Recorded as during rehearsals for our Ballad gig at the Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering 2011, for which we were graced by pipe tunes by Matt Seattle and a very enthusiastic audience. Some of the gig was filmed, hopefully soon it might make its way onto YouTube - for now here's a new version of Sedayne's very old setting of The Wee Wee Man by way of redux and renewal. Picture courtesy of Ross Campbell, Rylands Library, Manchester, though the credit goes to Ann Breadin for having the idea in the first place...
Rapunzel & I were singing this together long before we actually spoke, circa 1994, and I'd been singing it since hearing Jim Eldon sing it a few years before that. As with the Wee Wee Man this is by way of redux and renewal because it never comes out quite the same way either, being a vehicle for further invention, arrangement and improvisation. Here Rapunzel uses her electro acoustic guitar, and Sedayne plays his wee Black Sea Fiddle, complete with real-time loopy drones from the Kaossilator as all dissolves into a dreamy haze, although this was December 2011, from rehearsals for our Sheffield gig, so the winter winds are suitably chill (as they were in snow-bound Sheffield). The picture comes from earlier that Autumn, along the River Wyre by Skippool Creek which is one of our favourite haunts, tides permitting. There's a version of this on Songs from the Barley Temple which will be released on Folk Police later in the year; similar but different; change being the heart and soul of the broader continuities what we still might call Folk Music...
Last but not least, is Rapunzel's setting of a Ron Baxter piece concerning the more supernatural beliefs of the Fleetwood fishing industry; the cares and concerns of life we might all share. We do this as part of Demdyke, and it features in The Golden Dream as well, but here it's just the two of us in the Barley Temple with Rapunzel on her Daisy Rock Purple Heart electric guitar and me trying to be sentive on the crwth. Quite different from our other stuff really as she lets her more contempory sensibilities come to the fore in this quite emotive wee piece of love, loss and enduring hope in the face of an all too bitter reality...
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