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Nowt So Good'll Pass Bob Fox & Stu Luckley (1978) The
first of two albums described as 'classic' by Colin Irwin in
Melody Maker
a brand new double CD re-recording of the entire album as part of the 30th Anniversary tour "Nowt So Good'll Happen Again!" with some bonus tracks previously unrecorded. Click HERE for details
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Wish We Never Had Parted Bob Fox & Stu Luckley (1982) The
second of the two 'classic' albums and also no longer available Now available -"THIRTY YEARS ON" - a brand new double CD re-recording of the entire album as part of the 30th Anniversary tour "Nowt So Good'll Happen Again!" with some bonus tracks previously unrecorded. Click HERE for details
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Track List 1 Celebrated Working Man/Oakey's Strike Evictions 15 Farewll Johnny Miner 16 The Miner's Lifeguard |
How
Are You Off For Coals? FECD111
Whilst
working as Music Development Worker for Easington District Council
Bob was inspired by the discovery of a photographic archive to
produce a songs/slide show with Benny Graham celebrating the rich
and varied culture of the coal mining communities of Durham and
Northumberland. This project brought Bob back to recording after almost 15 years when he and Benny Graham produced this CD collection of mining songs.
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 Track List 1 Bonny Gateshead Lass |
Box
Of Gold FECD124
This CD contains a selection of songs from the two 'classic' vinyl albums re-recorded at Fellside studios in Workington to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of "Nowt So Good'll Pass."
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Track List 1 The Road to the North |
Dreams
Never Leave You WRCD035
As
a result of highly successful appearances as "special
guest" on the FAIRPORT CONVENTION Y2K Tour Bob
recorded his first ever solo album at Woodworm Studios with
Gerry Conway and Dave Pegg playing percussion and bass on
all tracks and other Fairport members guesting throughout
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Track List
1 Jack Crawford
2 A U Hinny Burd
3 Going To The Mine
4 Here's The Tender Coming
5 Bonny Gateshead Lass
6 Snow It Melts The Soonest
7 The Row In The Gutter
8 Oakey's Strike Evictions
9 Sair Fyel'd Hinny
10 Shoemaker
11 The South Medomsley Strike
12 Trousers and Coverlets
13 Guard Your Man Well
14 Byker Hill
Dark
To The Sky MWMCD SP54
The
Hush featuring Bob Fox (2002)
This
one is enough to get Grandad out of his grave – dancing!
Bob
Fox and Jed Grimes put electric guitars, saxophone, percussion
and a load more into a collection of the North-East’s finest
folk songs. Traditionals such as Here’s the Tender Coming and
contemporaries, including three from the pen of Johnny Handle provide
the high quality material.
Bob
Fox's expressive, supple voice delivers every time, especially on
the beautiful Sair Fyel'd Hinny where it's borne along by Graham
Wood's ethereal piano. Paul Smith (drums/percussion) and
Neil Harland (electric/double bass) make up the tightest rhythm
section you could wish for and all topped off with
Gary
Linsley's tasteful sax playing. On
the finisher, Grimes's Fender Strat takes Byker Hill into the
purest axe-fuelled rock territory, reclaiming its anthemic
status
along the way.
If
there is only one electrically enhanced “folk” album you
buy
this year, then make it this one.
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Track List
1 Virginnia
2 My Love is in America
3 The Whitby Tailor
4 Life is not kind to the
drinking man
5 Dance to your daddy
6 Shoals of herring
7 She waits and weeps
8 Peppers and tomatoes
9 Child of mine
10 The last of the widows
11 Bonny at morn
Borrowed
Moments TSCD 544
Bob
Fox (2003)
Bob's first release for Topic Records released on 3rd September 2003 backed by some fine musicians, and with a Celtic feel to some of the tracks, this album is full of lyrical songs with strong, narrative lyrics.
Each song has a 'proper' tale to tell
and deals with life events trivial and significant, personal
and global, the essence of all folk music.
Bob
plays acoustic guitar, bouzouki & piano, annA
rydeR piano accordion and muted trumpet, Norman
Holmes whistle and flute, Neil Harland double bass,
and
Chuck Fleming plays viola.
The
sound is pure and very acoustic with touches of Celtic because
of the whistles, flutes and piano accordion.
This
is a finely produced and crafted album, which will really appeal
to lovers of gentle, thoughtful English folk music.
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Track List
1 One Miner's Life
2 Still Growing
3 All In A Day
4 Taking On Men
5 Trooper Cut Down
6 Broomfield Wager
7 Recruited Collier
8 Diamond/Song Of The Whale
9 Golden Vanity
10 Only Remembered
The
Blast TSCD 555
Bob
Fox (2006)
The
last album Bob released featured a ‘backing band’ but on
this starkly contrasting recording it’s just the man himself accompanied
by guitar, produced by John Tams.
Fox
is without doubt one of the finest singers in Britain and for
those of us that have followed his career it will come as no
surprise that the accolades will come thick and fast. From
a technical perspective his guitar playing knows no
bounds
and at times is quite astonishing filling gaps and enhancing
every syllable as if strategically placed like a soldier
on military manoeuvre.
That’s
not to say the music’s soulless, far from it in fact for
this is a thinking man’s musician who makes every note
count. It's thought provoking and compelling listening and
although indulgence isn’t a word that readily springs
to
mind when referring to a Bob Fox recording I hope that many
more artists take note of how it should be done.
"At last, the record we've been waiting for from Bob, it's the sound we hear in live performance, that astonishing guitar technique coupled with one of England's finest voices." Ralph McTell
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Track List
1 Rocking Chair
2 Bonny Gateshead Lass
3 Dance To Your Daddy
4 Collier Laddies Wife
5 Born At The Right Time
6 Big River
7 Pitman And the Blacking
8 Galway Shawl
9 Where My Heart Lives
10 Sally Wheatley
11 Devil's Ground
12 Rambling Rover
13 Meet Me On The Corner
14 Monday Monday
5
Star B & B
Billy
Mitchell & Bob Fox (2006)
Blimey these Geordie lads believe in working at break-neck speed!
It was only in October 2006 that I was discussing with Billy and Bob that they should record an album together. Well, blow me down if they haven’t succeeded and, as you’d expect the quality is exceptional.
On the back of a twenty-date tour together that should have been two separate performances culminating with the pair playing together for a 20 minute set they were already joining each other on over 90% of the evening. Not bad going I think you’d agree.
Basically a ‘best of…’ this recording provides the listener with a veritable smorgasbord including ‘Rocking Chair’, ‘Dance To Your Daddy’ topped nicely with the tune ‘The Spanish Cloak’, Jimmy Nail’s tremendous nostalgic view of the Tyne ‘Big River’, ‘Sally Wheatley’ and Billy’s ‘The Devil’s Ground’.
Billy
and Bob’s vocal performances aren’t so much good as towering
and while folk music has ambassadors like these let’s
count ourselves lucky that they have decided to settle in
our camp.
A round of applause should also go to Ron Angus who captured that real essence of a ‘live’ performance.
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The
Song of Steel
The
Don Valley between Sheffield and Rotherham was once full
of steelworks and many thousands of families relied on steel
for their living. The Song of Steel offers a glimpse inside the
lives of men and women who worked in the industry. In
its heyday the city thumped to the sound of heavy drop
forges
working night and day, pub tables had guard rails to stop
glasses vibrating onto the floor, and the air was black with
dirt from the factory chimneys. Interviewer Vince Hunt talked
to more than forty men and women who tell of hard shifts
working alongside red-hot furnaces and the humour
and
stoicism that enabled them to survive such a world.
Many
of the stories are about the Steel, Peach and Tozer
steelworks in Rotherham.
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The
second of the new Radio Ballads concerns people living with
HIV/AIDS.
Six
women and men talk candidly about life with the virus - how
they discovered they were HIV-positive, the effect the drugs
have on them, and how people react when they disclose their
connection with the virus. The ten outstanding original songs
inspired by the interviews are personal and poignant, touching
on the courage as well as the tragedy, the shame and
the prejudice experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS. The
stories featured in this ballad are all highly individual. Cecilia
is a Ugandan woman who fled her home country and contracted
HIV/AIDS while in the UK; Betty Feldman speaks
of
her actor son who died of the virus; Ann Marie, a white South
African, lost her British husband to the illness then discovered
that he'd passed it on to her.
Sophie discovered she
was HIV-positive on her graduation day and went on to marry
her boyfriend, with whom she hopes to have children;
Maxwell,
a teenage schoolboy in London, has a father who is
also HIV-positive and Lynn, in her early twenties, contracted the
virus through a blood transfusion.The battle to find a cure for
HIV/AIDS has been one of the most urgent ongoing areas of medical
research in recent years; the support and medicine now available
helps prolong patients' lives beyond expectation.
This
Radio Ballad illustrates some of the issues surrounding the
condition.
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The
Horn of the Hunter
Hunting
with hounds has become one of the most controversial debates
in British life in recent years. Fox hunting was made illegal
last year and, though public debate has to some extent died
down since the time of the ban, the issues are still contentious
for many people. Those who hunt say the ban has
destroyed
rural livelihoods and traditional practices that are centuries
old. Those opposed say hunting is a cruel and unnecessary
practice that leads to the savage deaths of countless
foxes and hares each year.
The
Horn of the Hunter features opinions from all sides of the debate,
drawn from extensive interviews with both pro- and anti-hunt
supporters across the UK.
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Swings and Roundabouts
The
travelling showmen and women who run Britain's fairgrounds
live within their own self-contained community, with
their own seasons, rhythm of life, codes of behaviour and
language. The fourth in the series of 2006 Radio Ballads, Swings
and Roundabouts paints a musical and anecdotal
portrait
of the people who travel the country building and re-building
their rides, always looking to attract customers to
their machines.
"This
was a fascinating programme to make as a picture built up
of the close-knit showmen and women community," said producer
John Leonard. "Traditional fairground families can trace
their lineage back six centuries - in some cases, back to
the wandering minstrels."
One
fascinating ritual of the fairgrounds inspired Edinburgh songwriter
Karine Polwart to write the song Luck Money, which tells
how the first money taken on a new ride is then nailed or screwed
to it, to bring luck, and that money stays on the ride throughout
its life, being passed to a new owner if it is sold.
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Thirty Years of Conflict
Disagreements
between the Protestant and Catholic communities
in Northern Ireland have existed for centuries, but
the problems escalated into all-out conflict in the late 1960s
when the British army became involved. Since then,
thousands
of people have died in bombings and shootings carried
out by both sides. Taking Bloody Sunday as a key turning
point in The Troubles and using music as the linking thread,
this Ballad tells personal stories from three decades of
conflict in Northern Ireland..People
from both traditions recount how the Troubles have affected
them and their communities. Radio Foyle presenter and
musician Gerry Anderson tells of the bombs he's survived
in
the place he dubbed 'Stroke City' (Derry/Londonderry) and, in
a particularly moving sequence, survivors of the Miami
Showband tell their stories of the day in 1975 when three
of the band were murdered by terrorists.
Both
these accounts inspired powerful songs from songwriter
Jez
Lowe.
The
programme also considers how music has been used as a
force for peace, to pull the two communities together. Veteran
Civil Rights activist and peace campaigner Tommy
Sands contributes several songs to the Ballad including
the
finale, Carry On, which he sang with politicians outside Stormont
in the days leading up to the signing of the Good
Friday Agreement in 1998. Thirty Years of Conflict is a Radio
Ballad full of harrowing stories that stands as a
testament
to the power of music.
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The Ballad of the Big Ships
The
final programme in the 2006 Radio Ballads series examines the
lives of shipbuilders from Tyne and Wear and the Clyde, two
regions with a proud maritime history. Shipbuilding has been
in the blood for generations on these rivers, although the
heyday for both communities is well in the past.
The
men and women in The Ballad of the Big Ships talk about how
building ships has driven their lives, their hopes, their humour
and their culture.
The
Ballad covers all aspects of shipbuilding, from the dirty
jobs: plating, welding and riveting - known as the black
trades' - to the finishing and launch. It’s brutal work, welding
steel as icy winds blow in from the river; uncomfortable, uncertain
and dangerous, yet these people's anecdotes reveal
how
humans look for the funny side of such an existence.
Both
sets of interviewees - Geordies and Glaswegians - share an
unbreakable gift to see the funny side of life, however bleak it
appears. Former Glasgow shipyard worker turned poet Brian
Whittingham reads ‘The Apprentice’ about his memories of working
as a young lad in the yards and ‘The Great Voltaire’
about
the amateur turns who would entertain their colleagues with
magic shows, tricks or singing. Among the horror stories of asbestosis
and the terrible conditions under which shipworkers toil,
it's the resilience and creativity of the men and women who contributed
to The Ballad of the Big Ships which leaves a lasting emotional
impression.
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The Songs of the Radio Ballads
A special album of 'songs only' from the BBC Radio 2 documentary series
The 2006 Radio Ballads, a
stand-alone companion piece to the six-CD Radio Ballads collection.
The documentary series was built on interviews about
issues of our time – hunting with hounds, the decline of
the steel and shipbuilding industries, living with HIV/AIDS, the
lives of the showmen and women of the travelling fairgrounds
and how music attempted to heal Northern Ireland's
Troubles.
The
songs were inspired by and written from accounts of actual
life experience, and speech and song were interwoven to
create a rarely-attempted self-narrating storytelling style in
the Ballads.
Musical
Director John Tams and series music producer Andy
Seward have gone back and stripped out the speech so the
songs stand alone in their own right. The twenty songs on this
album have been drawn from across the Ballads series and represent
just one-third of the songs specially commissioned
for
this remarkable and critically acclaimed radio series.
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