Live from The Convent, near Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Tune in live and watch in real time on Sunday night, or you can watch as many times as you like in the following week.
£7.50 to stream the entire gig into your living room in glorious HD.
‘We’re very excited to be playing at this amazing venue and we hope that people will tune in all over the world. Please help us spread the word about it and get in touch to let us know you’re watching it’
The melody from a Dutch/Flemish traditional children’s song about a little boy who creates havoc pretending to be a knight.
Sometimes found in English morris dancing, the tune is played here live by wondrously funky dance band Blowzabella, first up in a set in Am, then transposing to Bm to morph into second tune Go Mauve (at 1:45).
(Image: Manet, Boy with a Sword*)
Blowzabella
Andy Cutting (diatonic button accordion), Jo Freya (vocals, saxophone, clarinet), Paul James (bagpipes, saxophones), Gregory Jolivet (hurdy-gurdy), Dave Shepherd (violin), Barn Stradling (bass guitar), Jon Swayne (bagpipes, saxophones)
Red Tail Ring fiddler Laurel Premo wrote this beautiful tune about a stretch of the Paint River at Crystal Falls, Michigan. The Michigander duo play it here in a set with 19th century traditional American tune Rueben (Rueben’s Train).
Red Tail Ring
Laurel Premo (fiddle), Michael Beauchamp (guitar)
Video from a performance at the Ark in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 2014
Just a few places left on this wonderful multi-instrumental folk weekend. Inspiring classes, home-cooked food, informal sessions and country walks in the Fens. And don’t forget your walking shoes/boots!
Details and bookinghere (book by 14 February for reduced rate!)
On Candlemass Day, a tune to drive winter away – a shining waltz from Leveret‘s newly-released second CD, In The Round. The cover notes tell us the tune was originally published by Daniel Wright in 1715, in An Extraordinary Collection of Pleasant & Merry Humours (etc.).
(See below for where to buy In The Round, and booking details on the UK launch tour)
Leveret
Andy Cutting (diatonic melodeon), Rob Harbron (concertina), Sam Sweeney (fiddle)
Another favourite tune title! This great crooked West Virginia tune dances satisfyingly across the fiddle’s range. It’s fairly straightforward to catch by ear, but the double stopping’s a whole other ball game, so I’m posting several versions to help people find their best way in.
In order of appearance:
A string band playing the tune at speed
Two wonderful solo fiddle videos that show that pesky double-stopping fingering more clearly.
A slightly slower fiddle/banjo rendering that may help mastering the basic tune
And a bonus track – a haunting experimental recording that sent chills up my spine.
Key of A (mixolydian), with the fiddles cross-tuned ADAE (for more on cross-tuning, see blog post Newt Payne’s Tune)
As always, although this blog is fiddle-focused, the tune is intended for any instrument – I’d so love to hear it on border pipes or hurdy-gurdy!
Let’s begin with a great string-band performance setting out the tune for us.
Stephanie Coleman (fiddle), Adam Hurt (banjo), Beth Williams Hartness (guitar), Kellie Allen (double bass)
A rocking line-up filmed at a house concert.
(‘Fine Times At Our House – Stephenie Coleman, Adam Hurt, Beth Hartness, and Kellie Allen’ YouTube video, 3.30. Posted by Kabel Channel, 13 Sep 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNHoECrWKCo)
Scotty Leach (fiddle)
Filmed at a Seattle house concert on 31 May 2014, West Virginia fiddler Scotty leads with an introduction to the tune’s background.
Preview of work from their Creative Artist Residency – based on manuscripts from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library – that explores ‘the unique relationship between music and morris dance, specifically the gravity defying ‘slows’ that allow dancers to showcase their expertise.’
This beautiful tune, composed by Nigel Eaton in 2011, is so well loved it has its own website – a project to record as many different renderings as possible. Anyone may upload their version; to date, there are 172 recordings on the site.
Nigel Eaton (hurdy-gurdy)
Played here in D – a great key for fiddling Halsway. I play it tuned ADAE and double-stopped, to catch something of the hurdy-gurdy’s drones. (Nigel plays it in G here)
Laurel’s retreats always need a pair of walking shoes as well as your instrument/s, but this one needs a torch as well! Fabulous teaching and playing in wonderful locations – can’t recommend too highly.
Every couple of weeks or so I feature a tune that's caught my fancy – audio/video clips of brilliant musicians playing great, perhaps uncommon tunes to learn by ear. Most are from the English and American Old-time traditions; some hail from other musical worlds ‒ Scandi, perhaps, or French. But whatever you play ‒ fiddles or frets, free-reeds or fipples ‒ I hope you enjoy catching these wonderful tunes!
Jenny Glover's FIDDLETAILS 