Monday, April 21, 2008

Minor places, major faces

Two books arrived for me in the post last week. Thanks to Owen for my copy of his new picture book, and thanks to me dad for my replacement tune book.



My friend Rowan, who is studying folk music and fiddle-playing in Sweden at the moment, has made some really really beautiful recordings recently. You can listen to them here.

This evening I will likely be making a couple of small saw and banjo appearances with Yo Zushi and Curtis Eller at the 12 Bar club.

On sunday I took advantage of being left all alone, and played my own fiddle and banjo until my hand hurt... (the other week, in a daring whirl of DIY, I replaced the fingerboard on my fiddle, and it plays much more evenly and very lovely now. Well, very lovely for me).



In the morning I had been distressed by a TV show about British folk music, and the advertisements in between. -It's nice that British "traditional" music of many kinds has such a public face at the moment, and there are lots of people around who I think are good, like Rachel Unthank, Alasdair Roberts, Jackie Oates... but aside from them Radio 2 in particular seems most intent on promoting horrible, blandest common denominator, TV friendly, almost nashville equivalent rot... naming no names. It's inevitable, I guess... End of rant.-

Does anyone know if anything similar to this amazing site exists for British or European films?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh name names!

Thanks for the comment about our recordings. We're going to add some faster ones soon, realising they all start very slowly. A CD will wing itself to you when it is finished.

love to the mews!

Joel Stewart said...

Well, one of them rhymes with Peth Sakeman...

Can't wait for the CD. I really love what you're doing.

x

Joel Stewart said...

(but he's more Bon Jovi than Nashville...)

Unknown said...

Oh, god. Sweaty Peth. Not good.

Come to the workshop in June! It'll be great, we are planning it now. Its a full day of workshops with a concert and dance in the evening. And it'll be almost midsummer and gorgeous.

See you there!

Unknown said...

P.S jealous you get to see lovely Clive Palmer with my lovely dad!

Joel Stewart said...

Oh, I do plan to come. And I'm really happy Helm suggested the concert.