Folked Up

Click the Header to hear “Sailors Boot”

Artist Wiki Bio: Frank Turner (born 28 December 1981) is an English^[1] folk/punk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, Winchester. Initially the vocalist of post-hardcoreband Million Dead, Turner embarked upon a primarily acoustic-based solo career following the band’s split in 2005. To date, Turner has released four solo albums, two rarities compilation albums and four EPs. Turner began recording for his new album England Keep My Bones, in January 2011. It was released on 6 June 2011 in the UK, and 7 June 2011 worldwide

Click the Header to hear “Radio Montana”  for recordings go to http://www.caseyneill.org/

Artist Bio: Casey Neill is an American musician. He leads Portland, Oregon-based band Casey Neill & The Norway Rats, singing with a raspy vocal quality and playing electric and acoustic guitars. Neill’s style, folk-punk, mixes influences from punk, Celtic and folk music, and has been compared to R.E.M.^[1] andThe Pogues.^[2]

The Norway Rats include Jenny Conlee of The Decemberists on keyboards and accordion, among other established Portland musicians Jesse Emerson, Little Sue, Hanz Araki and Ezra Holbrook of Dr Theopolis.

Every Monday there will be a recommended pioneer of folk music.

Today welcome to the blog, Henry Whitter.

According to “Wikipedia”, Henry Whitter started playing guitar at a young age and later went on to learn how to play piano, fiddle,banjo and harmonica. The song in the link is not his own but an old time railroad ballad. However this song and recording is what boosted Henry’s fame by a hefty majority. One of the earliest folk musicians to quit his job as a cotton mill worker to pursue his passion for music, Henry Whitter was a true believer in the pursuit of happiness.

folkdrummer:

Original field recordings of Irish musicians and singers captured and credited by Alan Lomax as he traveled through Ireland. Free to stream from the Association for Cultural Equality website. THIS is genuine, unpolished Irish folk music. This is an invaluable resource and look into musical culture.

Click the Header to hear “The Wolves”

Artist Bio: Ben Howard (born 24 May 1988) is an English singer-songwriter, born in London. He moved to Totnes Devon in his teens and is currently signed to Island Records^[1][2] and Communion Records^[3]. Howard was raised by musical parents who exposed him to lots of their favourite records from singer-songwriter artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, which were a big influence on him.

After attending King Edward IV Community College and Torquay Boys’ Grammar School and then a short stint studying Journalism at University College Falmouth, Cornwall, Ben decided to focus on making music full time, making melodic rootsy folk music, with progressively darker lyrics. He began to build up a reputation not just around Devon, but elsewhere in the UK as well. After a month of sold out dates across Europe and the UK Howard was eventually asked to sign to Island Records.

Because of the label’s history of UK folk singers, including Nick Drake and John Martyn, Ben decided to sign. With singles “Old Pine”, and “The Wolves” released already in 2011, he has recorded an album entitled Every Kingdom for the label, which was released on 6 October, 2011.

In 2012 Ben will launch his music in America with ‘Every Kingdom’ finding a release on April 3rd, with appearances at SXSW in Texas and a US tour already confirmed.^[4]

His song ‘Promise’ was featured at the end of S08E12 of the T.V show House

Ben Howard is confirmed to play at the 2012 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. ^[5].He has also been confirmed to be performing at this years T in the park music festival in Perth & Kinross shire Scotland.

Click the Header to Hear “Singing Softly to Me”

Artist Bio:Øye and Bøe were both born in 1975 (Øye on November 21 and Bøe on October 25) and have known each other since they met in the same class at school. Their first musical collaboration was a comedic rap about a teacher.^[1] At sixteen, they played together in the band Skog (“forest”) with two other friends, releasing one EP, Tom Tids Tale, before breaking up and later forming the Kings duo.

The duo were signed to the American label Kindercore after appearing in European festivals during the summer of 1999. After a spell living in London in 2001, they released their debut album Quiet Is the New Loud. The album was produced by Coldplay producer Ken Nelson. The album was very successful and even lent its name to a small movement of musicians in the pop underground (including acoustic contemporaries such as Turin Brakes) which took Elliott Smith, Belle & Sebastian and Simon & Garfunkel as their inspiration and focused on more subtle melodies and messages.

Versus, an album of remixes of tracks from Quiet Is the New Loud, came out shortly after. After this breakthrough year, not much was heard from the band. Øye spent the next few years living in Berlin and doing solo material, releasing music under the DJ Kicks series as well as a solo album titledUnrest. He also has a side project named The Whitest Boy Alive.

It was not until 2004 that the Kings’ follow-up Riot on an Empty Street was released. The video made for “I’d Rather Dance With You,” the second single from the album, topped MTV’s European list as the best music video of 2004. The album also featured contributions by Feist.

The band had a period of inactivity, which led to speculations that they had stopped working together. On March 7, 2007 however, the duo played a one-off concert in Mexico City. There was also a concert scheduled for March 6, but it had to be cancelled, because Øye had a problem with “Montezuma’s Revenge” and was not feeling well. They played two concerts on March 7 and announced they were going to start work on their new album in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In January 2008 the band played concerts in the Northern Norwegian cities of Tromsø, Svolvær and Bodø, and Swedish cityUmeå along with a concert in August in Stockholm.

Most recently, the band toured North America, Latin America and Europe, including stops in Boston, New York, Toronto, Detroit; Latin American stops in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. European stops include Italy, Switzerland and Spain. On some of their American tour stops they appeared with the band Franklin for Short who joined them on stage for a few rousing numbers.

The third album, called Declaration of Dependence, was released on October 20, 2009.^[2]

Impressions: I love the laid back style these guys have. Just like they were jamming and enjoying every moment of it.

Click the Header to hear “Barton Hollow”

Artist Bio:In some ways, music doesn’t get much more modest or minimalist than it is in the hands of The Civil Wars, a duo comprised of California-to-Nashville transplant Joy Williams and her Alabaman partner, John Paul White. They travel without a backup band, and on their first full-length album, Barton Hollow, the bare-bones live arrangements that fans hear on the road are fleshed out with just the barest of acoustic accoutrements. Each song is an intimate conversation, and no third wheels or dinner-party chatter are going to interrupt that gorgeous, haunting hush.  On the other hand, there’s been something distinctly loud about the duo’s introduction to the world, even prior to the album’s release. Their signature song “Poison & Wine” was heard on Grey’s Anatomy—in the foreground, in its entirety, over a key climactic montage, prompting hundreds of thousands of viewers to Google the mystery music. And they got a wholly unsolicited endorsement when America’s biggest pop star gave The Civil Wars a seal of approval. After first tweeting her love for the duo, fellow Nashvillian Taylor Swift included “Poison & Wine” as a selection in her official iTunes playlist, saying, “I think this is my favorite duet. It’s exquisite.”  Swift took the words right out of the folk-country-Americana world’s mouth. If it looks like The Civil Wars’ appeal might cast a net that extends well beyond the typical audience for acoustically based music, that may be due to the inherent sensibilities Williams and White bring to their collaboration, which are quite disparate, if not necessarily warring. Both were gigging and recording on their own prior to teaming up a year and a half ago, neither solo career quite suggesting what their conjoined sound would turn out to be. “I do naturally bend pop,” says Williams, who adds that she “grew up on Billie Holliday and The Beach Boys.” White, meanwhile, was raised on Kristofferson, Cash, and Townes Van Zandt by his retro-country-favoring dad. “Somehow we’re pulling from each other what we crave and what our strengths are,” he says.  If the music ultimately leans more toward White’s native South than Williams’ northern Cali roots, he says, “I think Joy’s got some hillbillies in her ancestry or something like that. There’s a song on our record called ‘My Father’s Father’ that we wrote on the day of the inauguration down in Muscle Shoals, not long after we got together. I started playing the guitar figure and she starting singing this amazing Appalachian kind of melody, and I’m like, ‘Don’t even pretend that you’re the pop girl and you come out with shit like that!’ I don’t know where this stuff is coming from, but she’s drawing it from somewhere, and it’s amazing.”  ”Poison & Wine” isn’t just The Civil Wars’ breakout song. It’s also a thematic declara-tion of intent for this utterly complementary odd couple, encapsulating everything suggested in the duo’s name when it comes to exploring the conflicts that arise as part of couplehood. Speaking of which: They aren’t, that—a couple, that is. But they’re far from insulted if you mistake them for An Item in the storied tradition of the Swell Season, Richard and Linda Thompson, or other famous duos whose on-again, off-again relationships offstage complicated their stage relations.  ”A lot of people think that we’re married, and I think that’s actually quite flattering, to be honest,” says White. “Because we don’t want people to think that we’re up here acting and feigning the emotions that we write and sing about and show on stage. But one of the things that really make this special in our eyes is that if she and I were in a relationship together, it’d be a totally different act. We would write totally different songs. I don’t think we would be able to go on stage every night and sing ‘I don’t love you.’ I don’t think a healthy relationship could withstand that every single night. There’s areas we can delve into that wouldn’t make sense for somebody that’s till-death-do-us-part. I think there’s also a tension there that wouldn’t be there if it was something that was just rote, something that was an everyday relationship. We try to use that to our advantage.”  ”Poison & Wine” fits the paradigm of subject matter too true to be spoken, as opposed to sung. “That song probably does sum us up—The Civil Wars, the name of the band—as well as any song that we’ve written,” White says. It’s the one song on the album written with an outside collaborator, their friend Chris Lindsey. “We’re all married, and we were all talking about the good, the bad and the ugly, and just felt like: What would you say to someone if you were actually brutally honest—the things that you could never say because it would turn them away or let the cat out of the bag or reveal yourself to be weaker? What would you actually say if you had this invisible curtain around you and could just scream it in somebody’s face and they’d actually never hear it? We were all being very painfully honest, because we’re all very comfortable around each other and know that things like that never leave the room, except in a song. I’m pretty proud of that song, to be honest.”  When “Poison & Wine” was heard in its entirety on Grey’s Anatomy—versus in the background, for a few seconds, as Williams and White had expected—they knew that if the show’s audience liked what they heard, it would put their search skills to the test. The title only pops up in a verse, not the chorus, so it involved some ingenuity or intuition to track the tune down. Fortunately, viewers proved up to the test of finding, and choosing, their “Poison.” At last count, the song’s official YouTube video had been viewed 400,000 times.  White and Williams met in 2008 on what he describes as a “blind date, getting stuck in a room together, not knowing anything about each other.” This was a strictly professional blind date. As Williams recalls, “I got a call for what’s called a writing camp, where several writers were called together to work on trying to write several radio singles for a particular country band. Though I live in Nashville, I worked mostly in L.A. and came more out of the pop world, so I was like, why did they call me? John Paul definitely wasn’t bringing a Music Row sensibility in when he was coming into the write, either, but neither of us knew that about each other. In that room, it was almost 20 writers, basically drawing straws and getting to know each other a little bit. And when he started singing, I somehow knew where he was heading musically and could follow him, without ever having met him before. And that had never happened to me.”  ”I’ve done lots of co-writes and collaborative situations, but I’d never felt that weird spark,” agrees White—”that weird familiarity like we’d been in a family band or some-thing most of our lives. The beautiful part of it was that neither one of us would let on, so we both played it cool for a while, saying ‘That went well, we should write another,” and so on. I worked up enough nerve to—so to speak—ask her out. But there was a lot of scuffing my heel on the floor and ‘I don’t know what you’re doing for a while, but I’ve got this guitar, and you sing pretty good, but you probably don’t want to. You’re so much better than I am. Never mind. I’m just gonna go.’ Luckily she felt the same way.”  Months later, they did their first show as The Civil Wars at the French Quarter Café in Nashville—where their future producer, Charlie Peacock, was in attendance and definitely taking notice. Their second show was at a club called Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia, and it was attended by roughly 100,000 fans. At least, that’s how many people have downloaded Live at Eddie’s Attic, a free digital album, from their website.  The set included eight originals plus a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” “We didn’t even rehearse that much for that show, and we were flying by the seat of our pants,” recalls White. “But the sound guy at Eddie’s is legendary for doing really great board takes, and we listened to the tape on the way home and were pretty amazed at the quality of the recording. So we thought, ‘What the hell, let’s see what other people think about it.’ The beauty of putting that thing out as early as we did is, we could always fall back on: ‘Well, it was our second show’,” he laughs.  ”Looking back, John Paul and I can’t believe we put out our second show ever,” Williams says. “Hopefully you can hear the growth from then to now. But I’m really glad that we did. To get emails now like ‘A buddy of mine in South Africa just sent me Live at Eddie’s Attic,’ or somebody coming up to us and saying ‘Yeah, my friend in New Zealand was the one that told me about you guys’—in Alabama, where we were doing a relatively local show—that really took us by surprise, the way it started a conversation nationally and internationally.”  The Live at Eddie’s Attic release also had some other happy, unintended consequences. Williams feels that the loose chatter between songs helped establish that, as personalities, the two of them aren’t always (or even usually) as somber as their breakout song might suggest. More importantly, it established them as a fully functional duo that might be harmed more than helped by the addition of a slew of hired hands.  When it comes to keeping “the band” to an un-band-like two people, “there’s probably 10 different reasons for that,” explains White. “Some of it is logistics. It’s so much easier for two people to get into a car. But it just felt like releasing that record with just the two of us also put that stripped down, more organic, more raw kind of sound in people’s minds. And we felt like it was more emotional and told the story a lot better. It’s just she and I and a guitar and piano. If there’s something that is lacking, it’s gonna be painfully obvious. So the song’s guts have to be strong, at least for us, from front to back.”  No frills means no distractions from the quality of their blended voices. “It’s the strangest thing when I sing with her,” White says. “Even the things we do with vibrato, typically, they’re the same—we speed up and slow down at the same pace. She’ll ad-lib something live, and the next time around, I’ll sing the harmony to it. But if I sat and thought about it, I couldn’t do it.” For Williams, who’s sold hundreds of thousands of records recording on her own, sharing the vocals is “one of my favorite things about The Civil Wars, because when you’re a solo artist, you can’t harmonize while singing the lead. To me, all harmony is active listening.”  There’s something circuitously satisfying about the fact that “active listening” is taking place on-stage at The Civil Wars shows as well as among the audience, heightening the sensation that it’s a conversation being eavesdropped on, not just a performance. So much synchronization to go around… but also so much delicious tension, as the duo hardly shy away from the conflict that gives them their moniker. Harmonious discord, thy name is The Civil Wars.  White and Williams are never going to forge a complete meeting of the minds. “You’ll be a redneck once I’m through with you,” he tells her, teasingly. “Oh, just try!” she taunts him. Still a northern California girl after this many years in Nashville, she says, “I still can’t say ‘y’all.’ I still can’t say ‘fixin’ to.’ John Paul, you say ‘might could’ a lot, which freaks me out. But yeah, somewhere in there, if it’s only in the melodies, I’m happy to absorb all that.”  And to dish it back out in the form of universal narratives that are both elliptical and emotional. “After all the writing I’ve done for other artists or writing for TV/film or solo music,” says Williams, “the ability for John Paul and I to share stories of what’s happened in our lives, either current or past, and let those inform the way that we write intrinsically makes us care more about it. We’ve got songs that deal directly with loss that we’ve had in our own pasts. The opening song, ‘Twenty Years,’ is actually about a family secret, more on my side of the family. We love to write about these things and hint at it while not giving the whole thing away. If the stories that we’re singing about and the things that we’re speaking of are true, hopefully they’ll draw out the stories of the people who are listening, and that can create some invisible cycle of safety and exhilaration and freedom, and of being transported somewhere else for a little moment in time.”  Somewhere like… Barton Hollow? Where is the titular location, anyway? “I guess it’s something to do with the picturesque quality of the phrase,” admits White. “It’s a phrase that you’re not gonna Google and find, whatsoever. I found that out the other day. There is no Barton Hollow, that I can find.” But a few minutes later, he’s changed his tune, de-claring: “Barton Hollow is actually a place that I grew up. It’s a little geographic place close to where I grew up and did a lot of illicit activities,” White continues, embellishing as he goes, while his partner dissolves into helpless laughter. “I have a soft spot for that place.” Maybe the transporting Williams talks about has worked its magic on her partner, too.  ~ Chris Willman

Impressions: The civil wars immediately reminded me of the swell season. Their tight harmonies and soulful lyrics struck me to the core. Once I picked up Barton Hollow, I couldn’t put it down.

Click the Header to hear “Miss Emily”

Artist Bio:In late summer 2009 singer-songwriter Tim Ellis had a new batch of songs he had   recently written. Tim, having fronted various bands during the past ten years was   keen to start something new. He just needed a guitar player and percussionist for   his new acoustic direction.   Once the band was formed they began work at Tim’s studio at once. Throughout the recording process the band had been posting songs online, but it   wasn’t until the album was finished that they really noticed the impact the songs   seemed to be having. To maximize this impact the band decided that their songs   should be downloaded for free and they filmed a video to accompany the album’s single   ‘Miss Emily’. Within 6 months, ‘Where Lovers Die’  had been downloaded over  10,000 times and all CD copies had sold out! 

http://ghosttrains.net/fr_about.cfm

Click the Header to hear “Trouble”

Artist Wiki Bio: Raymond Charles “Ray” LaMontagne (pronounced ) (born June 18, 1974) is an American singer-songwriter who lives on a farm in Maine with his wife and two sons. Reportedly, after hearing a Stephen Stills song, LaMontagne decided to quit his job at a shoe factory and pursue a career in music. He has since released three albums, Trouble, Till the Sun Turns Black and Gossip in the Grain. In the UK,Trouble was a top 5 hit, and the title track of the album was a top 25 hit. Till the Sun Turns Black was a top 40 hit in the U.S. A soft-spoken person who is known for his raspy voice, LaMontagne has won a number of awards for his music and has performed at several charity events.

Impressions: This man has a very unique grit to his voice but from gossip in the grain to “Till the Sun Turns Black” he strikes a chord of truth with each song.