folk

We don’t do next-door very well in pop journalism. If we’re celebrating the back streets of Liverpool, it’s probably because they’re the roads that once led to Shea Stadium. Which is a strange thing, because small-scale, local and intimate…

In 1992 Kate Rusby was, you fondly imagine, a nervy teenager who couldn’t have dreamed of the outstanding career that lay ahead. The notion of a gentle young singer from Yorkshire with a mostly traditional repertoire lighting up a largely…

Had they begun in the mid-1970s, a time when the public seemed rather taken with weathered-yet-fiery acoustic music, Show of Hands would surely have been as massive as Steeleye Span. Instead, the duo of Steve Knightley and Phil Beer came…