Steve Knightley “Positively Folk Street”

Heartfelt, simple tribute to early influences.

A lot of tribute/cover albums can often leave you a little underwhelmed and wondering if the artist is just going through the motions or has run out of ideas. ‘Positively Folk Street’ is most definitely not one of those albums. You can feel the sincerity and gratitude that Steve Knightley has put into these twelve songs. Six are Bob Dylan covers, and the others are traditional songs that have been sung over the years by numerous artists, but most notably influenced by Martin Carthy.

The songs have been stripped back to Knightley’s distinctive voice and guitar with a little occasional harmonica and cuatro. It has a distinctive busking quality, which from someone who has sung everywhere from village halls to the Albert Hall is to be expected and admired. These songs come very easily to him. It’s no wonder, as he has grown up with them since discovering Dylan. He admits that “When I first picked up an acoustic guitar in my mid-teens, my repertoire was very limited – and then I discovered The Freewheelin’ by Bob Dylan.  That album was a revelation.  At the time, I had no idea Dylan had drawn so deeply from our own folk traditions to shape many of his songs. 

Later that same summer, I found myself at Sidmouth Folk Festival, where I saw Martin Carthy perform live for the first time – another moment of discovery!  Carthy is namechecked on the back cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan as a source of some of Dylan’s melodies and, suddenly, his music – which I had assumed was purely American – revealed its deep British roots.  These songs – woven from a tradition stretching across the Atlantic – felt both familiar and transformative.  It was an inspiring time, a period when Dylan’s poetic sensibility collided with the narrative power of folk music.  [Positively Folk Street] is a tribute to those formative influences.”

The timing of the album happily coincides with the recent release of the Dylan biopic, which has put his earlier songs back into the limelight. It demonstrates so aptly their English folk influences, none more so than ‘Girl from the North Country’. It was Carthy’s arrangement of ‘Scarborough Fair’ that inspired Dylan to write the song, and it is this link that binds the album together so exquisitely.

Those of you who have missed Show of Hands should take heart from not only this album but also ‘The Winter Yards’, which came out last year and were all original songs and his first solo offering for seventeen years.

Steve Knightley has the rare talent not only of writing incisive, modern folk songs but also has the ability to interpret the songs of others and offer something new. These are all well-known songs that he has put together very simply and respectfully. It’s a masterclass.  It is not outside the realms of possibility that in forty years, someone will be saying how his songs have influenced them, and they will be following his lead here and interpreting them in sincere tribute.