We All Will Shine in the Autumn Moon

Jeff and I went music shopping yesterday, and I ended up with three new CDs (If I had the capacity to play vinyl, I would have picked up two of Maddy Prior's earliest albums, ones that never made it fully onto CD.)

Seth Lakeman's Freedom Fields is excellent British folk in the Boden/Moray/Carthy - Eliza not Martin - vein: strong fiddling, partly traditional subject matter, but interpreted in ways wholly unlike the expected, interspersed with plenty of original weirdness. And with some definite streaks of rock in spite of the fact thatt he guitars are far from the focus of most of the instrumentation. I'm in love.

Nathan Rogers' the Gauntlet is a bit mixed, in both quality and style, but more good than bad, and nothing to regret. His songwriting has traces of James Keelaghan and that kind of Canadian style, and some departs entirely. His voice is distrubingly Stan-like at moments, but with a different kind of passion. Stan was young as musicians go (Dear Ghu. When he was my age, he'd been *dead* half a year.), but didn't sound young; he had a more relaxed delivery, confident his emotion would get through. Nathan still drives it harder at times.

Teddy Thompson's Separate Ways I'd already heard; he's got his dad's tendency towards gloom and doom, but a rather different way of expressing it. And his voice is rather mroe like Linda's than Richard's, which is a plus; Richard Thompson didn't start sounding actually good as a singer - as opposed to tolerable enough to do his own material - until this last decade.

What amuses me is that I seem to be heavily listening to LITERAL next-generation folk, as opposed to the musical generations (Of which I think British folk is on its fourth or fifth, but musicians of every 'generation' seem to intermingle and work together too much to draw easy lines.M Of which, more below.)

Nathan Rogers, son of Stan; Teddy Thompson as above; Eliza Carthy, daughter of Martin (And Norma Waterson); Rose Kemp (Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp). Jim Moray is the son of folkies - though a morris dancer rather than a rrecording artist, IIRC - but he's the one who said, (paraphrase) "It's like the Mafia, if you're born to it, you can't leave." *

The thing is, not only are they virtually all damn powerful musicians, they're none of them repeating their parents, more than in the occasional acknowledging nod, or the natural flow of inspiration that caused them to decide to do folk music in the first place, and in which Eliza Carthy can be just as likely to ahve been inspired by any of the other musicians *around* Martin and Norma as by they themselves.

Of course, Moray also said, "In the current quest for youth and innovation it's important that we don't lose the knowledge and experience of the people that have been there doing it for so long. One of the strongest things about folk music has always been its inter-generational aspect."

I think he's right; there's a reason why I also hankered after Maddy Prior in the middle. Fans of Maddy, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, or the Oysterband wouldn't feel out of place liking the new British folk, even with the sampling, horn sections, and other weirdness, and the reverse is true, even with the usually more stripped sound or minor-key harmonies. They aren't the same, but then, neither is Maddy like Richard like the Oysters.

I think he mgiht be slightly off if he's implying this is true only of folk or folk-like traditions. I know some rock and especially pop bands seem to end up reinventing the wheel, as if they don't notice things done by prior generations (There were those recently who publicly argued they were inventing a new more complex rock sound who were in fact recognized by musicophiles as doing things much like early Genesis and other prog.), but others will honestly cite their influences and inspirations. And feed off one another.

I'm not sure if there's a point to this rambling; partly I'm just "Squeee! new music, and new musicians!" and partly "But the old stuff rocks too." I guess it comes down to, I'm glad to see the field really is as active and vivid and shiny and new as it gets. or maybe, really, being happy about a new generation recreating and reworking folk music has something to do with ALSO discovering that the newest music by Fairport Convention has struck me as enormously tepid and lacking in ALL the things that make me so fond of British Folk-rock. (Not true of Thompson or Prior, but...)

(Of course, right in the middle of my new listening, along with the above three and Moray's In Modern History, is the Dandelion Wine CD, one of the few of my recent acquisitions by longtime experienced hands. Making some of the point for me; if I were ever to lose my brain and record, I'd have to cite decadent dave as encouragement, if only for not throwing me out of folk circles. It's also darn good, having only one weakness. Tom Jeffers' voice isn't terribly good - Decadent Dave's is FABULOUS - and Tom sometimes tries to do more with it than it will comfortably manage. He's fine on harmonies and some tracks - Tom's Cross sounds pretty good, and really who else could sing that one? - but Long Night 2.0 and Little Country suffer a bit.)


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* I'm not actually sure if Seth Lakeman or Jon Boden come from folk families, too. I think I'd be a mite weirded out if they ALL were...

We All Will Shine in the Autumn Moon

Jeff and I went music shopping yesterday, and I ended up with three new CDs (If I had the capacity to play vinyl, I would have picked up two of Maddy Prior's earliest albums, ones that never made it fully onto CD.)

Seth Lakeman's Freedom Fields is excellent British folk in the Boden/Moray/Carthy - Eliza not Martin - vein: strong fiddling, partly traditional subject matter, but interpreted in ways wholly unlike the expected, interspersed with plenty of original weirdness. And with some definite streaks of rock in spite of the fact thatt he guitars are far from the focus of most of the instrumentation. I'm in love.

Nathan Rogers' the Gauntlet is a bit mixed, in both quality and style, but more good than bad, and nothing to regret. His songwriting has traces of James Keelaghan and that kind of Canadian style, and some departs entirely. His voice is distrubingly Stan-like at moments, but with a different kind of passion. Stan was young as musicians go (Dear Ghu. When he was my age, he'd been *dead* half a year.), but didn't sound young; he had a more relaxed delivery, confident his emotion would get through. Nathan still drives it harder at times.

Teddy Thompson's Separate Ways I'd already heard; he's got his dad's tendency towards gloom and doom, but a rather different way of expressing it. And his voice is rather mroe like Linda's than Richard's, which is a plus; Richard Thompson didn't start sounding actually good as a singer - as opposed to tolerable enough to do his own material - until this last decade.

What amuses me is that I seem to be heavily listening to LITERAL next-generation folk, as opposed to the musical generations (Of which I think British folk is on its fourth or fifth, but musicians of every 'generation' seem to intermingle and work together too much to draw easy lines.M Of which, more below.)

Nathan Rogers, son of Stan; Teddy Thompson as above; Eliza Carthy, daughter of Martin (And Norma Waterson); Rose Kemp (Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp). Jim Moray is the son of folkies - though a morris dancer rather than a rrecording artist, IIRC - but he's the one who said, (paraphrase) "It's like the Mafia, if you're born to it, you can't leave." *

The thing is, not only are they virtually all damn powerful musicians, they're none of them repeating their parents, more than in the occasional acknowledging nod, or the natural flow of inspiration that caused them to decide to do folk music in the first place, and in which Eliza Carthy can be just as likely to ahve been inspired by any of the other musicians *around* Martin and Norma as by they themselves.

Of course, Moray also said, "In the current quest for youth and innovation it's important that we don't lose the knowledge and experience of the people that have been there doing it for so long. One of the strongest things about folk music has always been its inter-generational aspect."

I think he's right; there's a reason why I also hankered after Maddy Prior in the middle. Fans of Maddy, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, or the Oysterband wouldn't feel out of place liking the new British folk, even with the sampling, horn sections, and other weirdness, and the reverse is true, even with the usually more stripped sound or minor-key harmonies. They aren't the same, but then, neither is Maddy like Richard like the Oysters.

I think he mgiht be slightly off if he's implying this is true only of folk or folk-like traditions. I know some rock and especially pop bands seem to end up reinventing the wheel, as if they don't notice things done by prior generations (There were those recently who publicly argued they were inventing a new more complex rock sound who were in fact recognized by musicophiles as doing things much like early Genesis and other prog.), but others will honestly cite their influences and inspirations. And feed off one another.

I'm not sure if there's a point to this rambling; partly I'm just "Squeee! new music, and new musicians!" and partly "But the old stuff rocks too." I guess it comes down to, I'm glad to see the field really is as active and vivid and shiny and new as it gets. or maybe, really, being happy about a new generation recreating and reworking folk music has something to do with ALSO discovering that the newest music by Fairport Convention has struck me as enormously tepid and lacking in ALL the things that make me so fond of British Folk-rock. (Not true of Thompson or Prior, but...)

(Of course, right in the middle of my new listening, along with the above three and Moray's In Modern History, is the Dandelion Wine CD, one of the few of my recent acquisitions by longtime experienced hands. Making some of the point for me; if I were ever to lose my brain and record, I'd have to cite decadent dave as encouragement, if only for not throwing me out of folk circles. It's also darn good, having only one weakness. Tom Jeffers' voice isn't terribly good - Decadent Dave's is FABULOUS - and Tom sometimes tries to do more with it than it will comfortably manage. He's fine on harmonies and some tracks - Tom's Cross sounds pretty good, and really who else could sing that one? - but Long Night 2.0 and Little Country suffer a bit.)


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* I'm not actually sure if Seth Lakeman or Jon Boden come from folk families, too. I think I'd be a mite weirded out if they ALL were...