The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #149146 Message #3509951
Posted By: Phil Edwards
28-Apr-13 - 12:10 PM
Thread Name: Twenty-Six Fortnights
Subject: RE: Twenty-Six Fortnights
Next fortnight - nay, next week - we'll be into May, otherwise known as the month when stuff happens in folk songs, and I'll be putting up some new/reinterpreted/re-recorded stuff.
For now, here are two songs I sang out recently, at the latest of Alice Bester's "Folk Threads" events. On these recordings I'm accompanied by (a) assorted drones and (b) several other versions of me. On the night I was accompanied by (a) nothing and (b) a roomful of folkies giving it rice; I'm afraid you'll have to imagine that.
The first song is Earl Richard - Child 68, a.k.a. Young Hunting - and what a fine song it is. (There's more information about my version and where I got it from here.) I had fun with this when I recorded it last summer, although listening to it back now the pacing sounds fairly deliberate - I tend to go at it a bit more aggressively when I sing it out. The drones - and the recorder that pops up a couple of times - sound pretty good.
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Earl Richard is from 52 Folk Songs - Orange.
The second song is Two Sisters - Child 10; one of the shorter versions of it, not featuring the tell-tale fiddle. This was recorded fairly early on in the 52 Folk Songs year - for the difficult second album - when I'd started wanting to jazz things up a bit but hadn't yet got the hang of harmonising. So what you get here is me in octaves and unisons. The original recording had rather a lot of 'room tone' - I hadn't yet realised that my vocals come out best if I sing slap up against the microphone, in a Chet Baker-ish sort of way. I've remixed - well, equalised - the track, making it a bit less boxy and giving it a bit more oomph generally.
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Two Sisters is from 52 Folk Songs - Indigo.
52 Folk Songs is at http://www.52folksongs.com.