Bushrangers & Swagmen   Folk Songs of Old Australia   ^^free stream & download^^ The stream can be a little slow starting TAP PLAY ONCE THEN AGAIN to play here or tap the building icon to enter our  internet archives page & stream or d/l^^   A billyful of recordings from the late-50's into the new millenium. Folk group The Sundowners were Aussie pioneers in the genre. Folk-rockers The Bushwackers Band are back in town with trademark songs, yarns and instrumentals from between 1974 & 1981. Cobbers , The Colonials and Ants Bush Band  each brought their own distinct sounds and flavours in the 70's & 80's.  Slim Dusty & The Hawking Brothers bring a taste of  Australian country music to the brew. Classic Aussie poems Clancy of the Overflow and Ballad of Ben Hall were collected & preserved by Australian Banjo Paterson (1864-1941) who also penned songs like  The Man from Snowy River  and the world-famous unoffic...

See the Stars Begin to Fall Stratospheric Folk Americana Selection. Spotlights the new Neil Young album Second Song  and Jesse Welles ' latest  Masks Off . Topical songs. ^^free stream & download^^ The stream can be a little slow starting TAP PLAY ONCE THEN AGAIN to play here or tap the building icon to enter our  internet archives page & stream or d/l^^ A new Neil Young album with The Chrome Hearts, Second Song , dropped last month. Its a surprisingly deep and melancholic affair, especially after the rebellious & rocking Talkin' to the Trees set from last year, and is better. There are only seven songs though two of them are epics. Lyrically it seems that Neil is wrapping up while sending out some personal asides. Songs like Soon I Might Be Going and The Foggy Edge of Time leave us in little doubt that the man's dealing with immanent mortality while the title track reflects on a long life lived but also the regret at seeing how the world has turned. ...

The Warlike Lads & Lasses of Europe Semi-topical folk-rock mixtape. Songs old and new. The set is  named in parody -- European people are not of course innately warlike at all! The title is a pun on the folk song The Warlike Lads of Russia , played here by Show of Hands.  The music flows and varies, alternating between the serious and uplifting with rocking tunes, ballads & laments with a historical tint. While not a purely conceptual mix, the shadow of war is never far away in 2026 as we see the Russia-phobic and anti-Iranian NATO propaganda machinery surge into overdrive again. The best that we can hope for is that they desist with the idiocracy and that the hue & cry chokes off. Many folk songs give us a window into the psyches of different wartime periods and report the various impacts conflict had on the lives of everyday people in society at large, including the adverse psychological affects simply of living in uncertainty - under the dark, suffocating cloud ...

Rugged Roads North All-era traditional & modern folk selection. Alternative versions of many well-known traditional songs line up alongside more contemporary compositions. Spotlights on Judee Sills , Pete Coe , Bob Fox & Mary Black .   ^^free stream & download^^ TAP PLAY ONCE THEN TWICE to play here or tap building icon to enter the internet archives page (and our lives) & stream or d/l^^ Highlighting outstanding tracks from the amazing self-titled Mary Black album from 1983, including her wonderful rendition of My Donald  and the very Emmylou-esque Rose of Allendale . Californian singer-songwriter  Judee Sills had a promising career cut short all too soon by her death in 1979 having released only 2 albums in 1970 & 72. Tracks on here are from that period and centre around some great demo recordings which don't suffer from the over-production that blighted her first LP. The crudely recorded North Country is very rough but is a strong song worthy o...

  Song of the Labouring Classes An ode to working class struggle, labour rights & unionisation  History and solidarity through folk music and song.  "The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor" Thomas Donahue (AFL-CIO USA 1979-95).  The trials & tribulations of the lower classes have long been well documented and the only wonder is how come we've stood for it for so long (for millennia actually). Union solidarity and industrial action has always been the sole route to improvements in living & working standards, we achieve only when we fight to demand - they ain't never gonna just hand it out on a plate. The conditions are again ripe for a renewal of class consciousness with the clear & present threat of fascist takeover and overt narcissist authoritarianism. Right now people around the world are showing a renewed interest in counter-fascist ideology as they reach the logical conclusion that radical socialism is the only alternati...

Seeya on the Allendale Road English, Scottish and Northumbrian folk ballad selection. Forgotten gems alongside some popular folk standards. Oh for the love of wor lush and native Northumbrian fells... Corbridge to Lowgate & Plankey Mill, to Allenbanks & Ninebanks then back over to Catton & bonny Allendale.  We'll meet again hinny up on the Allendale Road... ^^free stream & download^^ TAP PLAY ONCE THEN TWICE to play here or tap building icon to enter the internet archives page (and our lives) & stream or d/l^^ The Devil's Water at Dilston by Annette Bushby Featuring some largely forgotten songs from two of Yorkshire's great balladeers Dave Burland and Tony Capstick . Burland's debut album  A Dalesman's Litany was released in 1970 and is an interesting collection of old & rare ballads. He came together with Richard Thompson  in 1992 to record New Saint George , a warning about the rise of nationalist fascism. Capstick's equally absorbin...

The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry and other legendary folk ballads  Starring three amazing and very distinct versions of The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry  song, beginning with Barbara Dickson 's version from 1996, the classic cut by Judy Collins from 1962 and concluding with a mighty June Tabor interpretation from 2011. Selkies are mythological shape shifting half seal - half human hybrids from Norse and Celtic traditions. These selkie folk (Scots) who wear seal skin could be benevolent or vengeful in equal measure but could be tricked into marrying humans by the hiding of their precious seal skins. Such unions were usually deemed to have ended in tragedy. Selection of artful & fiddle-heavy folk numbers. ^^stream & download^^ TAP PLAY ONCE THEN TWICE to play here or tap building icon to enter the internet archives page (and our lives) & stream or d/l^^   Barbara Dickson  made a return to singing traditional material in the mid-90'. Tracks from her 1...