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Folk rock

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Brit version, that it, much as I love the Byrds etc. That lovely period in the late 60s and 70s where folkies grew a rhythm section was just fab. Obviously Fairport were a huge driver of this, liberating folk solo artists and duos to make extraordinary music with a rock rhythm section whilst keeping the essence of the music. Post your favourites. (Yes, another list thread). Playlist to follow.

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  2. Well, I’m going with the obvious. This was Fairport at Cropredy in 2017 when they had pretty much all the still living former members come back for the 50th anniversary. They opened with this, including almost all the original members – sadly, for obvious reasons, Martin Lamble excepted. This is from the first album. The whole set was filmed and is on YouTube.

    https://youtu.be/EnbKzGZblrA?si=RCqDFe6uNxtOgU44

  3. As I was up in Newcastle yesterday for a tribute concert for a well liked Geordie musician George Weich there were several ex members of Hedgehog Pie playing at it so i think it’s opportune to post this.

    Not forgetting….. rather too many so I’ll let others suggest more.

      • One of the times I saw them was the evening after attending my cousin’s wedding in the afternoon where shall I say I’d imbibed rather well.

        When they came on stage there were twelve of them, each identical twins and doing the same movements. It wasn’t until I’d closed one eye that they reverted to a six piece.

  4. Arch traddie Anne Briggs’ unreleased-at-the-time 1973 album was unusual in featuring Steve Ashley’s Ragged Robin on several tracks. Ragged Robin never got a chance to record their own album, though Steve Ashley’s 1974 ‘Stroll On’ featured several of their numbers, including ‘Fire & Wine’ (which Anne B had recorded on her 1971 album ‘The Time Has Come’).

    This cover of ‘Sullivan’s John’, associated with Irish traveller Pecker Dunne (and previously recorded by ‘Sweeney’s Men’ in 1968 – indeed, released as a 45 in Britain as well as appearing on LP), illustrates well the Briggs/Robin folk-rock adventure.

  7. I’ll be watching with interest, as it’s a genre I should like more than I do. I have a fairly low tolerance for the strident vocal, sea shanty, hey nonny nonny end of things. I very much like the more melodic, Jansch/Drake end of things.

  9. Just listening to Katherine Priddy’s new album ‘These Frightening Machines’ which is rather bloody good!

    I have a feeling this thread is going to cost me £s

  12. I’m not as deeply knowledgeable as others here about folk rock but my interests largely centre on Fairports, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake and Davy Graham. I’m particularly fond of Mike Cooper’s ‘Trout Steel’ album from 1970, featuring as it does several members of Mike Westbrook’s band at the time. This track features Mike Osborne on alto:

  14. Is “No Roses” by Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band a folk album or a folk rock album? I don’t know.
    Good record, in any case.
    This song was also done by 10,000 Maniacs.

  16. Another from me. What I love about this is it starts very trad and ends up with rock n roll inviting wah wah solo, all underpinning a lyric which is hundreds of years old.

    The whole album is excellent.

    • I first heard The Clours about 38 years ago, on the way into work when Mike Read was on Radio 1, he was an unlikely champion of the band but enough so to get a thank you on their farewell tour T shirt. I was instantly hooked and I have been known to say that hearing this changed my life.

      Unfortunately, a “killer” album eluded them, some almost got there but they all have great tracks on them. This is a favourite from their later stuff, even if it’s nearly 20 years old.

  23. I suppose Pentangle must be included, though they were always folk-jazz, not folk-rock – but if all the folkhyphenwhatever categories are included they are the greatest of all, in my view.

    Here they are in one of their last filmed performances (of the original 1967-72 era), and the last one that’s extant – on Belgian TV in 1972. Renbourn got drunk halfway through the filming so they’re a rhombus here.

    • Point of order: do Show of Hands fulfil sufficiently the rock for folk rock? Yes, there are occasional rhythm sections on albums but I would say, even with added Miranda and Evan, they were essentially folk.
      But Knightley’s “new” band certainly does tick the rock in the equation:

      • This is where defining genres can get tricky. I’ve never considered SoH a folk group as such as they never did much ‘Trad Arr’ material, although their instrumentation, at least live, was acoustic based which obviously gives them a folky edge. However, Knightley’s songs in terms of lyrics and arrangements aren’t ‘folk’ I would argue, many being quite political and current in nature.

        • The Gresford Disaster mentioned above happened in 1934 and the song was published anonymously at the time it was political and current in nature.
          Does this make it less than a folk song,?Martin Carthy updates the words to ” A begging we will go” writing a new verse last month is it still a folk song?

          I’m not trying to make an argument as you say defining genres is tricky.

  26. I absolutely love the records made by the Oyster Band/Oysterband during the first 10 years of their existence – say 1983-1993.

    The title of “The Early Days of a Better Nation” comes from the writings of Alasdair Gray, if anyone’s interested.

    • An interesting comment, and one, I wonder, if based on then Alan Prosser mainly playing electric guitar as opposed to shifting more to acoustic, in later years. I don’t think they hit their stride until the 1990s and seldom disappointed, even right up to last years finale shows.

      • An interesting comment, and one, I wonder, if based on then Alan Prosser mainly playing electric guitar as opposed to shifting more to acoustic, in later years. I don’t think they hit their stride until the 1990s and seldom disappointed, even right up to last years finale shows.
        And, I would say, it was they, rather than, say, Fisherman’s Blues period Waterboys that begat the Levellers who certainly fulfil a folk-rock hall of fame role.

          • To be a folk-rock band, I would probably argue yes, but it is a wavy line, as the acoustic Levellers and the acoustic Oysterband are still folk-rock, at least to me. Maybe a drumkit is the pre-requisite. Or electric bass?
            Discuss?

            • By my definition it’s a rock rhythm section, so electric bass and guitar plus drums, and electric instruments/close mic’d for things like mandolin or fiddle. Without that it’s folk music which is great but it don’t rock.

              Musically, for me, it should reference the more modal sounda of British folk music rather than the 3 cowboy chord voices of American folk music.

              Of course this is just a high level view – like the famous definition of porn. I know it when I hear it.

  27. Dando Shaft were actually a band from Coventry whose first album, “An Evening With…”, (1970) is worth investigating. They seemed to have stayed in the folk scene for years after, but I am not familiar with that work.

  31. The ‘Dust On The Nettles – A Journey Through The British Underground Folk Scene 1967-72’ 3 CD compilation on Cherry Red’s Grapefruit imprint is a pretty good primer:

  33. Saw these a couple of times.

    The drummer would play the William Tell Overture on his head, he went on to join Gryphon. I had a chat with him as we walked back to the bus after a Gryphon concert at the Union Chapel a few years back. He’d just come along to watch.


  34. False Lights, put together by Jim Moray & Sam Carter made 2 decent albums Salvor (2015) and Harmonograph (2018). I remember when they formeed Moray said something like “Why does everyone assume a new folk-rock band will be influenced by Fairport Converntion? We grew up listening to Radiohead”. I can hear elements of that in their 2 albums. I think they found it too costly to keep a 6-piece band on the road. Both albums are worth a listen

  35. I’ve managed to find the Swarb quote I was looking for.

    ” You know if you’re singing about a bloke having his head chopped off, or a girl fucking her brother and having a baby and the brother getting pissed off and cutting her guts open and stamping on the baby and killing his sister – now that’s a fantastic story by any standards, whether it’s told in a pub or on Broadway. Having to work with a story line like that with acoustic instruments wouldn’t be half as potent dramatically as saying the same things electrically “

  36. Those British folk rock bands were making waves throughout Europe in the 1970s and folk bands began to sound much fresher and more modern up here in Scandinavia.

    Some got decidedly proggy and jazzy

    And others downright jazzy and funky.

    In 1996, Garmarna gave this Swedish medieval ballad a very effective, rocky, electronic makeover

    Modern Nordic folk rock in 2026 has all got all black metallic and weird and suffers from severe white nighty madness…

  38. I was looking through the AW Archives and chanced upon this enjoyable review by @Retropath2 of a gig by THE MEN THEY COULDN’T HANG.

    A Night Out with The Men They Couldn’t Hang

    And that led me to this obituary for Stefan Cush who died of a heart attack at the age of 60 in 2021

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/feb/06/stefan-cush-singer-for-the-men-they-couldnt-hang-dies-aged-60

    That led me to this Retropath2 FOLK ROCK thread from 2022.

    Folk rock ahoy!!!!

    Several names we’ve mentioned here and several we haven’t.

      • Very easily done, @Twang

        Take a week’s holiday or have a few days illness and one can miss a lot on the AW.

        I’m listening to the playlist now and there are lots of artists I want to hear more of.

        Dare I suggest that Polly Jean is almost a folk rocker at times?

        That tune is from Dark River, a film by Clio Barnard.

        PJ has an interest in history that any folkie would identify with.

  42. It would be a shame if @Twang was denied the hamper so:

    I saw Olivia Chaney the other week at the Songs of Martin Carthy (one of my regrets I never saw Martin playing electric) and was listening to Offa Rex (The Decemberists and Olivia) on the drive home last night.

    Here’s Bonny May (does not contain a milk-white steed)

  43. I was listening to the playlist from the previous Folk Rock thread and discovered this Italian combo playing Norwegian Reggaeton.

    I fear we may have gone just slightly off-piste.

    • I saw him last night with Merry Hell and yes, he is a great player. We were at the recently reopened Blandford Forum Corn Exchange, the nearest gig to us but still a 2 hour drive. A nice evening but I feel that Merry Hell are better suited to standing gigs and festivals.

  46. An interesting article from the GUARDIAN about how seeing Pentangle live in 2008 was a life-changing experience for Zakia Sewell.

    I was 15 years old; at that fumbling, awkward age on the precipice of adulthood, desperately trying to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and where I belonged in the world. I grew up feeling perpetually “in-between”: half-white, half-black; half-British, half-Caribbean, and on the faultline between what sometimes felt like two worlds at war.

    One night in 2008 my dad took me to see Pentangle play at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. The band had risen to fame in the late 60s, known for fusing British folk melodies with blues and jazz syncopation. I must have stood out in the crowd – among the bearded men in sandals and socks – with my big hoop earrings and scraped-back hair. And although I dragged my feet on the way in, when I stepped out of the concert later that auspicious summer’s evening, I was changed for ever.

    https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/mar/14/my-cultural-awakening-pentangle-helped-me-find-my-place-as-a-person-of-colour-in-britain

    Other than Jacqui, who else was in the band in 2008?

    I just read on wiki to my surprise that in 2008 the original band reformed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentangle_(band)

    They appeared on Later…..with Jools Holland

  49. Here’s a curio – a British Isles (for wont of a better expression) artist with an electric guitar tackling a Pete Seeger song – ‘Bells of Rhymney’ – associated with the US variant of folk-rock in the 60s. Dick’s version owes nothing to the Byrds, though. From an early 2000s Seeger tribute album.

  50. Twang knows folk rock when he hears it… This might fall within the outer boundaries. We must await his judgement. It’s certainly a late masterpiece, from Lal Waterson and her son Oliver – voice and electric guitars.

  51. Rather like the end point of 70s jazz fusion (which died on Channel 4 in those blank ad breaks in the early 80s, when there no ads but plenty of dreadful noodly, wishy-washy jazz-fusion-marshmallow music), the trajectory of ‘pure 70s folk rock’, begun in 1969 by Fairport Convention, died on Top of the Pops in 1979 with this.

  53. Many years ago I was asked to burn a cd with classical music playing for a friend’s wedding for people to listen to while waiting. I put one together and for my amusement put this track “Haste to the Wedding” from the Compleat Dancing Master on at the end for my own amusement.

    The wait took longer than anticipated and this track suddenly burst forth over the P A people who had been chatting etc looked up at the speakers as the track played. A friend who was playing guitar for the wedding looked at me and mouthed “That’s you isn’t it” lots of people were smiling.

    I enjoyed it so much I had it as the lead out at our wedding

  54. Just when I thought that Folk Rock was done and dusted for this time, I stumbled across these lists by a Canadian journalist and musician, Allister Thompson. He mentions many artists that we’ve talked about and quite a few that we haven’t.

    https://makeyourowntaste.com/2013/09/03/12-essential-british-1980s-folk-rock-albums/

    https://makeyourowntaste.com/2013/08/30/12-essential-british-1970s-folk-rock-albums/

    https://makeyourowntaste.com/2013/09/04/10-essential-post-1990-british-folk-rock-albums/

    Maybe this thread needs a sequel @Twang….

    There seems to be a lot more to listen to. I’m particularly curious about the what happened after that notorious Day Trip to Bangor, I suspect there are several folk rock bangers from the 90s and beyond…

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