Somerset is a county in the south-west of England. It is home to many types of music.
Show of Hands is an English acoustic roots/folk duo formed in 1986 by singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and composer and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer. Joined by singer and double-bassist Miranda Sykes for a tour in 2004, Show of Hands continued to regularly perform as a trio with Sykes, as well as in their original format. In 2019 the line-up was further expanded by the addition of Irish percussionist Cormac Byrne.
Steve Knightley is an English singer, songwriter and acoustic musician. Since 1992 he has been one half of folk/roots duo Show of Hands along with Phil Beer. Knightley was named "Songwriter of the Nineties" by BBC Radio 6 Music in 2012.
Andy Cutting is an English folk musician and composer. He plays melodeon and is best known for writing and performing traditional English folk and his own original compositions which combine English and French traditions with wider influences. He is three times winner of the Folk Musician of the Year award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and has appeared on around 50 albums, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians. He was born in Harrow, London and is married with three children.
There has been a folk festival in the coastal town of Sidmouth in South West England in the first week of August every year since 1955, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to over 700 diverse events.
Mark Erelli is an American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and touring folk musician from Reading, Massachusetts who earned a master's degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before pursuing a career in music. Erelli has released nine solo albums and three collaborative albums. His self-titled debut album was released in 1999, the same year that he won the Kerrville Folk Festival's New Folk Award. His first recording for the Signature Sounds label, Compass & Companion, spent ten weeks in the Top Ten on the Americana Chart. Erelli has worked as a side musician for singer songwriters Lori McKenna and Josh Ritter. He has performed at various music festivals and shared the stage with John Hiatt, Dave Alvin, and Gillian Welch. Erelli's song “People Look Around”, which he co-wrote with Catie Curtis, was the Grand Prize winner at the 2005 International Songwriting Competition. His songs have been recorded by Ellis Paul, Vance Gilbert, Antje Duvekot, and Red Molly.
Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodicals, audio-visual materials, photographic images and sound recordings, as well as manuscripts, field notes, transcriptions etc. of a number of collectors of folk music and dance traditions in the British Isles. According to A Dictionary of English Folklore, "... by a gradual process of professionalization the VWML has become the most important concentration of material on traditional song, dance, and music in the country."
The English Folk Dance and Song Society is an organisation that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organisation, was incorporated in 1935 and became a registered charity in 1963.
Peter Douglas Kennedy was an influential English folklorist and folk song collector throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Maud Karpeles OBE, was a British collector of folksongs and dance teacher.
Caroline Herring is an American folk and country singer, songwriter and musician. She started singing professionally when she was a graduate student at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. While there she co-founded Thacker Mountain Radio, a literary and musical hour broadcast from Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, and still syndicated on Mississippi Public Radio. Herring began her solo career when she moved to Austin, Texas, in 1999. She has released six commercial albums, starting with her 2001 debut Twilight, which earned her 2001–2002 Best New Artist award at the SXSW Austin Music Awards. The Austin American-Statesman named Twilight one of the top five albums of 2001. In 2012 Texas Music magazine named Twilight in its Top 50 Essential Texas Albums list. Her 2003 album Wellspring was named one of the top ten albums of 2005 by The Austin Chronicle. Wellspring includes the song "Mistress", which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution listed as one of the Top 100 Songs About the South. Texas Music magazine included "Mistress" in its 2012 listing of the Top 50 Classic Texas Songs in recorded history.
Fred Jordan was a farm worker from Ludlow, Shropshire, and is noted as one of the great musically untutored traditional English singers. He was first recorded in the 1940s by folk music researcher Alan Lomax and, over subsequent decades endeared himself to the English folk-song revival movement. Jordan was awarded the English Folk Dance and Song Society's highest honour, the Gold Badge, "for distinguished and unique contributions to the folk performing arts" in 1995.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an annual festival of folk and world music and traditional dance held in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England.
Elbow Jane are now a five piece acoustic band from Merseyside in the United Kingdom. They signed to Fellside Records in 2009, and in 2011 released their second CD on the Fellside label entitled The Boldest Blood. A reviewer in R2 magazine described their music as “utterly infectious”" and called the band “one of the top acoustic acts in the country". A reviewer in Maverick magazine wrote that they have a "vibrant sound with soaring harmonies...a thinking man's band that seems to have plenty to say and that "the musical arrangements are at time magical.",
Wake the Union is the sixteenth studio album by British folk duo Show of Hands. Although their fifteenth studio album, it is their eighth in their "canon" of studio albums. The release follows the successful Arrogance Ignorance and Greed (2009) and the limited edition albums Covers 2 (2010) and Backlog 2 (2011). Recorded and produced by Mark Tucker, the album takes a strong influence from both English and American folk music and was created as a "journey through of [the two countries'] landscapes united by a common tongue and musical heritage". The album again features their unofficial third member Miranda Sykes. The album was also described by Knightley as a direct continuation of Arrogance Ignorance and Greed, although critics saw it as very distinct in its own right. The album was also a 20th anniversary celebration for the duo.
Sam Carter is a British guitarist, singer and songwriter, originally from the English Midlands but more recently based in Sheffield. He has released four albums of mainly original material which fall loosely into the folk/roots category. Carter is the winner of the "Horizon" award for best newcomer at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2010. Highly regarded as an instrumentalist, contemporary Jon Boden of Bellowhead described him as 'the finest English-style finger-picking guitarist of his generation, and former BBC Radio Two folk show presenter Mike Harding wrote that Carter was "one of the most gifted acoustic guitarists of his generation.". As a songwriter, Carter marries a traditionally English narrative style with elements of American gospel, shapenote, R&B and folk-rock has been described as an "impressively original" performer. Some commentators consider that Carter's guitar and vocal style is similar to that of noted British iconoclasts John Martyn and Roy Harper, whilst his lyrical perspective has further invited comparison with the work of Richard Thompson.
The Full English launched in 2013 and is an ongoing English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) project to create a searchable digital archive of English folk song collections from the early 20th century, thereby preserving and improving the accessibility of these resources. The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, The Folklore Society, the National Folk Music Fund and the English Miscellany Folk Dance Group. An offshoot of the archive, also in 2013, was an album and concert tour under The Full English name by a collective of UK folk singers.
Bryony Griffith is an English fiddle player and singer, specialising in English traditional songs and tunes. She is best known for her work with the Demon Barbers and a cappella quartet Witches of Elswick.
David "Doc" Rowe is a folklorist, author and film-maker who lives and works in the United Kingdom. A graduate of Hornsey College of Arts, he is a prominent lecturer on and advocate for folk traditions and folk music.
