Folk Tracks Roundup, March 2024

Well, folks, here’s the thing – we at Americana UK like to acknowledge the roots of the music we love, and to that end we have specialist round ups of genre adjacent albums like Bluegrass and Folk.  And we also like to feature the same in our Video and Track sections – but we need to balance this against the tide (did someone say Tsunami?) of solid Americana that comes our way.  So, what to do?  Well this Deputy Editor’s stand is to occasionally run a bunch of songs, if possible with a theme. Maybe that theme is Valentine’s Day or the very occasional bunch of Christmas songs. We still hanker after a Beltane or May Day theme, but well…until that happens we can still significantly cut our backlog by occasionally proffering up a selection of the folkier folk that comes our way, which is still music that’s worth hearing, trust us. Which is what is occurring here today as we introduce Folk Tracks Roundup for your delectation and delight.

This may actually be a first for Americana UK – a full on brass marching band and choir, but the story behind it is so interesting that it was too good to pass over.  ‘The Preacher and the Slave‘ comes from the lost history of the Industrial Workers of the World (nick-named the Wobblies) labour battles during the Spokane Free Speech fights of 1909. Surrounded by strike-busting Salvation Army bands paid for by the bosses, the International Workers of the World nicknamed them “Starvation Army” bands and fought back with their own IWW Brass Band. Lampooning and satirizing the religious imagery and jingoism of the scabs in the Salvation Army, the IWW Brass Band’s songs would set the template for using folk song as a form of protest.

‘Starvation Army: Band Music No. 1 – Songs of the IWW and the Salvation Army‘ will be released on May 3rd on PM Press/Free Dirt Records.

‘Ceithir Gaothan na h-Alba’ by Julie Fowlis and Oliver Cox is the first single from the upcoming Lush Spa album ‘Highland Treatment’. We actually reviewed a previous Lush album and they are, yes we admit it, somewhat surprisingly, really rather decent collections.  ‘Ceithir Gaothan na h-Alba’ (The Four Winds of Scotland) is a traditional folk song sung in Scottish Gaelic by Julie Fowlis, and composed by Oliver Cox – based on a poem by Scottish writer George Campbell Hay.  Julie Fowlis has commented that “This is the first time I collaborated with Lush on a piece of music for a treatment like this. It requires a completely different approach to what we’d usually do and the music that we’d be commissioned to create.  It’s always been really important to me to sing in Scottish Gaelic. These are the songs I feel closest to. They’re the ones that I heard in my formative years and the ones that feel pretty much part of me and the community that I belong to.”

Ambient folk musician Black Brunswicker (aka Ethan Helfrich) told us plenty about themselves – they are from Bloomington, Indiana, but they are currently a UK artist based in Manchester, where they are really enjoying the rain.  They’ve got a varied musical background, including a time as a heavy metal musician, and were inspired to take up finger-picking guitar by listening to John Fahey, Jack Rose, and Robbie Basho.  The one thing they don’t mention is why they are named after the Herzoglich Braunschweigisches Feldkorps most noted to history for their actions in the Peninsular War and at Quatre Bras during the 100 days.  Answers on a  postcard (emails will be ignored…).

Urban Folk Quartet recently released their seventh album, ‘True Story‘, and are a band that bring a lot of influences to their “folk” music – including funk and early 21st century jazz-hip hop.  And, pretty obviously, Peter Gabriel whose ‘Solsbury Hill’ they are covering on this single from the album.

Urban Folk Quartet are Dan Walsh on banjo, multi-instrumentalist Joe Broughton, percussionist Tom Chapman and fiddle player Paloma Trigas.