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Kathryn Roberts | |
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 Roberts in 2015 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Barnsley, Yorkshire, England |
| Genres | English folk, British folk rock, acoustic folk |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, Piano, Woodwind |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Labels | iScream Music, WEA, Rough Trade, Putumayo |
| Website | http://kathrynrobertsandseanlakeman.com |
Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
Roberts' first released recordings were on the album Intuition, a collection of songs by various South Yorkshire folk artists which also included her friend Kate Rusby. Roberts went on to record the critically acclaimed album Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts with her in 1995, [1] [2] which was voted Album of the Year by fRoots magazine.
Roberts and Rusby formed the band Equation, [3] along with Devon-based folk musicians the Lakeman Brothers (Sean, Sam and Seth). They recorded an EP CD in 1995, with Rusby and Roberts sharing lead vocals. This led to the group being signed to Blanco y Negro Records / WEA by Geoff Travis. Rusby left soon after, to be replaced with Irish singer Cara Dillon. Dillon also left after one album, leaving Roberts as the sole lead singer. Equation made four albums and two EPs. [4] They toured throughout the UK, Europe and extensively through the US as a "folk supergroup". [5]
Around 2001, Roberts and Sean Lakeman toured British folk clubs in an attempt to return to their folk roots. They released two albums as a duo, titled 1 and 2, before taking time away from the road to start a family. The couple returned to touring in 2011 and recorded their third album Hidden People in 2012. In 2013 they were voted Best Duo at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Roberts' song "The Ballad Of Andy Jacobs" was also nominated as Best Original Song.
Roberts appeared on Seth Lakeman's albums Kitty Jay , Freedom Fields and Poor Man's Heaven (Album) .
She took part in the Cecil Sharp Project in March 2011, a multi-artist residential project organised by the Shrewsbury Folk Festival to create new works based on the life, work and collecting of folklorist Cecil Sharp.
In 2020, Roberts appeared as a guest on the song Lift Dickie Bird Where He Belongs by the Barnsley comedy band The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican, duetting with the band's lead singer Scott Doonican.
Roberts is married to Sean Lakeman. They have twin daughters.
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Cara Elizabeth Dillon is a Northern Irish folk singer. In 1995, she joined the folk supergroup Equation and signed a record deal with Warners Music Group. After leaving the group, she collaborated with Sam Lakeman under the name Polar Star. In 2001, she released her first solo album, Cara Dillon, which featured traditional songs and two original Dillon/Lakeman compositions. The album was an unexpected hit in the folk world, with Dillon receiving four nominations at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music, with the aim of raising the profile of folk and acoustic music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British radio station BBC Radio 2.
John McCusker is a Scottish folk musician, record producer, and composer. He had a long association as a member of the Battlefield Band beginning in the 1990s and was later a band member and producer for folk singer Kate Rusby. He has served as producer and arranger for various artists. He has also released several solo albums.
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but also plays the viola and banjo. Nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize, Lakeman has belonged to several musical ensembles, including one with his two brothers, fellow folk musicians Sam Lakeman and Sean Lakeman, but has most recently established himself as a solo act.
Freedom Fields is an album by Seth Lakeman released twice in 2006. It is his third album as a principal performer. It is named after a park in Plymouth, England, where the Sabbath Day Fight during the Siege of Plymouth is commemorated.
The Lakeman Brothers were an English folk music trio, consisting of Sean Lakeman, Sam Lakeman and Seth Lakeman. They released one album, Three Piece Suite, in 1994 before forming the band Equation with Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts.
Seth Lakeman's fourth album, Poor Man's Heaven, was released on 30 June 2008, entering the UK Album Charts at number 8. Taking over 10 months to finalise, many of the tracks on the album have been part of Lakeman's live set since the second half of 2006, the initial tracks performed being 'Poor Man's Heaven' and 'Race to be King', but this expanded towards the end of the tour, with new tracks continuing to be previewed throughout 2007 and into 2008.
In 1990, at the age of fourteen, folk artist Cara Dillon formed a traditional Irish music band with school friends called Óige. In 1995 she joined folk super-group Equation and signed a record deal with WEA.
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.
Hill of Thieves is the fourth solo album by Irish folk singer Cara Dillon. It is her first full-length release on Charcoal Records, the label formed in 2008 with her musical partner and husband Sam Lakeman. The album was recorded and produced by Sam and first became available in October 2008 at their live concerts. It is also the first release since she gave birth to their twin boys Noah and Colm at 26 weeks, after going into labour onstage at the Swindon Arts Centre, UK. It has been the most successful of her first four albums in relation to chart performance, entering at No. 7 in the UK Indie Album Charts
The discography of Kate Rusby, an English folk singer, consists of nineteen solo albums, four albums as part of a duo or group, four extended plays (EPs), two video albums, fourteen singles, and seven music videos. Rusby's debut was Intuition, an album recorded in collaboration with five other female singers from Yorkshire, which was released on a small label in 1993. Her breakthrough came with an eponymous album recorded with Kathryn Roberts, another of the singers featured on Intuition. This album, which was named as the best of the year by Folk Roots magazine, was the first release on Pure Records, a label set up by Rusby's father on which all her subsequent solo recordings have been released. Rusby and Roberts also formed the band the Equation in conjunction with the Lakeman Brothers, but Rusby left the group after their debut EP. In 1996 she joined the all-female folk group the Poozies, with whom she released one EP and one full-length album.
Samuel Charles Lakeman is an English musician, songwriter, and producer and co-owner of Charcoal Records.
Sean Lakeman is an English folk musician and record producer.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an annual festival of folk and world music and traditional dance held in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England.
Joseph Francis, better known by the stage name Winter Mountain, is an English singer-songwriter, based in Cornwall. He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, bass, piano, and harmonica, whose music is predominantly indie folk/rock.
Equation were a British, young Devon-based folk supergroup formed in 1995, which combined the core talents of the Lakeman Brothers with Kathryn Roberts and Kate Rusby, later replaced for a spell by Cara Dillon.
Rosalie Deighton is an English singer and songwriter.
The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican are a British comedy folk and parody band from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Formed in 2006, they claim to be the hardest working comedy band in the UK, having played over 1250 shows throughout the UK. They are best known on the UK's festival scene, having played at major festivals including Glastonbury Festival, Cambridge Folk Festival, Beautiful Days, Bearded Theory, Rebellion Festival, Wychwood Festival, Kate Rusby's Underneath The Stars Festival, Towersey Festival, Wickham Festival, Shrewsbury Folk Festival and to an audience of 20,000 at Fairport's Cropredy Convention in August 2018, for their 900th show and again in 2022. Playing mainly acoustic folk instruments, they take popular songs and replace the lyrics with their own comedy reworkings, often on themes completely unrelated to the original song. They have independently released eleven studio albums, and a large number of live albums. Presenting themselves as the long-lost children of Irish entertainer Val Doonican, and claiming to be "on a mission to keep their late, great spiritual father's legacy alive", the various members of the band have adopted the singer's surname for their shows, and wear brightly coloured hand-knitted tank-tops in tribute to Doonican's traditional knitwear.
This is a list of releases by The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican, including studio and live albums, singles and other media.
Media related to Kathryn Roberts at Wikimedia Commons
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