Before I wrap things up, I wanted to share with you my ten favourite albums of the past twelve months. Let me know yours!

Chumbawamba - ABCDEFG
All the notes in the musical scale are there in the title and this is an album all about singing and music, why we do it and how we do it, and the whole CD is chock full of great songs sung with absolute meaning and total craft.

Coope Boyes & Simpson - As If ...

Great voices in harmony with a brilliant collection of songs. A world-class album from the depths of the tradition. English folk music at its very, very best.

Danu - Seanchas
One of the greatest Irish bands ever with a brilliant collection of music and songs. Everything flows, nothing jars, there are no bulky seams. Yet there is also nothing slick or insincere about this album. A brilliant piece of work.

Emily Portman - The Glamoury

A terrific young English singer with a majestic voice and a skewed and compelling look at the ballad as a vehicle for magical and mysterious stories - a great CD.

Peter Carberry - Traditional Irish Music From Co. Longford

Manchester/Longford box and banjo player Pete Carberry has produced an album of deeply rooted, unhurried and glorious sets of Irish music. This will be a classic for ever. I've played it over and over and over again.

Lizzie Nunnery - Company of Ghosts

I was stunned by this album the first time I heard it and have gone back to it over and again. There's something riding under all the songs that, as in all great music, makes for more than the sum of its parts. Lizzie Nunnery is better known as a playwright but her songwriting and singing, wherever they have come from, seem to me to move in epic and mythic worlds that are as memorable as any great play.

Pete Coe - Backbone

One of the stalwarts of the folk scene and a man to stand up and be counted. His hard hitting songs, and versions of other writers' works and traditional songs are deeply rooted in the tradition and come deep from a well of dissent. Not for the fainthearted or those who think folk songs should be nice and comfy. Laughs and good music a-plenty, but loads of kick too.

Fisherman's Friends - Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

A cracking album of sea songs sung by blokes who do it for the greatest of all possible reasons: because they love the music. I know they won't mind me describing them as not quite packaged, polished and groomed for the Middle Way. They're about as pretty as I am but sing it and tell it like it is. They are having a great time riding the roller coaster of their success knowing that if it ends up back in Cornwall they'll have had a lot of fun along the way. One of the best albums of sea songs in years.

The Demon Barbers - The Adventures of Captain Ward

One of my favourite live bands ever - they sing with gusto and commitment and put on a great show too. They are doing a great job taking English folk music out to a really wide audience. This album captures the essence of the band.

Ewan McLennan - Rags and Robes
A great voice, a great guitar style and a total saturation in the music produce something really rare and valuable. I get lots of CDs from brilliant young women singers but most blokes seem to be more interested in becoming great instrumentalists. Now, with the advent of people like Ewan it looks as though young male folkies are digging deep into the tradition and coming up the better for it. I think great things will be heard from him in time to come.

Well, thanks for reading, have a great Christmas, take care if you're travelling and keep listening to the show or I might end up having to go on the X Factor, and you know what that will lead to.

To quote old Joe Gargery from Great Expectations,"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together" So take care, and, as the Vuddha of Karrow said, "Gan canny marra"

Oh, I forgot to mention: I'm on the road from mid-February, doing my own bit to spread misery and discontent. See you around somewhere.

Fisherman's Friends at the Beautiful Days festival. That's me, far left.

"And, if our nerves can take it, what exciting prospects lie ahead of us. A book, a documentary, a movie (!*?*!), an ad campaign, another album, the Celtic Connections Festival, more TV, several gigs before Christmas, and then another summer of festivals...

"We’d love to see you at our shows, we know you’d have a good time, and we’d love you to join in with some of the songs... only not too loud, we wouldn’t want you to spoil them after all!"

"I love a carol" said Vaughan Williams - and if you enjoy singing, you'll probably agree with him. For me there's something extra special about joining in with a song in season. But not just any carol. I'll admit it, I'm choosy, I'm a sucker for the powerful, open-throated Yorkshire/Derbyshire approach to carol performance. Piping choristers or glacier-paced tunes intoned in all too obviously; voices just aren't for me. "Sing lustily", John Wesley told the earliest performers of Christmas hymns, proving that giving it some welly is a well-established and honorable tradition.

So how did we get stuck with sweet and slow singing in the choir backed by a far from merry organ accompaniment? As with many things, you can thank the Victorians for it. Old church and chapel choirs, the people who sang Christmas hymns and carols in the eighteenth century and later, took pride in singing vigorously and being heard. Sometimes this enthusiasm could mean they were more shouty than musical. They were also uninclined to take instructions from parish clergy in the way that vicars thought they ought to. Predictably, ecclesiastical argybargy followed. "Church music is at a standstill" wrote a contributor to the magazine, The Parish Choir, blaming an absence of "proper singers" in church. What was needed, he claimed, were "persons who had the proper devotional spirit" who would "evince and diffuse a devotional style of singing" And this, he assured his readers, could never be obtained from "the odds and ends of fiddlers, music-masters and ballad-singers making up church bands and choirs at present.". On top of this, other voices then demanded music written by "proper"; - classically trained musicians ; not the blacksmiths, shoemakers and glovers who wrote so many of the tunes parish choirs enjoyed.

That we have so much very "proper" singing of carols now is the result of all this nineteenth century agitation. But fortunately, a few rebels like Vaughan Williams were also on hand to collect and publish carols that were in direct opposition to those who were "professionally afraid of gaiety". What's more there were carollers in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Cornwall and other places still keeping up the older traditions and doing it lustily! They're what I'd call "proper" carol singers!

Carols are "a challenge to be merry" says The Oxford Book of Carols and quotes a Wassail Song to prove it - "Love and joy come to you". For me, singing a carol is one of the best ways to ensure that they do.

"Friday 7 December 2007 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall was where it all began for myself and Siobhan, when we were announced the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award winners for 2008. Anyone who knows us will vouch for me when I say, neither of us are ever really stuck for words, but when the result was announced we were both speechless!

"Since then we have had a fantastic time. We signed to Greentrax and made our debut album, and we've been lucky to perform at some great festivals like Cambridge, Cropredy and Towersey. The Orkney Folk Festival is always a favourite of mine (not biased in any way!). A highlight for us was in January 2009 when we were asked to do support at Glasgow City Halls for Judy Collins as part of Celtic Connections.

"In Autumn 2009 we did a three and a half week tour of Austria which also took us to Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Norway was also a very enjoyable place to perform. On St Andrew's day that year we were asked to perform at the Homecoming Scotland Finale, collaborating with Phil Cunningham, Aly Bain, Julie Fowlis and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. That was a terrific experience for us both. Being used to having guitar and piano backing our voices it was very surreal to have a whole orchestra.

"Following the success of our first album we won Up and Coming Artist of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards.We also won the Hancock Horizon Award and were nominated for the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Horizon Award.

"Separately we have both gone on to do great things as well. I was asked to join the Germany-based Irish band CARA in March of this year. We went on to record an album, Long Distance Love, which was released on our autumn tour of Germany this year following a successful tour in the States in the summer. Coming up in December this year I will also be performing with The Chair at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards. Siobhan, at Celtic Connections this year, took part in the A Scottish Songbook concert, which had Karine Polwart at the helm as Musical Director. This December Siobhan has been nominated for the Citty Finlayson Scots Singer of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Awards. She will also be appearing on the Scottish Hogmanay Show with Phil Cunningham.

"Looking into the New Year we are honoured to be supporting the legendary Andy Irvine and John Doyle at Celtic Connections. March will be busy too as we have a tour organised in Germany. And, of course, we are looking forward to getting feedback and reviews for our new album Shadows Tall!"

Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller won the 2008 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award.

This month, the duo from Orkney and Penicuik release their second album Shadows Tall. Siobhan has written to tell us about it:

"It is three years since Jeana and I started making music together and I know that when we met at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama as students we never dreamt that our love of music would bring us the experiences we have had since winning the Young Folk Award.

We were over the moon when Ian Green offered to take us on at Greentrax and record a CD. We had such a great time recording the first album, In a Bleeze, and learned a lot about the recording process.

So getting back to the studio in May this year to record our second album Shadows Tall was very exciting for us both!

Jeana Leslie & Siobhan Miller

It felt really remote, like we were escaping to a wee sanctuary for the day. We were recording at the hottest time of the year but had to keep the windows shut for fear that the sheep and the bumblebees would try to make a debut appearance on the album. Anyway, enough of sheep and bees! Down to the recording...

"Mattie Foulds with his portable Mobile With a Home studio recorded, produced and mixed the album and also played cajon for us. He worked really hard to pull the whole project together and to encourage us when things were a bit challenging.

"The first task was finding the material and then playing with it to see how we could work with it creatively. We wanted to find arrangements that were our own, showing how our music has developed. Song is still very much the focus of our music and we have used a mixture of contemporary and traditional material. Choosing which songs to record and not record is never an easy job.

"We were joined by Ewan Macpherson on 12 and six-string guitar, electric guitar and mandolin; Kevin Maguire double bass; and Signy Jacobsdottir on tuned percussion. It was exciting to collaborate with new musicians and to hear their parts complement the songs.

"To launch the album we organised two concerts. The first was in my home town Penicuik, in the Music Hub which is attached to my old high school and run by Burnt Out Records. We had a lovely night there and played to a sell-out crowd. The second launch was in Glasgow at the Classic Grand.

"We are really happy with the end result and hope that audiences respond as positively to this album as they did to the first."

One minute you can be onstage with your regular bandmates, in the middle of a huge tour around the country, the next (if you're me) you are back home juggling admin work, answering emails, planning new tours and shows and trying to learn new music, whilst all the time chasing after an increasingly fast-moving wee bundle of joy (and almost always denying any housework).

And, now and again, you get the chance to try something new and venture out of your usual musical zone. For example, last month I got the chance to collaborate with the amazingly talented Jacqui Dankworth, Horse MacDonald, Justin Currie, Carol Kidd, Eddi Reader, Todd Gordon, and the Ryan Quigley Big Band to perform a Beatles tribute concert. I never thought I would see the day when I teetered onto the main stage of the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and sang Nowhere Man with a full jazz big band and string section. And it was great fun!

This week I am on tour with the energetic and infectious Salsa Celtica - we play Glasgow tonight - and I am enjoying their salsa spin on Gaelic and traditional rhythms.

Recently, I was invited to travel to Cornwall to spend two days with the band Fisherman's Friends, with a view to adding a wee bit of Gaelic to a track they had recorded. I thought to myself - spending a few days in a gorgeous part of Cornwall, at the end of the summer, with a crowd of lovely fellas who love to sing - well, it didn't sound too much like hard work at all.

We had a great craic together and I added some vocals to their reworking of the Mumford and Sons song Winter Winds, all of which was recorded in the beautiful and well conserved local church, St. Kew.

The actual recording of my vocals took all of one hour - the rest of the evening we watched the summer sun disappear, and the torrential rain begin, all from the cosy front room of the local pub. It truly felt like winter arrived with the recording of that song! We ignored the weather and blethered about boats, fishing, small rural communities, good local beer, music, songs and the Vatersay Boys. It's funny how two communities so far removed from one another - Cornwall and the Hebrides - could have so much in common.

At one end of the musical spectrum you have unaccompanied traditional singers such as Lar Cann and Peta Webb, beautiful singers who carry the living fuse at the core of the music, and at the other end you have singer/songwriters like Lizzie Nunnery, whose Company of Ghosts is one of my favourite albums of the last 12 months and Robinson whose England’s Bleeding does what the best songs always do and gets right into the heart of the matter.

In between there is an equally glorious cornucopia of musical riches from Barbara Dickson and Ewan McLennan to Kate Rusby and bands like Steamchicken and Steeleye Span; everything from stomping dance music to the elemental stories of the ballad.

There can’t be another form of music that can do so many things, from telling stories to making you laugh, dance, think and cry.  There may be somebody already working on a Phd on “The Political and Social Significance of Lady Gaga’s Lyrics” but I doubt it.

The other thing I like about the folk world is that it also embraces all ages, from primary school kids learning their first tunes on the penny whistle to octogenarians tripping the light fantastic at a ceilidh.

Two CDs arrived recently that make that point exactly: The Other Crossing from Emma Sweeney the young Manchester-Irish fiddler who was a BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award finalist a few years back and Back To You from Martyn Wyndham-Read who, like the writer of this blog, is a few moons beyond the bus pass.

Both albums are beautiful and true and have pleased me greatly. Emma is one of our finest young fiddlers and her self-released five track EP of tunes is a real gem. The playing seems effortless and un-forced and I get the same buzz listening to it that I get when I listen to the great master fiddlers like Dezi Donnelly and Aly Bain. As well as being a world-class musician Emma is no mean shakes when it comes to composition and several of the tunes on the EP, including the title track, The Other Crossing, are her own.

Martyn, in Back to You, has produced another album of great songs sung with deep conviction and in a voice that, while it is rich and powerful is still never anything more than a vehicle for the stories Martyn brings us. Years working in Australia drew Martyn deep into the bush-ballad and bush-band tradition which shows in great songs like The Billy of Tea and The Broken Down Squatter while his love of English traditional song burns through As I Roved Out and The Banks of the Sweet Primroses.

Two albums from the Spring and Port Wine of the folk scene, both brilliant and both extremely cheering and uplifting.

Get them and listen to them. They are wonderful.

"On the eve of the launch it seems incredible that it's already half a year since we went into Abbey Road to record Hedonism. What an amazing experience it was. Living in beautiful apartments in St John's Wood for two weeks and being able to walk to Studio 2 every day was a dream in itself; no greasy hotel breakfasts and sweaty tube rides, just a refreshing five minute stroll through leafy grandeur to the most famous recording studio in the world.

Sam Sweeney and Rachel McShane of Bellowhead recording at Abbey Road Studios.

"Of course every morning there were crowds of tourists at the gates, stopping traffic on the zebra crossing and graffiti-ing their favourite Beatles lyric on the walls. And wondering who on earth we were and if they should know us, as they parted to let us through.

"As if entering Abbey Road wasn't exciting enough, once inside, there was the legendary John Leckie waiting for us. The very same John Leckie who produced one of my favourite albums of all time, Showbiz by Muse. When we entered the huge Studio 2 for the first time he casually pointed out the piano that I had just put my fiddle on was the one McCartney played on Lady Madonna. And the vocal microphone he was setting up for Jon Boden was the one Lennon always used. Surreal!

"And now, somehow, six months of gigs, festivals, beer brewing - more on that later - and anticipation has passed and here we are finally about to unleash the album to the public.

"To launch the album we're throwing a party with an invited audience of the great and the good, family, friends, and lucky fans who won the prize draw for tickets. It'll actually be the first time we have played some of the material since Abbey Road, and I can't wait.

"To top it all, we're promised that they'll be serving Hedonism Ale there too, brewed by our own fair hands. Back in May, John (Spiers), Pete (Flood), Ed (Neuhauser) and I arrived on the steps of the Potbelly Brewery in Kettering at 7:30am, bleary eyed and ready to brew our very own golden, summery ale to commemorate the album. It was a long but hugely enjoyable day of mashing, sparging, shovelling and disinfecting, punctuated by long gaps of waiting filled with tunes and the sampling of many other ales. Lots of sampling. And I can confirm our beer is absolutely delicious!

"So - after next week's party we have a month to prepare, both mentally and physically for the mammoth Hedonism Launch Tour. Personally, I'll be playing squash everyday until November in order to lose the weight I will inevitably put back on in beer and service station pasties"

"Hello again! I'm writing this in our new house, surrounded by boxes, again! Since my last blog, John and I have moved house, got married and finished the first leg of The Last Star tour. We thought we may as well do all the big things at once!

"Our wedding felt like the best folk festival in the world with Eddi Reader, Kris Drever, Phil Cunningham, Alan Kelly, Boo Hewerdine and Iain MacDonald all playing and singing and that was just in the church!

"The tour has been brilliant fun so far and I'm really enjoying singing songs from the new record and also playing with the lads. We started the tour at the Live Theatre in Newcastle and travelled up and down the country for two weeks finishing up in Devon playing a festival with our friends Ade Edmonson and the Bad Shepherds.

Myself, John, baby Molly Mae and John's mum and dad all travelled down together at the start of the tour. We got about half-an-hour outside Edinburgh before John'ss dad was fast asleep, snoring with his chin on his chest in the passenger seat, John's mum was lightly snoring beside me in the back and Molly was out for the count on the other side. John looked in the mirror and asked: "could this tour be any less rock &roll?"

"The gigs have been going great, brilliant audiences and people really looking after us. We based ourselves in Derby for the first week, and played a concert there also, and then the following week we were based in Lincoln. We started every day feeding and playing with Molly, before driving off in the afternoon to the gig and returning at night to our home away from home.

"It;s always amazing to see the effort folks put into putting a concert on. You turn up to places like Nettlebed Folk Club and see the volunteers all working so hard to make it a good night, just because they're passionate about this music. It makes you feel lucky to be part of this scene. I've been doing lots of interviews for the record and tour and there seems to be a general feeing that this is a very exciting time for folk and acoustic music. I totally agree and it's been great seeing lots of young people coming to the gigs on the tour. It always annoys me though when journalists say that it's great that folk music is no longer about people with beards and woolly jumpers. Growing up in Ireland with the music of Luke Kelly, The Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers I've never understood that attitude - those musicians and singers were so passionate and exciting and had so much to say, and I'm sure they could have out-partied any rock band going today! Mumford & Sons have beards and jumpers and play banjos and got to number one! It's all nonsense. It;s just brilliant that people are getting excited about the music we all love.

"A big thank you to everyone who has come out to see us so far, and all the promoters and hotel staff for being so welcoming to us and especially to Molly Mae. This weekend we're off on our 'gigamoon' to play more gigs across the country. Hope to see some of you on the tour. Heidi x "

"As I drove across the bleak landscape of Northumberland last January, through a darkness that only true rural isolation can boast, I was thinking, not for the first time, of the people from a far-off land who had once made this part of England their home.

"They had come, seen, conquered and been gone now for almost two thousand years. But it was what that they left behind them that had brought me here on this wild and wintry night.

"So began for me a journey along the Roman Wall, a journey in words and music, with a group of companions that would become close friends before the week was out. Isolated in a remote but, I confess, somewhat luxurious converted farmhouse near the tiny village of Once Brewed - within sight of the wall itself - Julie Matthews, Rory McLeod, Ruth Notman, Boo Hewerdine and myself were charged with the task of plotting a musical path along the full length of the wall, from east to west, and to give a performance of our achievements at the week's end.

 

"Having been involved in a similar exercise a year before, as part of The Darwin Project, and knowing how talented my housemates were, I was arriving with keen, almost relaxed anticipation. The jokers in our pack this time however were the poets Kate Fox and Elvis McGonagall, both of whom I had heard and enjoyed on Radio 4's Saturday Live morning show, but whom none of the rest of us had met.

"Within minutes of their arrival the next day however, we were all getting on famously, lobbing ideas back and forth, cracking jokes, hiking across the hills and sharing mealtime revelry. Inspiration, given the wealth of history, scenery and musical empathy at our disposal, was never in short supply. But this was no history lesson in song. Subjects as diverse as foot and mouth disease, the Berlin Wall, the Tyneside Metro system, The Border Reivers, nineteenth century witchcraft, doomed love affairs from the middle ages, and of course a good number of Romans in the gloamin, all made it into our lyrics and poems.

"The concert at our week's end, with fiddler Kate Bramley brought in to add spice to our musical menu, was recorded for CD. Two attempts to bring our work to further live performance were thwarted by the tragic cancellations of Brampton Live Festival (our sponsors and benefactors) and the Gateshead Green Phoenix Festival soon after.

"However, the CD, entitled All Along The Wall is officially launched this Thursday and our musical liaison will live again with a series of performances early next year, including Glasgow's Celtic Connections. We can all hardly wait!"

Hamish's daughter Fiona Imlach is making his autobiography (which he co-wrote with Ewan McVicar) available again, and we asked her to share a few memories with us...

"As a child it was a novelty telling people that your dad was a professional musician - especially living on a Motherwell council estate.

"We did go and see him playing when we were young, and were instructed to sit still and be quiet, although, I think the adults were told that too! One gig that sticks in my mind and that was the 'Welly Boot Show', where my brother - aged 10 - managed to sneak a peek at the topless Brandy de Franc!

Left to right: Mairead, me, Hamish, Jim and Vhari. Taken around 1968.

"Hamish was a very generous man and would help anyone out. He would often bring home strangers he had offered to take on the road with him.

"My poor mum didn't know who he would bring home next, but she made them welcome and ensured they were well fed and had a bed for the night.

"His kind heart also showed when he suggested that the volunteers at the Tønder Festival in Denmark should be thanked, and offered to make them a curry and put on an extra show for them.

"This tradition is still going, over 30 years later; my sister Mairead and I will be part of the curry crew on the 30th August, chopping a mountain of onions.

"We always received a present from his travels, although at 12 my older sister did not appreciate the very loud flowery jeans from America and my brother at ten was not impressed by the lederhosen he got from Germany. But I would say the stuffed woodpecker nailed to a piece of wood took some beating.

"After a night with Billy Connolly he came home with one of Billy's dog's pups, to be named 'Welly'. He felt sorry for it because it was the runt of the litter. Mum wasn't too amused at that; we lived in a second floor maisonette. Fortunately my nana and papa adopted Welly and he was a part of our lives for more than 12 years.

"We are very proud to know that dad played a very important part in not only the folk world but blues and rock, where his influence on Christie Moore, Billy Connolly, Barbara Dickson and John Martyn has been well documented. A few years ago I spoke to Eddi Reader at Tønder and she even mentioned how dad had given her good advice in the early stages of her career.

"If you have a quick search online, the number of hits his videos get are a testament to how popular and relevant his music still is."

]]> Jon Lewis https://meleleh.pages.dev/blogs/folk/2010/08/remembering-hamish-imlach.html https://meleleh.pages.dev/blogs/folk/2010/08/remembering-hamish-imlach.html Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:11:12 +0000