#1 The Old Crow Folk Club- What is it?
What is it? Well, its 23 new recordings, re-imaginings of a bunch of my songs by some of the artists I’ve loved, admired, and been inspired by for over forty years.
First up, Nick Harper. You call him Nick Harper, I call him Nickleangelo. The Artist, the great designer. The Rumpelstiltskin of song. I hand him grass cuttings and he weaves me an opus of gold. We chose Happy Birthday Revolution for him, The Levellers recorded that on Hello Pig, I recorded it on Spitting Feathers, but we’ve all taken those hats off now, now we have this recording from The Master. When he sings ‘I’m sitting here watching the world fall apart’ we know it is and only the poets may save us from the politicos now. Hats off to Nick Harper!
Next up, my old accomplice, no one puts more flight and fancy into a song than Mark Chadwick, Mr C. His ideas have always been diamonds to me, pulled from the dust. He first told me about John Lilburne, Freeborn John and without his knowledge of radical history that album and chapter of my life would have looked and sounded very different. Can you imagine assembling all those thousands of people in the dusky twilight of Beautiful Days Festival to sing along to ‘Winston Churchill The Jazz Rock Years?’ No, neither can I and we have Mark Chadwick to thank for that. Here he sings a new, unreleased song, I wrote it for him, Brighton Rock. In it we are looking back over our collective shoulder to warmer evenings when our dreams teased the air like gadfly. He moves easily between the charm of his verses to the punch of the chorus… like a sling shot. Bang. Thank you.
The Doulas, three-part harmony from two generations of my family. My wife Sanchia Ryan, Anna Ryan and Olivia Olwyn. ‘Every Woman’s Pain’ they sing, and they should know. I ponder that I’ve never written a truer song. Recorded, it seems to have climbed out of the window of the Motown Studio in Detroit and it hammers back along the tracks to its origins in the English Civil War. What a three- part blessing they bring to my house.
Down by the River O, who might find themselves blessed or cursed with the responsibility of reimagining a song the Levellers made their own, a staple of Drunk in Public and those heady days of wine and blunder? Only Nick Parker and his False Alarms… he kept me going during the Covid lock down, the only musician to lift the gloom of tinny guitars in celebrity kitchens with his Home and Away collaborations. I’m forever grateful that his talent took up the challenge. An epic version, trumpets too, chasing down the end game in search of drier land. A saviour, a warning prophet and a fellow to lead us away and home again. Cheers, Nick say ‘Hi’ to the band.
Cobblestones, Sanchia and I wrote this one foggy winters evening watching the drinkers stumble across the Iron Bridge in Exeter St Davids. Here, the indominatable John Jones sans Oyster Band, the voice of the marches sings the narration backed by Al Scott and Ray Cooper. He’s walked those bridges himself; I’ve walked them with him in Europe and around the UK. I’ve always loved the importance and belief John brings to a lyric. Al Scott called it an authority and he is usually right.
Maid of the River, way back when I only wrote river songs this was the first one. I knew Maddy had to sing this. She’d sung so beautifully on Freeborn John, and she can carry a historical narrative better than anyone. For me she’s always been the Queen of Folk Music, the one singer even the non folkies knew. Wow, she carries Maid of the River into another realm, she’s made it her song … so good she must have written it herself.
Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman- the most beautiful couple in folk music. Kathryn was born to sing, she told me, she’s never done anything else. It was Sean’s advice that made the Old Crow Folk Club happen in the first place. I told him in the summertime that all the artists could choose their own songs. He said, ‘Forget it, it will never work. They are musicians Rev, tell them what to sing, when to do it and then nag them like hell!’ Sage advice, Sean! He should know as a musician and producer he’s done it all. Their version of Every Step of the Way, arranged as a wonderful waltz, glides through the air. It feels tailor made for them but to be fair so might any song, they are that special.
Black Coal Hole, the tear- jerker. I wrote this after my father died and recorded it with Phil Johnstone on the Green Fool album. Here Phil’s son Alex performs the song. He’s singing for his father now gone and he is playing his father’s notes on the piano. It’s a stunning performance and one of the best vocals I’ve ever head from Alex. Only he could have done this.
Jack O’Green, this was always a weird little pagan folk song. I asked my son Samuel, he wanted to record it with a band. He went into the studio with Tony White in Exeter, and between them they created this towering version of pagan punkabilly. ‘I am not hiding here, I’m waiting to get noticed by the tree of a thousand coloured rags’, yes you are son, and after this you shall be.
Circular Blues felt like a footnote that could have gone further when I recorded it for Bishop of Buffalo. Here it is does go further. Zachariah Chadney expands it into a one-man dreamscape complete with smoke, psychedelic lighting, and a feverish haunting vocal. I’d like to have trodden similar ground back in 1996 but I’m overjoyed to hear what Zach has done here. He’s a most singular talent and one to watch out for.
Sam McGrory will tell you he is not a songwriter, but he is one of the greatest interpreters of song working today. Here, singing Wingman he is backed by his son Rohen and between them they deliver this punchy lament to musicians who are no longer with us. There are plenty of those, whose shadows we can still see stage right even when the crowds have gone home. I met Sam some years ago at Bradninch Folk Club, Sanchia and I played a few songs, and I admired his guitar. He later sold it to me but in all honesty that guitar misses him and that rhythmic bounce his vocal has. Sam is the real deal and the day I spent with him and Rohen was a highlight of this project and a reminder to take songs back to their source when you are looking for their light.
Justin Sullivan taught me my first chord on the guitar. It was D. He gave me my first guitar and has been my friend since 1984 when I first saw New Model Army at the Pandoras Box festival in Rotterdam. We once had a song writing competition between us to write about the strange and wonderful happenings in Walhachin, Canada. I wrote Ghost of Walhachin, and he didn’t write anything, although he will tell you he did. So, when it came to finding a song for him I couldn’t resist asking him to perform and arrange my competition winner. Here he turns a ghost story into a magical film and a sonic landscape worthy of Ennio Morricone. You can taste the dust. Keep hydrated folks!
St John is a song I recorded with Nick Harper for the Skald album. I knew I wanted it to appear on this collection but who would record it and not be overly influenced by Nickleangelo’s electric wizardry? I called Rupert McDonald as I consider him the best blues man living in the UK today. I’ve known Rupert a long time, he was lead guitarist on the Meltwater Ghost album and I knew he’d find a way to slide this song home, past the jetty, through the grasslands like the shepherd. It’s a beautiful thing.
Roy Harter is New York’s contribution to the Old Crow Folk Club. I asked him to reimagine Pour your Whisky on my Road which had appeared on the album Spitting Feathers. I’d always liked the backing vocals on the original which sounded like The Band with Rick Danko and Levon Helm singing so I wanted to Americanise it further. It also had a few tricky chords in it so I needed an exceptional player and someone who could breathe fire tenderly and scorch a new path on an old road. Roy was that fellow. A true gentleman and consummate musician. What a guy.
Simon Friend and I go way back, even before he joined the Levellers with his suitcase full of great songs, he and I used to play folk clubs and bars together. He was called the Kilburn Agitator back then but now he lives in the far North of Scotland and spends his time climbing mountains and painting. He knew Caledonian Rain from the Industrial Sound and Magic sessions where he played mandolin. Here he dusted down his old guitar and performed a version so bold and honest it was as if the Kilburn Agitator was back in the room with me after 40 years away. Great to hear you again my man.
Stealing was written on the banks of the River Shannon in the early 90’s. Olivia chose this in front of the fire in our family home. Olivia Olwyn, if she’d had lived in Paris in the 1950’s Edith Piaf might have gone shelf stacking for a living. I love this vocal, its wild yet gentle and I don’t know how she does that, but she does a lot of gigs and she’s honed her craft beautifully.
Down the Alley, Dan Donnelly, my go to guy. If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, then Dan is the Harvey Keitel of Music. Everyone wants a piece of Dan. He sorts things for you. Properly. Himself a wonderful songwriter who can play anything. Here a classic turn from him to take this dark yet hopeful little backyard ballad and elevate it into a Bluegrass Grass anthem. Jon Sevink, who has also been vital to this project back on the fiddle here, weaving and bobbing away like we are at Kentucky Derby. Merry days.
Just like Trevelyan, Seth Lakemen had to be the one re imagine this song about the Penlee Lifeboat disaster. He’d been there before. He beat me to it; his great song Solomon Browne is about the same event. What are the odds? Here he plays narrator and fiddler, and we are harbourside and there’s a mighty storm a blowing our way.
Humm recorded Ellan Vannin, this new version on the beach in Cornwall, right there in the sand. You can hear the waves rolling in behind them. The song is about the Isle of Man and Ellan Vannin being the Manx name for the island. Carys’s vocal skipping over Arty’s guitar line like a shearwater across the waves.
Mary Mary- my daughter Anna Ryan totally reworked this song which was an oddity from the Spitting Feathers record. With her musical partner Joe Frost, they’ve toughened up the background, dreamt a beautiful vocal and created a powerhouse reworking. ‘ I don’t know how you do it,’ Anna sings here. Well, I do know without her talent and drive this whole project may never have left the shed. Thanks Kid.
Saline- was a finger-picked folk song on the album Skald. Here, my long-standing friend and mentor, the poet Joolz Denby delivers the song as a spoken word piece. Her vocal perched over the heavy synth noir of the backing. She’s an actress and a tattooist, an artist and writer and she brings it all to bear in the telling of this story of things left unsaid.
Summertime in England, a song about outsiders, or particularly those returning from war who are placed outside society through experience and pain of trauma and suffering. Here John Matthias and Ben Green – The Green Matthias Band take a folk protest song and render it with electronica and an unnerving piano, an intimate vocal and haunting strings before the skip beat complete with missing heart beats leads us into the shadows of our own lives, houses, and kitchens.
I first heard Alex Dover a songwriter and folk singer from the great musical city of Bath when he performed Wild Mountain Thyme with my daughter Anna on a hillside. Here though he has taken the song Rosie and reinvented it gloriously full of past echoes, distortion, and a dreamy love forlorn vocal and dragged it into the present, a rebirth of something quite beautiful.