News of a Nels Andrews single is always worth getting excited over. We described his music as combining “deft storytelling with a warmth of tone and gentleness of pace… Like finding a seashell at the back of a dusty cupboard, putting it to your ear and hearing the ocean.” It is in fact the ocean in Santa Cruz, California that Nels Andrews now calls home, a place that surely inspires him and forms the perfect back-drop for contemplation.. Click to read more/ listen
at tours end, I headed back home to California and Jess back to Norwich to began work editing her forthcoming book, birdwatching apparently plays a big part..i could tell she knew what she was doing.
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When he’s not lifting the heavens with his poetic lyrics, Danny keeps fit and limber raising his daughter Maizy.
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Lots of love and laughter at folkfam HQ
we’d just finished watching lost episodes of me and AJ Roach’s web series “Cursing Kerouac” on Phil’s big TV .
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Making music and traveling with Rory Cloud & Allyson Makuch has made it a charmed year for me. I was honored when they asked if I’d come over to their place in the beach flats and shoot some portraits of Echoes and Artifacts, (their gobsmacking duo). that glow is part back light / part internal light :)
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Who can make a 105 degree thick Texas evening burst into a thunderstorm? Chris Chandler.. poetic and meterological shaman.
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Beth Porter is one half of the duo the Bookshop Band with her partner Ben Please.. The two write wonderful folk songs inspired by books., and they’re fittingly based in Wigtown, Scotland (Scotland’s national booktown, a village exclusively made up of bookshops.. ) so we got a little visit with them whilst doing a show at this year’s Wigtown Literary festival.. This shot is Beth in her Wigtown attic, working on q song for a release day reading of The Testaments . Margaret Atwood;s new novel!
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I spent an day off in Edinburgh with Leith’s own Dean Owens ( and his faithful Schnauzer Alfie). . We strolled past the boat specked canals and up the Craiglockhart War Poet’s Trail ( around the Sanitarium used to heal soldiers after the war), nice way to prep for work on a few song co-writes for the new album he’s recording at Wavelab Studios in Tucson this Jan. super honored to be a part.. I think we caught a few good ones!
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Winding his mighty moose bravely through the highlands .
me: ‘rob aren’t you nervous driving this big RV through all these tiny twisty country roads with no shoulder ‘
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rob : ‘ what people don’t realize is we’re all carrying our baggage with us wherever we go . mines just easier to see so i have the advantage ‘. aye ..
What can I say about Jess Morgan ?? Seven years ago we met on a bill in Leicsster, and kept running into each other at scattered Internatinal Folk Alliance conferences, where we cooked up plan to do a couple Co-Bill tours, one in each of our respective homelands, when her visa was denied (BOOOOO HISSS) , she channeled the frustration into a sort of one woman show, with a series of spoken word vignettes spun around her songs telling a story of her 10 years in the music business, which resonated with music lovers and musicians alike, ( a live recording of the last show at the Big Comfy Bookshop is available at her Bandcamp https://jessmorgan.bandcamp.com/). One of the stories revolves around a winter open water swim in Snowdonia, Wales, where she learns about “Type 1” and “Type 2” fun the first being enjoyable in the moment, and the latter, only after its over.. This shot from the frigid waters of Orkney on the north tip of Scotland, where the Atlantic Ocean, and North Sea meet, might capture the second one..
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How does one man remember so many verses in this blazing heat?
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Danny surveys the pre show mainstage vibes, at our Sunday afternoon summer swelter soundcheck , hours before the sky fell and rained out the fest.
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After a phone call with his mother who called him out for living in a liberal Norcal bubble. John’s spending 2020 traveling by bicycle exclusively to perform in counties that voted red in the 2016 election. He’ll stay long enough to local government meetings and try to interact with and connect with folks out of his comfort zone and document it on his monthly podcast : Audiodes.
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really loved sharing the evening with these guys at the enchanting Abbey Arts Center Seattle.. much mutual gushing in the green room ( and heady Salt & Straw ice cream finale).
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Sometimes the magic of a place is tucked up in the rafters.. One of the highlights of every KFF is the lte night climb up to the very top of the campgrounds to the “crows nest” late in the evening/ early in the morning, where Brian quietly tends the fire and sets the mystical tone of songs in the raw.. if ever i was to do a “planet earth” style doc on folksingers, this is where id shoot reels of “their natural habitat”.
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SInce meeting him as a wee lad via my old buddy Aj Roach, I’ve watched Harry Harris mature into an amazing songwriter over the years . fitting that he came to meet us pre showin Aj & Nuala’s Leith flat where i snapped this pic.
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Shhh ! Milkdud is listening
couples make lovely compostitions!!
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The Brits really do sleepware much classier than us.. i need to up my dressing gown game for coffee and music morning hangs like this.
Not much these two can do to surprise me anymore.. Science art music adventure woven into one enchanted couple.. Stelth had crossed a bakers Dozen borders and time zones in the previous week, played to close to 100,000 the day before (scaling the rigging in epic rock star fashion) with his band the Lumineers, thenn drove up to the Santa Cruz to share a folky evening with us in a vinyard for the innagural Blue House stage show! (also my birthday)
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Outside a NOBREXIT table in Wigtown, Scotland I swapped songs on a folding chair with John and his partner. He’s showing me the PVC banjo pick he’s invented.
What a treat getting to play music with this guy, Jon’s been “ticka-ticka” and “thump, thump-ing” behind my songs all year, here we are on break of a video shoot at his cabin home up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. ( liz’s lovely ceramic sculptures adorn the redwood space).
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i met up with Jeff for the first time after hours at the letterpress studio he works in. he showed me vintage typesetting and added worlds of rthythm and counterpoint to my strum and hum on the upright bass. i felt like we were at the beginning of a new musical adventure.. looking forward to more amigo.
My old pal Rob Ellen.. who whisked me around Europe for the first time in his rogue bio diesel- chugging Peugeot stopping at every ancient pagan standing stone and getting lost and found again daily .. forever setting the course of my musical adventuring .
Now he’s gone to full time caravaning in his Medicine Music Moose mobile ( google to watch his progress) spreading the musical gospel .. This trip we had tea at Fortingall Yew (3.000 year old tree in perth), recorded a campfire side video session in a Crannog (Iron Age yurt on stilts) , and battled it out in a late night table tennis tournament ( rob’s apparently a former Nairn county champion, and keeps the title after this challenge)..
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Big hearts, big gig.. David & Grace in front of their “Wall of Fame” of shows theyve promoted in Abington over the years ..lots of talented friends!
so fun geeking out with Markus over fantasy/ sci fi books in his Living Room after the last night of my tour .. Here he is with book one of Neal Asher’s Brass Man Series. ( awesome tip thanks Markus)
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After the glasgow americanfest matinee gig at the glad cafe I got an amazing hang in with folksinger Findlay Napier (who occasionally moonlights as a stand up comic), Findlay is also a fellow dad / surfer so comradarie / riffing was really a blast .. We tried to get in to a sold out show at The Stand Up Comedy club :( .. just as we dejectedly head back out into the rain, Findlay is spotted by one of the nights headliners Stuart Goldsmith, ( and host of the Comedian’s Comedian Podcast) who ushers us in :) this is us in Findlay’s kitchen the next morning, most of the blurry motion is being generated by Floriadh, lightning in a furry ginger bottle.
Pete keeps it analog.. one of my vintage sound madeline’s is a late night listen to the Beach Boy’s “Wild honey” on reel to reel on a glorious hi fi that dwarfed his apartment .. Wow & flutter indeed!
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