching Live In Belgrade, the epic
textures of Boban I Marko (the 2003
album that introduced the teenager) and
The Promise, an album of immense
power and beauty. For album number
four road weary Boban is effectively
handing control of the orkestar to Marko
- the kid writes almost all the tunes,
takes all the trumpet solos and sings
most of the songs.
The difference between Go, Marko, Go
and the previous albums is Marko’s youth
versus Boban’s experience. Marko’s
young, wants to party all the time, brings
in loops and dance beats, really fires
things up into a big Balkan party. At
times I miss Boban’s solemn, blues
flavour but if I want to rock a club Go,
Marko, Go is the CD I pack.
.....................................
“No wonder that over the years this band
has walked away with every available
prize.” fRoots
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Sväng
Jarruta
Aito Records AICD013 SM
The Finnish harmonica maestros are
back! Their second album draws on
Finnish Gypsy songs, polka, tango and
Balkan music, all expertly woven into a
vibrant set of compositions showcasing
the instrument’s extraordinary flexibility.
As a quartet their genius lies in their
ability to create such a rich, varied sound
as to emulate a full orchestra. They
achieve this using a range of diatonic and
chromatic harmonicas (including the
pumping bass harmonica which propels
the music along like a funky rhythm
section), retuning their instruments and a
special technique they call ‘overbending’
which allows them to play fully
chromatically on the diatonic blues harp.
There’s a good balance of light and
shade, from the gentle reflective Syliikävä
to the catchy Kua Kua Kome Kiki
and the hypnotic soundscape of Voi Kun
Mulla On Ikävä where the traditional
Finnish Gypsy tune emerges wreathed in
the blur of the Chandler tube fuzz. It’s a
mighty album with fabulous tunes and
sumptuous textures that keep you
coming back for more.
.....................................
Performing at The Linbury Theatre, Royal
Opera House, London July 20th
Various
Rembetika 2
JSP JSP77105 KS
Rembetika is often compared to blues
music because, just like pre-war blues of
the deep-south, it is filled with songs of
hope, despair, lust and longing. Sleepy
John Estes and Tommy Johnson had a lot
in common with the great Greek
musicians here who sing their hearts out
on subjects like booze, dope, jail, bad
girls, good girls and hard travelin’.
These 4 CDs contain 89 classic
obscurities and rarities from 1908 until
1946. This excellent selection ranges
from Melemenlis’s tough jail songs to
sweet heartbreaking vocals by Marika
Papagika and mesmerising guitar from
George Katsaros to virtuoso lyra playing
from Lambros Leondaridhis. Then there’s
the massive voice of Markos Vamvakaris
(the Charley Patton of Greece) and the
divine vocals of Rosa Eskenazi. We also
get the “mythically rare” last recording of
Dalgas and a newly discovered track by
Rembetika bouzouki king Jack Gregory.
Once again rembetika archivist Charles
Howard has come up with another
treasure trove of some of the world’s
best music. Volume 1 (JSP7776) thrilled
collectors from Sacremento to Salonika
and this box is just as magnificent. Every
single track is a mouth watering
experience.
.....................................
“Charles Howard has done an exemplary
job of assembling a broad arc of classic
performances.” fRoots
WORLD reviews
Various Artists
African Scream Contest
Analog Africa AACD063 JR
Mention Benin and Togo to even the
most clued-up African music fan and
chances are they’ll give you just a couple
of names before spluttering to a halt. So
this latest collection from Afro vintage
specialists Analog Africa is sorely needed.
As with the label’s two previous single
artist collections of Zimbabwean music,
African Scream Contest is the result of
label boss Samy Ben Redjeb’s search
for audio gold in dusty vinyl vaults (this
time in the twin West African countries
of Benin and Togo).
The tunes that made him shout ‘Eureka!’
are the ones that make up the 14 tracks
on this collection of 70s sounds. Rock,
salsa and soul influences are strong
throughout, Roger Damawuzan’s Wait for
Me for example, is all JBs style funky
horns and screeching vocals. The sounds
of neighbouring Ghana and Nigeria are
also in evidence (check the powerhouse
Afrobeat of Tidjani Kone’s Djanfa Magni),
and the local rhythms used in religious
rituals form a solid backbone to
everything here. As history lessons go,
this is one funky freak-out.
.....................................
“Emphasis is on the raw, but the rhythm
sections were definitely cooking.”
Music Week
The Ukrainians
Live in Czeremcha
Zirka 037CD13 KH
My memories of The Ukrainians from way
back are now so dim as to be nonexistent
beyond a memory of raw energy
without Ukraine’s defining stringed
instrument, the bandura (think balalaika
and Russia by way of comparison),
anywhere in the mix.
Judging by Live in Czeremcha –
“recorded,” the notes tell us, “at the
Spotkanie Folkowe Festival, Czeremcha,
Poland 29.05.2005” – the Ukrainians still
pack lashings of energy – now more
highly focussed – and they still leave the
bandura behind. What you get here is
electric guitar, mandolin, kit drums,
accordion, electric bass and violin. Aside
from shock-troop bounce-alongs like
Smert, Arkan and Anakhiya (their
Ukrainianised Anarchy in the UK), you
get the mandolin-pickalong-a-maxed
Chekannya (their Ukrainianised Venus In
Furs) as counterbalance. Where else are
you going to get your fill of Sex Pistols
and Velvet Underground served up
Ukrainian style?
....................................
“Captures the Wedding Present side project
in splendid form.” Uncut
Properganda 8 23

?
“T
24 Properganda 8
folk awards
John Leonard, Producer of The Mike Harding Show,
explains how the awards are chosen and why they are important.
he BBC Folk Awards event was started in 1999 as a
way of celebrating the past year’s achievements in the
folk music world. It was seen as an opportunity to get
artists and folk industry pundits together and say thank you
for their work over the previous twelve months. It was also
seen as a chance to showcase to the mainstream media just
some of the artists and albums that we, the people who
work in folk music, have been particularly proud of during
the year.
The awards themselves are voted for by a panel of around
150 broadcasters, folk journalists, festival organisers, agents,
promoters etc; people whose job it is to make judgement of
one sort or another about folk music during their daily work.
I have never asked musicians to vote because I think it is
their role to make the music and other people’s to judge.
The voting is in two stages: the first round is open and the
panel can vote for anyone they like in each of the
designated categories. These votes are collated and the top
four artists in each category declared as nominees. The
same panel is then asked to vote again on this shortlist to
choose an award winner in each category.
There can be no doubt that folk music
continues from strength to strength
There can be no doubt that folk music continues from
strength to strength – reflected not just in sales of records
like these but also in the vibrant festival scene, the profile of
the Awards themselves and, perhaps most importantly, in
the newer artists that continue to break through.
It’s appropriate that once again this CD contains a bonus
disc featuring the finalists of the 2008 BBC Radio 2 Young
Folk Award. Time will tell the futures of these young men &
women, but a glance at the previous year’s contestants sees
already familiar names, not just in the winners Last Orders
but also others such as David Delarre (Mawkin:Causley) and
Ruth Notman. It would not be surprising to see them
graduating to the main Awards before long.
The 2008 Folk Awards nominees represent a cross section
of folk music today. From long standing stalwarts such as
Richard Thompson and Jez Lowe and perennial favourites
like Martin Simpson, Show of Hands and Kate Rusby,
through to the next generation; Bella Hardy, Tunng and
Jackie Oates. Once again there are a number of first time
nominees including Lisa Knapp and Rachel
Unthank & The Winterset, whilst it’s always
great to see former Horizon award winners
like Julie Fowlis and Kris Drever (Lau) being
nominated.”
Anyone who doubts what the awards mean is
urged to seek out the performances and artist
interviews on the BBC’s website. Not only do
they give their all on the night but hearing
Martin Simpson, for example, talk of delight in
receiving the recognition of an award for best
Folk Awards 2008
Proper PROPERFOLK05
OUT NOW
Click on ALBUM COVER to buy now
song is telling. He humbly refers top Kate Rusby, another
nominee in the same category whose Bitter Boy he clearly
too to heart. Simpson also describes the spine tingling
sensation of hearing Julie Fowlis backstage, singing
unaccompanied to prepare her voice for the evening’s
performance. Martin of course won two awards himself for
Best Original Song and Best Album, even so he is clearly in
awe of Lau and the others amongst his peers who made
the event one to remember.
John sums up the hopes of staging the event, “Sometimes
many of us who deal with folk music every day can forget
how little it is known and appreciated outside the folk
scene. The Folk Awards gives an opportunity to broaden the
knowledge of some journalists and hopefully bring new
people into the fold. Each year over 60 journalists attend
the Awards and I’m delighted to say that many hundreds of
column inches - so far all positive - have been written about
the event and the music it celebrates.”
There can be no doubt that folk music
continues from strength to strength –
reflected not just in sales of records like
these but also in the vibrant festival scene
This Year’s winners in full:
Folk Singer Of The Year
Julie Fowlis
Best Duo
John Tams & Barry Coope
Best Group
Lau
Best Album
Prodigal Son By Martin Simpson
Best Original Song
Never Any Good By Martin Simpson
Best Traditional Track
Cold Haily Rainy Night By The Imagined Village
Horizon Award
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset
Musician Of The Year
Andy Cutting
Best Live Act
Bellowhead
Special Categories
Lifetime Achievement Award
John Martyn
Good Tradition Award
Shirley Collins
Folk Club Of The Year
Dartford Folk Club

THE BLIND BOYS
OF ALABAMA
EDDY “THE CHIEF”
CLEARWATER
SMOKIN’ JOE
KUBEK &
BNOIS KING
DANI WILDE
BUDDY
WHITTINGTON
ELMORE JAMES JR
The Blind Boys Of Alabama
Down In New Orleans
PROPER PRPCD033 KS
Last year, The Blind Boys left home to
record in New Orleans and the result is
this beautiful clutch of great gospel songs
inspired by the rhythms and heart and
soul of the Crescent City.
Thanks to The Preservation Hall Jazz
Band, The Hot 8 Brass Band and the
legendary Allen Toussaint, this CD
smoulders with jazzy syncopations, sly
second-line funk, raucous drumming and
inspired piano. The glorious Blind Boys
treatment is given to songs popularised
by the Staple Singers, Earl King and
Mahalia Jackson along with some hard
line traditional tunes. Original member
Clarence Fountain was too ill to attend
but replacement Ben Moore with regular
Blind Boy Jimmy Carter, who’s been
hollerin’ with the boys since 1939, keep
up the tradition of truly great gospel
vocals - especially on the soul-packed
power of A Prayer and they positively
purr on the hard-core four part harmony
showcase I’ve Got a Home.
This CD is joyously raw with a
consciously live feel that may not be as
slick as their last couple of albums but in
my opinion, it’s all the better for it!
.....................................
“Another landmark in their remarkable
seven-decade career” ★★★★ UNCUT
Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater
West Side Strut
Alligator ALCD4921 CW
First recording in the late 50s as a dead
ringer for Chuck Berry – tho’ his
adopted surname was a cheeky spin on
Muddy Waters - Eddy has maintained
the panache of rock ‘n’ roll
showmanship while establishing himself
as a prime exponent of West Side
Chicago blues attack.
After some 15 albums, his first for
Alligator is arguably his finest to date,
finding him in strong voice and good
company, including guest appearances by
Lonnie Brooks, Otis Clay and Jimmy
Johnson. With undiminished guitar
technique he performs mainly original
songs - plus a nod apiece to Muddy and
Lowell Fulson - that mix domestic blues
woes with typically humorous interludes
in a variety of settings from all out rockin’
(but never so heavy as ‘rock’) to electric
and acoustic blues and one almost Staxlike
track prominently featuring a punchy
horn section. If Eddy was a chef rather
than “The Chief” this might rate a
Michelin star for the Clearwater kitchen.
.....................................
“A Chicago bluesman with a mean Chuck
Berry streak and a fondness for feathered
headdresses. Not to be missed.”
New Yorker
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Smokin’ Joe Kubek &
Bnois King
Blood Brothers
Alligator ALCD4920 CW
We are now in an era when a generation
of newcomers (!) to the blues scene are
themselves becoming respected veterans
of the genre. Texas-based Smokin’ Joe
(guitar) and his longtime musical partner
Bnois (guitar, vocals) separately paid their
dues during the 60s & 70s before
meeting up in the 80s, first recording
together in 1991. Thousands of road
miles and a dozen or so albums later
they are of an age to proclaim My Dog’s
Still Walkin’ while suffering Midlife Crisis,
Midnight Flight.
Thirteen of the 14 tracks here are new
co-compositions (the other a take on
Lightnin’ Hopkins), the duo accompanied
by only a bassist, drummer and, on six
tracks, keyboard player. The overall feel is
of a roughed up Robert Cray thrown back
into a roadhouse and relishing the
downhome frission.
This is blues served up with grits on the
side!
.....................................
“Now, with this great new CD and a new
label, Joe and Bnois are ready to do what
they do best, get out on the road and take
their music to the people.”
KNON-FM, Dallas
Dani Wilde
Heal My Blues
Ruf RUF1137 KS
We haven’t had a real hot guitar slinging
blues woman in Britain since JoAnn Kelly
was rockin’ the joint in the 1970s but
new-comer Dani Wilde is generating
terrific reaction from those in the know at
her live gigs and now with this debut
release.
Thoroughly steeped in blues, she was
inspired to pick up electric guitar after
listening to her most significant influence
John Lee Hooker - although Susan
Tedeschi has also had a life changing
effect on her music.
Backed by a solid band, Dani lets loose
on this CD with energetic, passionate
vocals and crunching guitar licks. Vocally
she veers toward the rockin’ side of blues
but can bawl out blues-with-a feelin’ with
the best of them. Check out songs like
Testify and the green onions-ish Bring
Your Loving Home to hear the true power
of her voice and for heart-felt soul listen
to I’m Going Down.
.....................................
“She releases a sort of diesel roar from her
throat, pierced with little darts of high
falsetto. It is like two voices. She sings the
old twelve bar blues I’m In The Mood,
whooping and slurring like an old boy from
the Delta. The place goes mad, as if it can’t
quite believe what it’s heard.”
The Times Magazine.
BLUES reviews
Buddy Whittington
Buddy Whittington
BWRecords BUDW56 TM
Buddy Whittington is the current
incumbent in the guitarist slot of the
legendary Bluesbreakers. It’s a position
he’s occupied since the departure of
Coco Montoya in 93. In typical style,
Buddy’s band The Sidemen, who had
been making waves on the local Texas
scene, were given the support slot to the
visiting John Mayall in 91. John was
impressed by Buddy, so much so that
when Coco quit, he made one phone
call to Texas.
As well as being an exceptional guitarist
Buddy is also a fine singer and a
excellent writer. The opener Young And
Dumb sets pulses racing with some
fantastic slide guitar and wry lyrics
including the gem “Made Milwaukie
famous, gave me a headache.” It’s a sign
of things to come as the lyrics generally
are a cut above average and the guitar
playing is off the scale. The punning title
of Stevie Rave On (!!!) actually proves to
be a fitting tribute to the late great fellow
Texan and Second Banana is a laugh out
loud killer. The absolute business.
.....................................
“Beautifully crafted, played and presented…
Quite simply, a fabulous record”
Blues Matters
Elmore James Jr
Daddy Gave Me The Blues
JSP JSPCD8809 CW
Transposing Robert Johnson’s signature
1930s acoustic guitar phrasing into a
blistering electric bottle-neck version in
the 50s, Elmore James was one of the
most influential and slavishly copied
bluesmen of his generation. So you
might expect his belatedly recorded son
to be yet another one of those imitators.
Inevitably there are some well executed
references to his father’s musical legacy
among these 14 tracks. But surprisingly,
for the most part this is an album
uncluttered by historical baggage,
perhaps because ’Junior’ (now a 67 year
old youngster) only plays lead guitar on
three tracks. Elsewhere Cadillac Zack,
Oakland Red and Jeff Turmes provide
clean and fluid guitar parts, while Jr sings
in robust fashion, together with the rest
of the small ensemble resulting in a
thoroughly enjoyable album that merits
your attention.
.....................................
“Witnessing his son play those classic slide
guitar riffs is the closest most will ever come
to experiencing the original.”
Chicago Tribune
Sign up to the Properganda newsletter for all the news between issues and much more.
Properganda 8 25

Levon Helm
The soul of the Deep South.
“Earthy,
reassuringly
calloused country.”
★★★★ Mojo
Levon Helm
Dirt Farmer
Vanguard VCD79844
OUT NOW
Alison Krauss
100 Miles or More
Kelly Joe Phelps
Tunesmith Retrofit
Alan Lomax
Popular Songbook
www.rounder.com
To say that Levon Helm’s first solo album in 25
years has been eagerly awaited, would be
somewhat of an understatement. Having suffered
throat cancer and lost his recording studio to a fire,
it is a small miracle that Dirt Farmer is even in
existence.
Each song, from the traditional beginning with False
Hearted Lover Blues, to the beautiful Buddy and
Julie Miller penned closing track, Wide RiverTto
Cross, has an ear-catching and strong sound that
could only be created by someone of Helm’s
experience and talent. There is a far fuller feel than that of a
traditional bluegrass or country band, but at the same time,
it is never cluttered, and nor does it distract from the
content of each song. Helm states in the liner notes that
those involved ‘tried to let the songs dictate the
instrumentation and our performances’ – it seems the most
logical way to produce any album, and the result is superb.
Helm’s voice is full of character and he sings as though he
has lived every one of the songs, which only makes the
listening experience even more pleasurable. There is no
sense of him merely churning out the songs to fill up disc
space, these songs mean something to him and his gravely,
Southern holler captures every emotion. Most of this deeply
personal album gives and insight into what has made
Levon the man he is today, as he works through a
catalogue of traditional songs that his parents taught him
from an early age.
Carpenter, Mary Chapin
The Calling
Kathleen Edwards
Back To Me
Click on ALBUM COVER to buy now
Tony Trischka
Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular
CRITICS
CHOICE
Special Price
Promotion
Although many of the songs deal with the harder, more
heart-felt times in life, Levon unleashes his sense of
humour, when covering Paul Kennerley’s Got Me A Woman,
a light-hearted look at what many women do for their men.
This is followed by another Kennerley-penned song, A Train
Robbery, where the lyrics tell of robbers finding nothing in a
train safe, and so they turn on the passengers. Helm
expertly projects the trauma of the song, making it hard to
listen to as you picture the events taking place. The folksy
Little Birds and his romp through AP Carter’s Single Girl,
Married Girl, one of his personal favourite on the album,
are standout tracks. An undeniable triumph though, has to
be his arrangement of Steve Earle’s The Mountain,
seconded only by the tenderness of The Blind Child. Wide
River To Cross, is a wonderfully apt closing, as Levon sings
of having survived the toils that life throws at us, and yet
we all still have so far to go.
The album is made even more moving by the self-penned
liner notes, that tell the listener how Helm came to record
Dirt Farmer. Amy Helm (Levon’s daughter) and Larry
Campbell have produced an album that will surely be as
long-lasting as The Band’s material has been for so many
years.
ES
“Every whiskey-soaked note rings
not perfect but true.” Word.
Uncle Earl
Waterloo, Tennesse
James Hand
The Truth Will Set You Free
Various
When Rhythm Was King
James Hunter
People Gonna Talk
PHOTO: AHRON R. FOSTER.
Irma Thomas
After The Rain
Eilen Jewell
Letters From Sinners & Strangers

B l u r b
Top Of The World from Songlines Editor Simon Broughton
Of course, you’d expect writing about world music to take you to some
interesting places. But sometimes you can find yourself exploring
particular trails that are completely unexpected. I’m in Egypt to do a story
on the Bedouin Jerrycan Band (BJB), a wonderful collective of musicians
from Sinai whose debut CD was released last year. They’re coming to the
UK for tours in June and July, so I’m here to experience some of their
music in its home environment as they play for a party to celebrate the
birth of the lead singer’s first son. The party is held on the desert sand
beneath a brightly coloured festive canopy. There’s a wood fire dug in the
sand in the centre warming up the cold night air – something that’s tricky
to replicate in a British concert hall – and the music generates exuberant
dancing and clapping.
Inevitably quite a few BJB songs involve camels and the following day I
check out some local Bedouin in the camel business. We head down to
the racetrack where they train them up for racing. A champion camel is
worth a lot of money. At the racetrack, which looks more like an airstrip in
the desert than Ascot, there’s a camel hurtling round at high speed
followed by a pick-up truck. I’m told there’s a ‘robot’ on the camel’s back
which is controlled from the car. In the past they used to get 10-12 year
old children to ride the camels because they were light enough not to
slow them down. But after pressure from UNICEF this ‘robot’ was
developed – actually a customised power drill that sits on the camel’s
back and twirls a sort of whip when operated by a remote control from
the car. This is one of the more curious examples of how world music can
open a window onto a world you never knew existed.
In our recent 50th issue of Songlines, we ran a big feature on 50 Great
Moments in World Music. Sure enough, plenty of them were purely
musical, but many were closely related to political events that have
affected our times – the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the end
of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu in 1989, the Pinochet coup in Chile
in 1973, South African singer Miriam Makeba speaking to the UN about
apartheid in 1963, and even the independence of India in 1947.
One of the interesting things about music around the world is how it
reflects the circumstance, the politics and the everyday life in the places it
is made. And I believe this is what makes Songlines more than a music
magazine and accounts for much of its popularity. You don’t just discover
some great music, but you get a window on the world.
People come to world music for many reasons and from many directions
– and often they want to know more about an artist or why their music
sounds the way it does. That’s where we come in, to act as a reliable
guide to the bewildering number of discs that are being released – and
world music has been one of the more buoyant sectors of the industry in
recent years. But as the music gets harder to find in record shops, it’s
becoming more and more important to tell people that it’s there.
Feedback tells us that we’re an essential resource for knowing about the
music and getting a taste of what it sounds like – thanks to the
covermount CD, the Songlines podcast (accessible through iTunes), and
now through the interactive sampler you can access through the Songlines
website. With this sampler it’s possible to get a flavour of the magazine,
sample recordings and buy them. The new issue has features on Mali’s
top kora player Toumani Diabaté and the samba scene in Rio, amongst
many other things.
There’s a lot of great music out there and, despite the prevailing gloom in
the record business, it’s not going to go away. Travel is cheaper than it’s
ever been, so it’s getting easier to see music around the world and more
and more artists are coming to the UK for concerts and festivals. There’s
never been a better time to take the plunge. You might not need the finer
details of robot camel-racing technology, but it’s amazing how a little
context can bring the music to life. And the
Bedouin Jerrycan Band don’t disappoint with
their desert flutes, oboes, plus jerrycan and
ammunition-box percussion now put to better
use after the ravages of the Six-Day War.
SB
Subscription details can be found at:
www.frootsmag.com
www.countrymusicpeople.com
www.folkmusic.net
www.songlines.co.uk
www.jazzwise.com
www.bluesmatters.com
www.wordmagazine.co.uk
www.maverick-country.com
A CDs worth of tunes
A selection of favourite tracks and recommendations
from the the review team.*
Chris Wood - Come Down Jehovah
At last, an anthemic, almost hymnal song for us long suffering atheists.
Adult music for grown ups.
Find it on: Trespasser (Page 4) AL
Ruth Notman – Heather Down The Moor
With guest Saul Rose on melodeon, this track captures the
Nottingham newcomer singing like it’s the most fun she’s ever had.
Find it on: Threads (Page 4) JTR
Show Of Hands – Are We Alright
This brand new recording of a long time crowd favourite is a
moving love song and a powerful anthem from the Devon duo.
Find it on: Roots - The Best Of Show Of Hands (Page 5) and Folk
Awards 2008 (Page 24) JTR
Chumbawamba - Add Me
One for all of us who find sitting in a darkened room with only the
Internet to ‘talk’ to is not one of life’s most attractive options.
Find it on: The Boy Bands Have Won (Page 6) AL
3 Daft Monkeys – Social Vertigo
The road lifestyle takes its toll on the hapless Monkeys in this
woozy, swirling ode to travelling excess.
Find it on: Social Vertigo (Page 6) JTR
Leon Rosselson - When They Ask Me
An amusing little reflection on Death, to brighten up any otherwise
dull afternoon (to paraphrase Tom Lehrer).
Find it on: A Proper State (Page 11) AL
Porpoise Corpus – Neverending
Bugger punk wars… Jazz Rock rules!
Find it on: Porpoise Corpus (Page 15) SH
Shawn Mullins – All In My Head
I’m a sucker for a B3 and a countrysome groove!
Find it on: Honeydew (Page 15) SH
Liane Carroll - You’ve Got a Friend
Time stands still when Lianne is joined by singer Ian Shaw in a
magical duet on this familiar ditty.
Find it on: Slow Down and Liane Live (Page 18) BS
Sue Richardson - I Just Can’t Help Myself
This track from Sue’s superb album contains in addition to a great
vocal, perhaps last year’s greatest triangle solo.
Find it on: Emergence (Page 18) BS
17 Hippies – Schattenmann
The opening track from the barmy Berliner’s latest album sounds
like a gypsy orchestra being chased by Benny Hill. That’s a good
thing.
Find it on: Heimlich (Page 22) ET
Gabo Brown and Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo – It’s a Vanity
From an album packed with old-school funk and retro ambience,
it’s hard to pick a stand-out track, but this sounds like the
soundtrack to something very, very cool.
Find it on: African Scream Contest (Page 23) ET
Buddy Whittington – Second Banana
Today a sideman, tomorrow the whole band! I’ll have some “wry”
with my whiskey.
Find it on: Buddy Whittington (Page 25) SH
Blabbermouth – Blabbermouth’s Funeral
An uplifting account of the singer’s own demise and the resulting
joyous reaction from his friends and family.
Find it on: My Dancing Heart (Page 29) JTR
Mary Hampton – Ballad Of The Talking Dog
Like most of the songs on her album, this bizarre tale is either
hilarious or terrifying depending on what time of day you listen to it.
Find it on: My Mother’s Children (Page 29) JTR
Click on TRACK LISTING to buy now

forthcoming releases
Watch out for these coming your way this year.
W
ell that’s all for another Properganda. We’ll be back
to our regular quarterly issues again with another
instalment on the way in June, but until then let us
whet your appetite with a taster of what’s to come later in
the year…
2008 is due to be another landmark year in the continuing
rise of Folk music, with several big events already on the
horizon. Look out for a series of hour-long programmes
airing on Channel 5 which focus on the relationship
between several key artists and the landscape of their home
towns. The series, entitled My Music, is based on last year’s
excellent one-off documentary Kathryn Tickell’s
Northumbria, and will feature in-depth profiles on Eliza
Carthy, Seth Lakeman, Kate Rusby and Athena. The first
show airs on April 6 th!
Two forthcoming compilations also serve to highlight the
current young crop of movers and shakers on the Folk
scene. The follow-up to last year’s Folk Rising compilation
which is currently in production at Proper Music,
imaginatively titled Folk Rising 2.
28 Properganda 8
Neatly tying in, the brand new Eliza Carthy album
is due out on June 23 rd. An early rough cut has
found its way to the Properganda stereo and
reveals a radical horn-boosted, jazzy direction with
some spooky, Jaques Brel undertones.
Live DVDs seem all the rage this year too! Last
year’s film of Ralph McTell’s birthday concert
(reviewed in Properganda 7) seems to have
opened the floodgates, as Bellowhead, Martin
Simpson and Cara Dillon are all currently preparing
their bonus features!
Also on a Cara Dillon tip, expect a brand new album
from the angel-voiced new mum this autumn.
Hot on the heels of their Heidi Talbot and Benji
Kirkpatrick releases (both reviewed this issue)
the exciting new Navigator label has a slew of
incoming albums highlighting the cream of
today’s young Folk talent. Boo Hewerdine,
Spiers & Boden, Faustus, Lau (‘Best Group’
winners at this year’s BBC Folk Awards) and the
new collaboration between Kris Drever, John
McKusker and Roddy Woomble.
Australian Folk/Rock three-piece The Waifs were
an instant smash when they played at 2003’s
Cambridge festival. After a 2-year break from
touring and recording, their recent Sun Dirt
Water longplayer has been wowing the critics
down under and with a UK release scheduled
for April, it seems they’re ready to come back
and finish what they started at Cherry Hinton!
Following the fantastic 1970s compilations
Nigeria Special and Nigeria Disco Funk Special
comes a brand new entry in the series. Nigeria
Rock Special focuses on the African groups who
soaked the sounds of Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and
psychedelic rock into their soul grooves.
Following the success of her 2006 live album
Bowery Songs, Proper Records are proud to
present the new album from legendary
American folk singer Joan Baez. Featuring
brand-spanking-new material and production by
man-of-the-moment Steve Earle, this’ll be her
first new material since 2003’s Dark Chords On
a Big Guitar.
Also on the other side of the pond, Proper are
also looking forward to releasing Sonny
Landreth’s new album, which features
contributions from Mark Knopfler and Eric
Clapton.
If all this seems like too much to choose
from then you’re still in luck… A budget priced
compilation featuring tracks from pretty much all of the
above will hit the stores this spring.
Cara Dillon
Live At Red Castle
DVD
Drever, McCusker,
Woomble
Before The Ruin
Nigeria Rock
Special
Spiers & Boden
Vagabond

MARY HAMPTON
THE DRIFT
COLLECTIVE
BLABBERMOUTH
Mary Hampton
My Mother’s Children
Drift Records DFT008 JTR
Sometime you’ll be standing, browsing in
a record shop when something comes
over the speakers with a sound so
unusual, so beguiling, that before you
know it, you’ve bought a copy, just to
make sure you weren’t imagining it… Well
that’s the effect this album had on me.
While her lilting soprano may owe a debt
to the Dames of folk’s recent past (and
there’s a fair amount of Shirley, Anne and
Vashti in there), Mary Hampton’s style is
her own beautifully rustic patchwork quilt
of hermetic Anglicana. Lyrically, she’s not
far away from Lal Waterson’s original
songs, albeit with an often more macabre
edge – treasured pets, milk teeth and
memories of youth all pop up, but the
results are often more Shock-Headed
Peter than Beatrix Potter!
Amongst her influences she cites
birdsong, clockwork/bridges/fireworks
and ghost stories. It’s quirks like these
that imbue both the songs and the
parched production with the same
otherworldly sheen as affiliates The Drift
Collective (see right), with whom the
album shares a similar otherworldly aura
or, as a friend of mine put it, a sound
“like Bagpuss for adults”.
.....................................
“A woman who appears to have spent much
of her life attempting to imitate the shimmer
of wind-chimes. The effect is mesmerizing”
The Guardian
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
The Drift Collective
Various Artists
Drift Records DFT006 JTR
Robin Danar/Various
Soundtrack to an unmade movie reaches into the alternative core of the Los Angeles music community
"One of the things I thought of when making this
record is that everyone has had something in a film
or commercial. There's a new generation that hears
new music in films, on television and in commercials
and buys music by the song. I'm fine with that." Thus
speaks producer, engineer and musician Robin
Danar, in trying to put this extraordinary CD in
context. A collection of oddly crafted cover versions,
with songs given surprising treatments may not be
an original idea, but Altered States has the flow and
textures of a film soundtrack, even if the film does not
yet exist. The surprising twists and turns in the music come
from taking the artists out of their comfort zone and trying
things they might not try on their own.
Offering a glimpse into the strange
musical netherworld inhabited by a likeminded
collection of souls based around
the West Country, this compilation seems
to have arrived from a parallel version of
21st Century England where Nick Drake
and ZX Spectrums replace Mark Ronson
and Cubase at the forefront of popular
culture.
While traditional British Folksong
undergoes radical modern updates via
projects like The Imagined Village, the
various artists here seem to be doing
something similar in reverse - applying
the sounds and atmosphere of yesteryear
to their own original songs and music.
The common thread running through
these eleven tracks is the evocative
English twilight world conjured by low-fi
aestheics and occasional “field”
ambience. Added to this are splashes of
modern technology which manage to
circumnavigate the dance-floor beats that
dominate so much electronic music,
instead adding sparse Tunng-esque
ambience and texture to the mix.
This splendid introduction to the Drift
stable is gentle, often eerie and
sometimes plain weird, but nevertheless
consistently arresting.
.....................................
“As gorgeous as it is quirky”
Observer Music Monthly
REVIEW ROUNDUP reviews
Blabbermouth
My Dancing Heart
Hobgoblin Records HOBCD1007 JTR
“Thank God He’s Dead” might not be
your run-of-the-mill self-penned epitaph,
but then Steve Thompson (aka
Blabbermouth) is no ordinary
singer/songwriter. Said line is the
anthemic coda to Blabbermouth’s
Funeral, in which the author’s vision of
his own send-off becomes the kind of
feel-good celebratory experience that’ll
be familiar to anyone who’s attended
one of his live shows recently.
Blabbermouth’s debut album proper
(more of a re-recorded ‘greatest hits’ set
cherry picked from earlier demos) pushes
his oddball worldview, child-like whimsy
and talent for winning tunes to the
forefront with a clear, eloquent voice.
Unsurprisingly for an artist who has the
Magritte slogan “this is not a pipe”
tattooed under his neck, a strong
surrealistic humour runs throughout the
songs, most notably on Domestic Bliss
and Four Foot Death - the latter being the
moving tale of a diminutive Grim Reaper
whom no-one takes seriously. But it’s not
all played for laughs, and genuinely
beautiful moments such as the aching
love song Geneviève and the powerful
title track pepper the album with real
depth. Thank God he’s alive!
.....................................
“Idiosyncratic lyrics and clever tunes… A
very impressive debut” ★★★★ Rock ‘n’ Reel
the likes of Blondie, Television, Patti Smith and The New
York Dolls, during its glory years at ground zero for one of
the most influential music scenes ever. At the same time, he
was engineering studio sessions for such mentors as Steve
Lillywhite, Phil Ramone, Gary Katz and Russ Titelman on
artists as diverse as Donald Fagen, Chaka Khan, Billy Joel
and Material. The hot-house creativity of the New York scene
was unbeatable but at a certain point Robin felt it was time
to make a move - to New York's polar (some would say
spiritual) opposite - Los Angeles.
SHANACHIE.
BY PROVIDED PHOTO:
“A multi-cultural
mix...showcased by Danar
in imaginative settings in
some suprising (and
suprisingly effective) song
So perhaps it was natural in the shadow of Hollywood that
the soundtrack concept would take shape. It’s certainly the
most fitting description for a collection that plays better as a
choices.”
whole. Bookended by dreamy, romantic atmospheres on
The LA Times
"Everyone said they didn't have the pressure of their own Inara George’s reading of Chances Are and Jessica Raye’s
record so they were open to things and got into character,” The Last Waltz/Such A Night respectively. In between, the
shares Robin. “Rachael Yamagata had never heard the tracks ride peaks and valleys of edgy rock textures and
Stones' 2000 Light Years From Home. Lisa Loeb doesn’t evocative electronic atmospherics, taking in The Smiths,
usually fit into an alternative format so I chose the Damned Michael Jackson, Bill Withers and Talking Heads all given a
tune for her. I had Inara George do Johnny Mathis' Chances twist by the likes of Minibar, Paul Buchanan and Gary Jules.
Are the way Patsy Cline would do it. With Quincy Coleman,
we worked on a Pink Floyd song as an Andrews Sisters Ok, so imagine the millionaire’s row of Mark Ronson’s chart
tune...but being a Pink Floyd tune it's like the drugs kicked in busting Version but transformed by the California sun into a
half way through and things got a little crazy.”
leafy, welcoming, but slightly boho community? I know
where I’d rather live.
Robin Danar Robin Danar knows about scenes. For many years, in New
SH
/Various York he was doing live sound and recording at CBGB's for
Altered States
Shanachie SHAN5771
RELEASE APRIL

REVIEW ROUNDUP reviews
Swans In Flight
Swans In Flight
Oyster House Records OYSTER001 RR
Combining a passion for traditional rock
music with their knowledge and love of
acoustic instruments, the Devonshire-based
duo Swans In Flight have created a
beautifully recorded debut album rich in
melodic detail and unexpected sonic
contrasts. There are shades of acoustic Led
Zeppelin in Changing Gear, a nod to Jethro
Tull in the melody of Paradise and an
unmistakable reference to Phil Lynott’s Thin
Lizzy in the vocal style of Life's Prize.
Singer Hugo Montgomery-Swan and
guitarist/producer Mark Tucker, who wrote
most of the songs together, are both
regular contributors to the audiophile bible
Acoustic magazine, and details of the
instruments and recording equipment used
is logged in scrupulous detail.
Even more impressive is the lengthy cast of
contributing musicians yielded up from the
pair's contact books, which includes such
divergent talents as keyboard player Phil
Johnston (from Robert Plant's band),
violinist Ric Sanders (Fairport Convention)
and bass player James LoMenzo
(Megadeth). With tracks ranging from the
gentle soft-rock of Young Heart to the
funky, Red Hot Chili Peppers-type groove of
Bad Boy Erroneous, the new acoustic-rock
revolution starts here.
.....................................
www.swansinflight.com
Spirits In The Material World
The regae world lines up behind The Police.
www.myspace.com/
spiritsinthematerialworld
Click on any ALBUM COVER to buy now
Brian Kennedy
Interpretations
Curb Records CURCD237 JTR
One of Ireland’s most successful
contemporary artists, Brian Kennedy’s
career has seen him present his own TV
show (On Song), sing for President
Clinton five times, represent his country at
the Eurovision song contest and more
sadly, as George Best’s favourite
singer/songwriter, perform at the legendary
footballer’s funeral.
Here Brian takes a break from his own
material to tackle a collection of personal
favourites from a variety of genres. Backed
by a full orchestra and band, he takes on
songs ranging from vintage Sinatra (Night
And Day) to Rock balladry (U2’s Stuck In A
Moment) by way of classic soul (Al Green’s
Lets Stay Together), and more in between.
The golden voiced Belfast child avoids the
common pitfall of straightforward rehashes,
instead moulding each song into a vehicle
for his unique delivery, often totally rearranging
the song in the process, as on
the smouldering version of his old mentor
Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. It’s not all
classics from the past though, as Brian’s
version of rising newcomer Declan
O’Rourke’s Galileo provides the album with
one of many spellbinding highlights.
.....................................
“A voice to charm the angels.” Q
The Police re-union tour was one of the proper
headline grabbing announcements of last year. Such
is the scale and demand for mega-events these days
that it’s still rumbling on a year later and is set to run
over the summer.
It’s hard to equate the current stadium busting
juggernaut with the wiry band that first crashed into
the tailspin of the UK punk scene. Adopting reggae
elements into their music, as the Clash had also
done, they tapped the cultural awakening of the
white, British audience who had taken the radical sounds of
Jamaica and some of the home-grown talent like Steel Pulse
and Misty In Roots, claiming it as their own.
To some extent the decision to market Bob Marley as a rock
act in the UK laid the foundations. Eric Clapton even had a
hit with I Shot The Sheriff, but the punk scene wanted
radicalism as well and identified with the outsider status of
reggae music. Plus you had DJs like Don Letts (and regional
equivalents) on the club scene and John Peel on the radio,
who would mix the two styles as if it was meant to be.
Temple Of Soul
Brothers In Arms
Hypertension HYP8262 JTR
Despite the misleading title, this album
couldn’t be further away from the glossy
blues lite of its Dire Straits namesake.
In fact, Temple Of Soul is the side project of
none other than ‘The Big Man’ Clarence
Clemmons – long-time saxophonist and
right hand man to Bruce Springsteen –
along with top session musician friends
Vernon “Ice” Black, TM Stevens, and Narada
Michael Walden.
As you’d expect from such a line-up,
there’s no shortage of killer musicianship
and top notch production values, but there
are also surprises along the way that mark
this apart from the standard hot-licks
hobby band. Ode To China is a sensual
slow groove featuring an Oriental lead
trade off between tenor sax and erhu,
while album opener Anna catches you
completely off guard with a high-NRG disco
stomp that wouldn’t sound out of place at
a modern nightclub!
Clemmons’ trademark growling sax and
basso profundo vocals are all over the
album, but it’s clear from the tight
performances and the songwriting credits
that this is a group effort. A band doing
what they do best; kicking back, and
having fun.
.....................................
“You all want to be him but you can’t!”
Bruce Springsteen on
Clarence Clemmons
SWANS IN FLIGHT
BRIAN KENNEDY
TEMPLE OF SOUL
making classic recordings with the late great Jacob Miller up
through their huge crossover hit Bad Boys, the theme of the
US Cops television show.
“These guys took a genre, put their own style to it and made
the world aware of the roots style of reggae," notes Inner
Circle's Roger Lewis, which is certainly true in America, “so
we owe big respect to Sting and the Police. This project has
been one of the most intriguing projects we've ever done
because everyone-Junior Reid, Ali Campbell, Toots,
everyone-brought their own sound to these Police songs."
The list goes on with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Gregory Isaacs,
Horace Andy and of course Inner Circle all contributing.
Significantly an inclusive cultural net is thrown too, with Joan
Osborne, Pepper from Hawaii and noted political activist
Cyril Neville getting in on the act.
And call me old fashioned, but anyone who shelled out
wallet busting prices or spunked a months wages on e-bay
to do the Police tour, well good luck, but…You could have
waited for the inevitable CD/DVD package and bought this
excellent reggae record as well, all for the price of two
This compilation then serves as a timely reminder of where interval beers and a T-shirt.
SHANACHIE.
it all kicked off, albeit taking what was an influence on the
TM
BY
bands songs and making it the driving force. In realising the
shift of focus, Shanachie called in the services of Inner Circle,
Spirits In The
who are no strangers to the crossover hit themselves. Their
Material World
PROVIDED
roots go deep from their time backing Bob Marley and
Shanchie SHANCD4567
OUT NOW PHOTO:

Regrettably since going to print Jeff has passed away.
His astonishing talents will be sorely missed and our
thoughts are with his family and colleagues.