Folking.com

The older brother of Brian Kennedy, born in Belfast as Martin Christopher Kennedy, Bap first found fame as frontman with Energy Orchard before embarking on a solo career, his debut album being produced by Steve Earle, working with, among others Mark Knopfler, Shane MacGowan and Van Morrison. Shortly after diagnosis, he died of pancreatic and bowel cancer in 2016. Now, ten yea...

Though they’ve been pen pals since 2021, she in Shetland, he in Southend-On-Sea, and she sang backing on a track on his most recent solo album, other than a co-write single in 2002, they’ve never recorded as a collaborative project. Thus, reflecting topics that are during their conversations with the tracks pieced together from emailed voice memo melodies  and  fragments of l...

Bonfire Radicals, the “exhilarating and exuberant” (Songlines ★★★★) six-piece [un]traditional folk band, release their third album, Spaghetti Junction, this September. Named after Birmingham’s most notorious stretch of motorway, it is a network of musical journeys that pulls traditions from Shetland to Brazil and the British Isles to the Balkans into...

Up bright and early for sadly the last day of this fabulous festival.

The Tuneless Choir was the first act we saw quite intrigued on the name. It is to bring people together, confident or not and give community singing a go. First initiated in Nottingham 10 years ago, the idea has spread and Hampshire’s Locks Heath and Solent branches are now a regular feature ...

As I have been struggling with a really painful left foot for a while, I had to come into the festival a little later and my first act of the day was An Audience with Spike Edney who was interviewed by Alex Dyke.  Alex is a former BBC Radio Solent presenter who has a knack of extracting information from his guests!  Very interesting!

The Joh...