Just a short note this month, but it’s a really exciting one: today marks the release of the first single from Ocean Big & Wide, the debut album by Emily Ashberry - which will come out on Folkroom Records on October 23rd. You can pre-order your copy here today.

Folkroom doesn’t put out a lot of records, so I hope you’ll understand how passionate I am about the few that do come out on this little label. Emily is no exception - one of the first acts to really capture my heart after I moved the Folkroom operation to Nottingham, Emily’s voice - both as a singer and as a songwriter - is absolutely gorgeous.

Take the lead single from this album, which you can hear today on all good streaming services (and also Spotify). ‘The Bee Charmer’ is inspired by the 1980s novel and iconic slice of queer Americana, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Emily somehow captures everything she loves about the film’s central relationship, instilling the song with the warmth of the American South without losing her identity as a young British songwriter. It’s particularly fitting, given Ocean Big & Wide will explore the relationship between English folk and the music of Appalachia.1

I hope you’ll take a moment today to listen to ‘The Bee Charmer’ and, hopefully, pre-order Emily’s wonderful new album over on the Folkroom Records Bandcamp. If you’re based in Nottingham and want to catch Emily in person, she’ll be headlining a small gig in the Rescue Rooms bar tonight - I hope to see you there!

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Explore all our upcoming gigs here

While the rest of the festival is filled with familiar covers and local jam bands, the Folkroom tent is my chance to share the musicians I love with audiences they might otherwise not reach. It is a joy: just shy of 48 hours of community. I have seen songs played live for the first time, unexpected collaborations between friends who barely know one another, and, last year, I saw a stormtrooper take a break from her patrol with Darth Vader to engage in a little morris dancing.

There is another benefit to Home Farm that seems, perhaps, so obvious that I frequently don’t even mention it when pitching the festival to new acts: it is outside.

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God knows exactly what it is that makes an outdoor gig so much fun, but I’ve long been enamoured by the opportunity to listen to music in the company of fresh air and a gentle breeze; to twist broken grass between my fingers as I lie on my back, the sun warm on my face, an unfamiliar song in my ears.

The Romantic in me might be tempted to suggest that folk music is meant to be heard in the fields - that it is the music of the working class, sung as they toiled to bring the crop in. So much of this genre concerns itself with the changing of the seasons, and it makes sense to immerse oneself in nature to best enjoy the songs. But this, of course, is bollocks. Folk ballads were just as readily shared in pubs, which are also often much better suited to live music, what with their functioning plumbing and, you know, ceilings. And how much does a modern festival site reflect the concept of nature anyway? Open bodies of water are cordoned off to avoid accidental drownings by young men wasted on Class A drugs and C-list ciders. You are more likely to find a bison burger than experience a chance encounter with a badger. Even the sunset is obscured by a long-drop toilet with a solid wall of stench around it. So what makes outdoor gigs so irresistible?

I think it is simply this: outdoor gigs place us in an environment incongruous to our normal listening habits. We are not locked in by the walls of our house, the low, dark ceiling of a venue, or the noise-cancelling security of our headphones. Instead, we experience live music in an unfamiliar setting, which, in turn, allows us to approach it from a different perspective. It’s the same reason I’ve always enjoyed hosting gigs in toy museums, or on boats. In many ways, it’s the reason that I listen to music in the first place: what if I could view the world just slightly differently? What then?

Anyway, on a completely unrelated note, I’m putting on two outdoor folk gigs this summer, and I’d like you to come. This is something of a new venture for Folkroom, but it’s very much an idea I’d like to explore more in the future - so if you’d like to see more small-ish outdoor gigs happening in Nottingham, please do buy tickets to one or both of the below, and show me that it’s worth the not inconsiderable faff involved in putting them on!

First up, on July 18th, Folkroom is teaming up with our pals Nest Collective to put on Rachel Sermanni at Stonebridge City Farm. This is a delight for so many reasons - first and foremost, Rachel is a truly wonderful singer-songwriter. Her music has an easy charm to it, and I honestly can’t think of many acts I’d rather listen to as the sun set and the light began to fade from the sky on a warm summer’s eve. Our dear friends Catmilk will be supporting, too, so you’re in good hands all evening.

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I’m also excited to work with Stonebridge City Farm - a community farming project that does incredible things for so many underserved groups in Nottingham. The farm is a charity, and as you might expect, it isn’t cheap to run a farm at the best of times - let alone in the middle of a city. Bar sales on the night will support keeping the farm open, allowing many more people to enjoy its charms in the future. Tickets are available here.

And good news for our lingering followers from London and Brighton - Nest Collective are also hosting Rachel for gigs in both those cities. On Friday July 10th, they’ll be at Cody Dock in London; the next day, The Earthship on the edge of Brighton. Ceitidh Mac supports for both of these.

Then, on August 2nd, Folkroom will play host to the brilliant Fyfe Dangerfield, formerly of Guillemots. We’ll be teaming up with The Grove for this, hosting the gig in the heart of Sneinton Market, on the edge of Nottingham’s city centre.

Through the Windowpane, the debut album by Guillemots, was released 20 years ago this summer, and remains one of the most ambitious and more brilliantly realised records of the 21st century. Fyfe put out three more albums with the band, as well as a critically acclaimed solo album in 2010. That same year, his cover of Billy Joel’s ‘She’s Always a Woman’ broke through into the UK Top 10 singles chart off the back of its appearance in a John Lewis advert.

This gig is going to be gorgeous - Cam from The Grove always makes his gigs sound phenomenal, and we’ll have delicious food available from Forager’s Kitchen. There are two supports coming along for the ride too, who we’ll be announcing shortly. Early bird tickets are available for this gig right now for just £17 - but there’s only twenty of them, so snatch yours up while you can. After that, the second release tickets will set you back a still very reasonable £20.

Despite Folkroom’s forays outside this summer, most of our gigs are still indoors in traditional venues, I swear! Last month saw the announcement of five new Peggy’s Skylight gigs. There’ll be headline spots for Paul Mosley and Jack Harris, Muco, Lemoncello, Rachel Newton and Kirsty Merryn.

Just yesterday, we announced a new gig at The Grove for George Boomsma, a singer-songwriter whose music has a distinctly classic feel to it - catchy melodies, and a gorgeous velveteen voice.

On a Folkroom-adjacent note, I’ve also revived my distinctly-not-folk sister promoter, Crocodile Death Roll, to host pop heroes Big Fear for the Nottingham leg of their upcoming tour.

There’s plenty more to come, too - this time next month you’ll be hearing about a couple of very fun gigs. A two-word teaser for one: Robin Hood.

For now, please accept my sincere thanks for following Folkroom and supporting me as I put on bigger and more ambitious gigs than ever before. Please, for the love of god, continue to buy tickets to live music! Everything I’ve got on sale is below - treat yourself, or a loved one, or eight loved ones, and keep live music alive!

June 12th-14th - Home Farm Festival (Saturday and Weekender tickets sold out, Friday and Sunday day tickets still available) - TICKETS

June 14th - Steve Turner + Dan Chapman @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

July 18th - Rachel Sermanni + Catmilk @ Stonebridge City Farm, Nottingham - TICKETS

August 2nd - Fyfe Dangerfield + support @ Sneinton Market Avenues, Nottingham - TICKETS

August 9th - Paul Mosley & Jack Harris @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

September 13th - Muco + False Idah @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

September 26th - George Boomsma + Amy May Ellis @ The Grove, Nottingham - TICKETS

October 1st - Big Fear + support @ The Grove, Nottingham - TICKETS

October 11th - Lemoncello + Fionnuala Mary Bradbury @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

November 8th - Rachel Newton + Catch the Sparrow @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

December 13th - Kirsty Merryn + Chris Avery @ Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham - TICKETS

Sometimes, though, opportunities arise, and I find it hard to say no. Here is the story of how I came to put on five gigs in May (and how you can make it worth my exhaustion).

The one guaranteed Folkroom event in any month is my regular engagement at Peggy’s Skylight, the gorgeous jazz club in the centre of Nottingham that feels like it’s been pulled directly from the streets of Chicago. Knowing that I have a spot to fill on the second Sunday of every month, I’m able to book early - which is useful, as many of the busiest folk musicians in the UK tend to book their tours a year in advance. Currently, I know who is headlining every Peggy’s gig I’m putting on, right up to June 2027.

When Mikey Kenney played a solo set at Peggy’s in April 2025, I was mesmerised by his performance - he’s one of the finest fiddle players I’ve seen perform, and I knew I wanted to see more. Mikey, too, was enamoured - with the venue, with the audience - and before the night was out, we had not only made initial plans for his full trio to play a gig in May 2026, but had even agreed on our ideal support act - the wonderful Rosie Brownhill. A year later, these plans will finally be realised on May 10th - this Sunday. You can buy your tickets here.

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When I’m not hosting gigs at Peggy’s, I usually opt to work with The Grove. A cosy 60-capacity spot in Sneinton Market, Nottingham’s creative hub, The Grove is run by Cameron Worne. Cam is as indispensable to the Nottingham music scene as Robin Hood is to its international tourism. He runs the venue, sound engineers as well as anyone in the city, and performs in roughly half the bands in town, too. Sometimes, he’ll message me and ask for my thoughts on a folk act that has asked to play at his venue. A few months ago, he did this for Michael McGovern - and I cheekily snapped up the opportunity, and decided to put the gig on myself.

Michael is a phenomenal singer-songwriter. He had a viral moment early this year when Paul Mescal championed his song ‘Evelyn’ during the Hamnet press tour - and rightfully so. ‘Evelyn’ is one of those love songs that sounds like a standard the moment it’s released. It recalls early Damien Rice, or perhaps a less gruff Leonard Cohen. What’s more, it’s clear that Michael is also a great champion of the musical community in his native Scotland. He has written with and performed in Scott C. Park's band, whom he also brings along as support for our show on May 13th. I’ve added the wonderful Eleanor McGregor to open the show. You can buy your tickets for Michael’s gig here.

Most of my bookings come from direct approaches by artists’ agents - but with so few gigs to fill, I usually end up putting on acts I’ve already been listening to for some time. When Chris Brain’s agent approached me looking for a Nottingham spot for Chris’s upcoming album tour, I leapt at the chance - I’ve been trying to make a gig with Chris work for almost seven years now. He is one of the most distinct voices in English folk music right now - a singer who has frequently been compared to Nick Drake, but who grows more distinct, more mature as a writer and performer, with each new record. And so I booked Chris in, despite having a gig already set for three days earlier. Chris Brain plays The Grove on May 16th, supported by Zoe Cure. The last few tickets are available here.

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And at this point, really, I should have stopped. Three gigs in a month is plenty. Except for two things: firstly, I forgot to mention that Cam and I had been working to bring a couple of great London-based acts to The Grove - Scottish band Neev, and Ukrainian singer-songwriter Maria Mahailik. I’ve always been intrigued by the magical musical barrier that is the M25. It is incredibly difficult for small, independent artists from outside of London to book gigs inside the city - and it often seems equally difficult for independent artists in London to find decent gigs anywhere else in the UK. Much of this comes down to the exorbitant prices of public transport in the UK, making travel to gigs difficult for young artists. There is also the challenge of finding support slots that can cover these costs, when most cities have so many great local acts who are willing to play for lower fees.

Cam and I decided to combine our desire to host Neev and Maria with my own interest in hosting my first local headliner since starting Folkroom events in Nottingham. I called on Posturing, a phenomenal act who had yet to headline in the city. Their cinematic folk is such a gorgeous fit for Folkroom, and also big enough that it wouldn’t feel rude bringing in a band like Neev to play just before them. Of all the shows I’m hosting in May, it’s possible that I’m most excited for this gig, on May 28th - it feels the closest in spirit to Folkroom’s early incarnation as a hub for new, independent artists. Tickets are here, and I’d love to fill the place out!

And then, finally, I was checking the Folkroom inbox back in January, all these gigs already booked and ready to go, when I spotted an unexpected name among the senders: Joseph Decosimo. I clicked on the email as fast as my cursor would allow.

You see, I knew Joseph Decosimo’s name because I already had a record of his sitting on my shelf. And I knew how rare an opportunity it was to see him play live - let alone to host the gig myself - because I had bought that record directly from his record label, who had shipped it over from America for me.

Joseph Decosimo is an American old-time folk musician. A banjo, fiddle and guitar player whose album While You Were Slumbering was one of my favourite albums of 2022. He hadn’t toured the UK in over a decade, and now here he was in my inbox, looking for gigs to help justify a trip to play at Fire in the Mountain festival. He had seen Folkroom listed among the 2025 tour dates of fellow old-time folk luminary Riley Baugus, and wondered if I might be open to hosting him in Nottingham. I was, though making it happen was a bigger challenge, given the limited dates Joseph had available and the fact that I already had four other gigs in the period he was booking. Still, what’s the point of being a promoter if you can’t take advantage of an unsolicited email from one of your favourite acts? Joseph Decosimo plays The Grove on January 23rd. Tickets are available here. I asked him if he had any thoughts on support, and he said ‘Rosie Brownhill’ - so Rosie gets her second support slot of the month, alongside Folkroom favourite Emily Ashberry.

And that’s my May. It can be your May too, if you fancy it - all the ticket links are there for you to go crazy on. It’s my busiest month for gigs since before the pandemic, and I’m thrilled that tickets have been flying out the door for all of them. And of course, the year continues to trundle along from there. In June, Folkroom hosts Steve Turner at Peggy’s Skylight. I’ve just announced a show for Rachel Sermanni, held on Stonebridge City Farm in collaboration with Nest Collective - one of two outdoor shows I’m working on hosting in Nottingham this summer. More news on that in next month’s newsletter, as well as a wealth of new Peggy’s Skylight gigs! Until then, I hope to see you at one of my many, many May gigs.

Stephen

A few months ago, I received an email from Satnam Galsian, a folk singer I had just booked for a gig that fell on March 8th 2026. There was a postscript:

It was kind of Satnam to notice, I replied. But also, I had to confess, it was entirely by accident. Folkroom has marked International Women’s Day with gigs in the past, but on this particular occasion, our regular monthly slot had just happened to fall on March 8th, and I had just happened to book two women to play it.

Still, the fact that my gig featured an all-women bill was not without design. I am always making a conscious effort to promote gender equity in my bookings for Folkroom events. I am all too aware of the number of folk gigs I have been to in the past where the line-up is entirely men and their guitars.

Folk music remains as challenging a genre for female musicians to navigate as any other. The very language used to describe women in the genre works to separate women from their male counterparts. ‘Singer-songwriter’ fits the bill perfectly well, but we’ll frequently see women described as ‘songstresses’, as though their ability to write is tied solely and inextricably to their gender.

Even at my own events, I have been aware of regular audience members who have pushed - or fully crossed - the boundaries of appropriate behaviour with performers. The septagenarian who said ‘If I were twenty years younger…’ to a teenage singer, leaving the sentence hanging, certain not to end with ‘…I would still be thirty years your senior, but would perhaps have a better sense of consent and appropriate boundaries.’

I don’t need to speak to the difficulties women face as musicians (or as audience members at gigs). If you identify as a woman yourself, you’ll be well aware of them. If you don’t, well, there are plenty of voices speaking from first-hand experience.

My only role - as a programmer, and as an audience member - is to do whatever I can to make Folkroom events (or any other space I’m in) as safe and inclusive as possible for everybody in attendance.

Which is why I continue to work towards fair representation of different backgrounds across Folkroom events - be those gender, socio-economic, disability, racial or ethnic backgrounds. Folk music has a curious history, being the music of the working people that has, for over a hundred years now, been gathered and documented predominantly by white men from relatively privileged backgrounds. And hey, look. Here I am, writing about ‘modern folk’, putting on gigs that will, in their own small way, help to determine which artists move forward to stake their claim in the future of the genre.

Below, you’ll see that my work is not yet done. We have some fantastic gigs coming up over the coming months. A lot of the headliners are men. Great acts! Playing great music! I’d love you to come and see them all. But here’s the deal: I’ll also keep working to bring other great artists to Folkroom gigs. And when I do, I’d love you to come and see them, too.

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Katie Spencer is the headliner of Folkroom’s accidental International Women’s Day special on March 8th! Katie is one of my favourite songwriters in the UK right now, and I’m excited to share her music with the audience at Peggy’s Skylight. Satnam Galsian, whose music draws on traditional Punjabi music, will be supporting. Tickets are available here.

I first met Dryadic when they were based down in Brighton, and was immediately hooked on songwriter Zora’s infectious melodies, and lyrics that traverse protest, queer identity and classic folk themes. They join us in Nottingham on March 12th for a lively gig at The Grove. Samuel Jackson Reed and Vivien Ivy are support for this. Tickets are here!

Sam Grassie is as Modern Folk as this Substack gets, sitting at the heart of the Broadside Hacks collective in London. Alongside the Wild Moon Folk Collective in Leeds (of which Satnam Galsian is an active member), and the new Hackney Folk Club, Broadside Hacks are part of a growing, buzzing folk scene in the UK. Sam’s music meets this moment. His finger-picking is intricate, but his music is built on classic folk tradition. He’ll be supported at The Grove on April 8th by Folkroom favourite Emily Ashberry, and fiddle player (and fiddle maker!) Victor Camilleri. Tickets here.

Last month saw Filkin’s Drift wow our audience with Welsh and English folk fiddling - so we’re sure there’ll be plenty of folk excited for Mikey Kenney’s return to Nottingham on May 10th. Last year’s solo gig at Peggy’s Skylight was one of the highlights of the spring - this time around, Mikey brings his acclaimed trio, as well as Rosie Brownhill for support. Tickets are on sale here.

Michael McGovern seems to have the world at his feet right now. Earlier this year, Paul Mescal named Michael’s song ‘Evelyn’ as the track he couldn’t get out of his head. Since then, he’s embarked on a mega tour, pausing only to join the excellent Ye Vagabonds for a number of dates around Ireland. Tickets for his stop at The Grove on May 13th have been flying out, and we’re expecting a sell-out - grab yours while you can! Michael’s bringing his pal Scott C. Park along for support here, alongside our local pick, Eleanor McGregor. Tickets, while they last, are here.

Chris Brain’s new album comes out on the first of May, and we’ll be bringing it (and him!) to The Grove in Nottingham on May 16th. If you haven’t heard Chris before, have a listen now! His sound is very much influenced by Nick Drake, but each new album uncovers new depths to his writing. This is another gig that’s on track to sell out - but you can secure your spot now by buying a ticket here.

May 23rd sees one of my favourite American folk musicians pay his first ever visit to Nottingham, where he’ll play The Grove for Folkroom. Joseph Decosimo is an Old-Time folk artist from the Cumberland Plateau.1 This is one of my most-anticipated gigs of the year on a personal level - I never thought I’d be able to bring such a unique and important figure in the Old-Time scene to one of my gigs. Join me - and Rosie Brownhill and Emily Ashberry - by picking up your tickets here.

Rounding up an exceptionally busy May, we have Posturing playing The Grove on the 28th. I’m a big fan of the band, who are one of the most promising acts in Nottingham right now. In fact, every artist on the bill for this gig is a glimpse at a burgeoning talent on the edge of greatness. Scottish singer-songwriter2 Neev brings her band along as main support, and Ukrainian-born, London-based Maria Mihailik opens the night. Get your tickets to this showcase of new talent here.

And here is where Substack politely tells me that I’m nearing the length limit of my email, so we’ll save other gigs for a future email - or you can check our Linktree and discover them now!

Til next time,

Stephen

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It started years ago, when, in a probably quite performative effort to be more cultured, I realised I should probably listen to at least some music by artists who don’t sing in English. There are, after all, over 7000 languages in the world. It seemed entirely plausible that at least one of them had a song that was on a par with, say, Thunder Road.

At the same time, I foresaw a problem: I’m very much a lyrics guy. What would I connect to if I couldn’t understand the nuances of the singer’s relationship with that girl they fancy, or their defiant ability to get knocked down, and get back up again, because you’re never gonna keep them down?

But when you listen to music in a language you cannot understand (which, for me, is every other language), you unlock a different way of enjoying each song. Take, for example, the Japanese folk singer Ichiko Aoba, who has been something of a global phenomenon over the past few years - I saw her play to 200 people in Nottingham in May 2023; next month she headlines the Royal Albert Hall.

Aoba’s music - and her international success - thrives not on her audience’s ability to understand Japanese, but on the otherworldly quality of her songs. I am reluctant to describe anybody’s music as ‘ethereal’, but if someone is going to make the claim, it is Aoba. Take her track ‘Seabed Eden’, which has the most unexpectedly perfect title in the history of recorded sound. To listen to the song is to be submerged in a perfect underwater world, untouched by human mistakes. A version released last week as part of a breathtaking live album brought me to tears.

I used to think that my enjoyment of songs in other languages was comparable to orchestral music, or anything instrumental - the stately jazz of Bill Evans on ‘Peace Piece’, or that Moog cover of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head that will occasionally play in my head as I unload the dishwasher. The idea being that the singer’s voice, free from the burden of comprehension, becomes just another instrument in a tableau of sound.

And that burden of comprehension isn’t to be ignored. It’s the reason that, yes, Ichiko Aoba’s music is absolutely perfect to fall asleep to. The reason that I can get a lot of work done when I’m listening to the psych-rock of her fellow countrymen Kikagaku Moyo. ‘Seis’, the seventh album by Chilean-Mexican singer Mon Laferte, is grandiose and rich with melodrama. But I can write without distraction while it plays because I am moved by the music without being pulled from my thoughts by the words.

But to treat these words as unimportant is to do a disservice to the songwriters. Like any artist, their lyrics are considered, and rich with meaning. Even without comprehension, the spirit of that meaning is carried by the words, and by the delivery - more so, maybe, than any instrument could muster.1 If anything, listening to another language highlights a quality of good writing we do not pay enough attention to in the music we understand: the importance of intonation. The way the sounds of our words say as much as the words themselves. I feel the heartache in Mon Laferte’s songs without having a clue what that heartache is. To listen to songwriting you cannot understand is not to treat the lyrics as an additional layer of instrumentation; it is to engage with the songwriter from a different angle, to open yourself up to a new way of listening, and a new way of enjoying.

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But look: I know this can border on the colonial. There’s a balance to be had between engaging with different cultures and exoticising them. These songs are not written for the benefit of foreign ears - they exist exactly the same way that every other piece of music across the world does: telling stories that are meant to be heard. Ichiko Aoba sells multilingual lyric books at her merch stand for a reason - she wants her lyrics to be heard for what they are, even by those who haven’t the ears for them. There is nothing inherently wrong with appreciating music that we cannot understand - it would be ludicrous to expect people to learn the languages of every song they intend to listen to. But we can listen without context only for so long - at some point, we must choose to pay attention to what the songs are telling us.

Nowhere is this more important than music sung in languages that aren’t dominant in their region, whether they be one of the hundreds of languages that live on the edge of extinction, kept alive only by the last few elderly speakers, or they be languages closer to home, like Scots and Welsh.

Over the past few decades, both these languages - once in steady decline in their home nations - have been given attention on both a cultural and legislative level to ensure that they are kept alive for future generations. Music continues to play a huge part in their revival. The folk singer Iona Fyfe is a staunch champion of Scots - in 2021, she successfully lobbied Spotify to recognise it as an official language on the platform.

Filkin’s Drift, who play Folkroom at The Grove in Nottingham this month, are vital advocates for the Welsh language. While Welsh-language speakers are on the rise across Wales and both the UK and Welsh governments are working to further support them, the total number of speakers in the country still amounts to around 18% of the population.

Filkin’s Drift perform much of their set in Welsh, with music inspired by an 870-mile walking tour of the Welsh coastal path in 2023. In singing Welsh folk songs, they connect the language to both the country’s rich heritage and modern audiences. Their songs are beautiful and, to my English ears, another perfect example of music in a foreign tongue that offers a chance to connect to music on a different level. But if you take the time to discover its meaning - or join them for a gig to have its meaning uncovered for you in person - there is an opportunity to fully immerse yourself in Welsh culture, and better understand where the music comes from, and where it is yet to go.

Filkin’s Drift play The Grove in Nottingham on February 28th. Tickets are available here. The duo are also on a wider UK tour, with dates listed on their website.

We’re only a few days out from our next Peggy’s Skylight gig with Steve Tilston, whose show will act as something of a career retrospective after the release of his final album last year. Steve has been a major player in the UK folk scene for over fifty years, and, in addition to working alongside many of our other folk greats, he was portrayed on film by none other than Al Pacino. Old Al wouldn’t be my first pick to play me in a film, but I wouldn’t turn him down!2

Then, in March, we welcome Katie Spencer to Nottingham. In many ways, Katie is the perfect pick for our folk night at a jazz club: her music is rich with the melodic, light jazz touches of Joni Mitchell and Michael Chapman. I’ve been trying to find a place for Katie on my line-ups for a few years - in my mind, she’s one of the most accomplished singer-songwriters in the UK right now. I’m also really happy that we’ll be joined by the fantastic Satnam Galsian for a support set.

We have absolutely loads of great gigs coming up at Folkroom, so take a moment to look over the current events list below and grab your tickets while you can - some of these are already well on their way to selling out! And don’t worry, London folks - I’m working on some really exciting gigs for you in the near future.

February

8th - Steve Tilston at Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham [TICKETS]

28th - Filkin’s Drift at The Grove, Nottingham (support from Dan Chapman) [TICKETS]

March

8th - Katie Spencer at Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham (support from Satnam Galsian) [TICKETS]

April

8th - Sam Grassie at The Grove, Nottingham (support from Emily Ashberry and Victor Camilleri) [TICKETS]

12th - Martin Simpson at Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham [TICKETS]

May

10th - Mikey Kenney at Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham (support from Rosie Brownhill) [TICKETS]

13th - Michael McGovern at The Grove, Nottingham (support from Scott C. Park and Eleanor McGregor [TICKETS]

16th - Chris Brain at The Grove, Nottingham (support TBA) [TICKETS]

June

14th - Steve Turner at Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham (support from Dan Chapman) [TICKETS]

Tomorrow I will be taking to our social media to announce four new gigs at Peggy’s Skylight, taking our announced events right up to the summer of 2026. And among them there is one very exciting name who I am certain will sell out in record time! I didn’t want anyone on the Modern Folk mailing list to miss out - so I’m giving you a 24-hour head start on getting your tickets.

After years of trying, I’m thrilled to tell you that I’m bringing the legendary Martin Simpson to a Folkroom event! And what’s more, it’s our regular night at Peggy’s Skylight. That’s right: the multi-award-winning Martin Simpson will be playing a gig at our intimate little spot in the heart of Nottingham. This is a sure-fire sell-out, so I wanted to make sure you had a chance to secure your spot for our gig on April 12th. You can buy your tickets here before I start shouting about them to the general public tomorrow!

And that’s not all - tickets are now online for all six of our Peggy’s Skylight shows for the first half of 2026. Alongside already-announced shows for Chloe Foy and Steve Tilston, you can now buy your tickets for Katie Spencer, Mikey Kenney and Steve Turner. I’ll talk about these in more depth in the months to come - but for now, feel free to explore the ticket pages for each of these fantastic artists, which have a lot more details about their music!

That’s all for now - I hope to see you at a gig in 2026! You can’t say I’m not giving you plenty of options to choose from.

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, season’s greetings, and I’m sorry the Christmas telly is so rubbish this year.

Stephen

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This isn’t entirely true, though. Don’t get me wrong - it is roughly 80% accurate, but there always remains a significant part of me that wants to share the music I love with anyone I can - be that friends, strangers, or whoever happens to be working the bar that night.

It can be all too easy, as a promoter, to only book artists that you know will sell. As an independent promoter, I’m all too aware that a loss for Folkroom is a loss for me. I’m sure there’s an interesting graph to be made that charts Folkroom gig sales alongside periods of unusually high chicken liver consumption. When I’m feeling poor, I always turn to offal, like one of the less appealing Dickens characters.

The real joy in promoting, though, always comes when you get to show off a musician that you know the audience wouldn’t otherwise get to see. They’re the harder sell - but then, I suppose, this is why someone does this job in the first place. To promote, rather than amplify. It’s one thing to put on a gig with a well-loved artist - it’s another thing entirely to watch that love for the musician grow in real time across the course of the set. And with that in mind…

Meet Nev Clay.

I was first introduced to Nev - the idea of Nev, not even the actual music - back in July, when I hosted Joshua Burnside for a gig. Joshua and his band had played Newcastle the night before, and as we shared our pre-show meal, conversation turned to a cult figure whom they themselves had only come across 24 hours earlier.

Nev Clay, they told me, is one of those great hidden secrets of the British music scene. He released three albums around the turn of the millennium, and then waited two decades to put out his fourth, 2024’s aptly-titled So Little Happened For So Long. According to the legend, as passed down by Joshua Burnside, Nev had spent the time between records quietly playing the local music scene and building up a devoted following that included Marc Riley, Mercury Prize nominee Kathryn Williams, and the artist currently known as Rich(ard) Dawson.1

I was fascinated by this image of an artist’s artist, quietly going about his work and earning respect in a relatively small pocket of the British Isles. Upon arriving home from the gig, I immediately undertook my own personal education in the music of Nev Clay. Within the first three songs of So Little Happened For So Long, I had ordered the album on vinyl. By the time I had finished ‘Lanyard’, a deceptively chipper song about people who wear their lanyards outside their place of work, I had emailed Nev asking him to play Folkroom.

During that twenty-year gap, Nev tells me he actually attempted to make several other records. He recorded an album with Kathryn Williams, but it was lost when her laptop crashed. A year or so later, a kitten knocked a drink over another laptop, this time wiping out a solo record. For a long while, Nev’s releases were limited to a smattering of home recordings on Bandcamp, and a collaborative record made with poet Ally May, avant-garde noise collective Jazzfinger, and that other notable singer-songwriter from the North East, Richard Dawson.

Dawson’s name comes up a lot when people talk about Nev Clay, not least because the former is an effusive champion of his friend. In a Reddit AMA, Dawson described Nev as ‘the best songwriter in the world’. In Q Magazine, he repeated the claim, citing Nev as a Newcastle legend: ‘He’s got the melodies, the lyrics, the heart. To top it off, he’s one of the loveliest men you could hope to meet.’

The pair also have a similar approach to songwriting, their lyrics finding truth in specificity rather than sweeping generalisations. Nev credits this in part to the lyrics of Mark E Smith of The Fall, who taught him that you can include anything in a song, from lorry drivers to Curly Wurlies.

I cannot remember the last time a songwriter’s lyrics felt so honest and relatable to me - no mean feat, given I was born and raised on the south coast, while Nev’s songs are rich with evocative images from the North East. Nowhere does this manifest more clearly than in ‘Cuddy’s Cave’, a song that first began fomenting in the late 1990s. It appeared in an early form on a St James Infirmary album in 2013, with Rich Dawson on guitar. Nev’s Bandcamp describes the recording on So Little Happened as ‘version 23’. He tells me that it continues to evolve, with versions specifically written for Byker, North Shields and Sunderland. On the surface, ‘Cuddy’s Cave’ is little more than hyper-specific references to the North East, listed in juxtaposed rhyming couplets. And yet the song itself somehow transcends this entirely - it is funny, it is warmly nostalgic without being rosy-eyed, and it is deeply, deeply moving.

I’ve spent the past four months listening through Nev’s back catalogue - and to his new music, which continues to pop up on Bandcamp occasionally. But it’s So Little Happened For So Long that has fully captured my heart. It’s the sort of record that makes someone excited to be a promoter. That email to Nev has resulted not only in a wonderful correspondence but also in a rare musical excursion beyond his usual venues. Nev Clay plays Folkroom at The Grove in Nottingham on January 23rd. I’ve booked two of my favourite Nottingham lyricists, Catmilk and Peter Hall, for support. You can buy your tickets here. I hope you’ll join me, and discover Nev’s music for yourself. But honestly - truly - I booked this gig solely for my own enjoyment, and anything you get out of it is just a bonus.

It’s a shame that Nev’s last album came out in 2024, because that leaves it out of the running for Folkroom’s Best of 2025 retrospective.

It’s been a wonderful year for new music, and I’ve asked some of Folkroom’s nearest and dearest to nominate their favourite records of the last year. Katie Carroll, our long-time London host, loved Drive to Goldenhammer by Divorce. I didn’t ask her to name this record - featuring former Folkroom regular Felix as co-lead singer, and tied closely to the Nottingham music scene - but the band’s songwriting is irresistible, and opening track ‘Antarctica’ has fast become one of Katie’s all-time favourite songs.

Angie Rance from Patch & the Giant - who released their own fantastic album, Fragments, on Folkroom Records this year - opted for Teeth of Time by Nev Clay evangelist Joshua Burnside. The record is a gorgeous thing that draws on trad folk sounds but delivers searing lyricism. Check out ‘Marching Round The Ladies’ for one of the year’s most satisfying musical moments.

Sam Falle of Winterfalle, who have been working on a follow-up to their 2023 Folkroom release Out of the Sea, couldn’t narrow his choices down. His votes were split evenly between caroline 2 by caroline and SABLE, fABLE by Bon Iver. Both of which are just nightmares to type in a newsletter. A new Bon Iver record is always welcome, though, and ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is among the best songs Justin Vernon has yet released.

As for me? I’ve been absolutely enamoured with Jens Lekman’s ambitious Songs for Other People’s Weddings since the day it came out. It’s a return to the heights of Night Falls Over Kortedala, and has some of the most unexpectedly fun moments of any record out this year. Maya Delilah had me similarly smitten with The Long Way Round, a jazzy pop record with deeply satisfying guitar solos that appear to have dredged up from the dawn of the 1990s.

Elsewhere, Folkroom’s old friend Sophie Jamieson treated us to a brace of releases via her current label, Bella Union. I still want to share was teased last year with the breathtaking ‘I don’t know what to save’. My doctor wants to talk to Sophie about the way that the song’s sweeping climax keeps stopping my heart dead in its tracks. As if that wasn’t enough, Sophie dropped her new three track Stitch EP on Halloween. Much to my dismay, it was not a concept record about Disney’s alien agent of chaos.

Finally, Chloe Foy released Complete Fool, an album that feels like the midway point between Katherine Priddy and Laura Marling. It’s an absolute delight, and I was thrilled when it came out, because I’d already booked her for the first Folkroom gig of 2026. Come and discover Chloe’s beautiful music on January 11th, when she plays Peggy’s Skylight for us. Our support for the evening, Lily Clarkson, released a gorgeous record of her own back in August - We Speak in Ancient Languages. I’m sure both will be available at the merch stand on the night! Buy your tickets here.

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Almost a decade ago now, my friend Sam Schafer asked me a question: What was the gender split at Folkroom events that year? It wasn’t intended as a trap - Sam was just curious - but it is a question that not enough promoters ask of themselves, and I was grateful for the chance to reflect. We’ve all been to gigs where there isn’t a woman to be seen in a line-up of three or four acts. In the years since, I’ve made a conscious effort to pay attention to the artists I host at Folkroom gigs, and I try to make sure our line-ups reflect the fantastic diversity that the scene has to offer. I also make an annual effort to openly share the gender split, in order to keep myself accountable - not just to Sam, but to the audiences and artists who make Folkroom what it is.

In 2025, Folkroom hosted a total of 51 artists. 26 were fronted by women; 25 by men. That’s 51% and 49% respectively - a small change from last year’s 56% of women-led artists. It’s important to note that while I count trans women as women and trans men as men, no acts were led by trans or non-binary artists this year. If you are a folk musician who identifies as either, I’d love to hear from you.

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Our first four gigs in 2026 are all on sale now, but believe me when I say that I am working on some very exciting projects for next year, including potential events across London and Brighton, as well as our regular Nottingham nights. For now, here’s what you can book with us in 2026:

January 11th - Chloe Foy and Lily Clarkson (Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham)

January 23rd - Nev Clay, Catmilk and Peter Hall (The Grove, Nottingham)

February 8th - Steve Tilston (Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham)

February 28th - Filkin’s Drift and Dan Chapman (The Grove, Nottingham)

That’s a wrap on Folkroom in 2025, though! Thank you for coming to gigs, buying records, and reading Modern Folk. I hope to see you all at a Folkroom event in 2026!

Stephen

Once out on my own, things started to change. I spent more time listening to new artists like Sufjan Stevens and Fleet Foxes. And then, in the mid-2000s, a curious wave of new music emerged from London. In stark contrast to the ragged sounds and skinny jeans of the recent indie sleaze movement, these new artists played acoustic guitars and dressed like the flimsiest lumberjacks you’d ever seen. The music was simple, but melodic. The lyrics contemporary and confessional. Everything about the scene was, well, lovely. Except the name: nu-folk.

This is the music that Folkroom was founded on - many of our earliest artists were clearly influenced by Mumford & Sons, Noah and the Whale, Emmy the Great and Laura Marling. As the gigs developed, I was exposed to more and more music by new artists bringing their own influences. When Ben Walker joined the Folkroom team, so too did his appreciation of trad folk (itself picked up piecemeal along his own musical journey).

Fifteen years down the line, and you’ll rarely hear the words nu-folk uttered in conversation (though, honestly, none of us were calling it that at the time, either - the descriptor existed solely for the music journalists). Noah and the Whale and Emmy the Great have hung up their guitars - at least under those names. Mumford and Sons evolved into a sort of U2 with banjos. Laura Marling is still going strong - her last three albums have been the best of her career so far - but she has now taken on a sort of mythic quality as a musician. She is more likely to be listed alongside Joni Mitchell and Fiona Apple as one of the greatest living songwriters than she is among her old contemporaries.

Another fantastic songwriter born of the nu-folk scene, but who has long since transcended it, is Matthew and the Atlas. At its heart the project of Matt Hegarty, Matthew and the Atlas’s origins are betrayed by two things: the ‘First Name and the Whatevers’ structure that defined much of the 2000s,2 and the fact that he remains signed to Communion, the label founded by members of Mumford and Sons and Bear’s Den that sat at the heart of the scene. Hegarty’s debut EP, ‘To The North’, was, in fact, Communion’s first release as a label.

Folkroom hosts Matthew and the Atlas in Nottingham next week, and it’ll be a rare chance to catch Hegarty and his band in an intimate setting. It suits their sound, I think, which is more considered, more reserved than that which immediately preceded him.

For me, Hegarty’s music always sat at the edge of nu-folk - his signing might have been a result of the movement, but his music sat very clearly at the dawn of whatever we might call the next period in British folk music. Nu-folk was often relatively chipper. Noah and the Whale’s music frequently turns up in adverts (or, this year, as the ironic soundtrack to a fight scene in the new Superman film). In a For Folk’s Sake review I wrote for Mumford and Son’s second album, I described ‘a wall of sound in which every brick is a banjo’. Even the better songwriters of the period - Emmy the Great and Laura Marling - sound much peppier on their debut records. Their themes were often more serious than their counterparts, their songwriting more complex, but it wasn’t until the scene started to fade that the music truly came to reflect those qualities.

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It’s interesting now, a decade and a half after peak nu-folk, to think about how little the era’s sound appears to have infiltrated our current music scene. Folk currently sits outside the mainstream - as it has done since the nu-folk old guard began to evolve into pop-rock outfits. There’s a small corner of American singer-songwriters who have broken through, though artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus don’t appear to have paid much attention to the British folk scene circa 2010.

If anyone has had an impact, it’s Laura Marling, whose sound was stolen wholesale by Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler for their 2022 album, and who certainly seems to have touched the music of Nadia Reid, whose record Enter Now Brightness has been a highlight this year. I suspect, though, that we’re just a little early for any nu-folk revival. If you pick apart the influences on current new releases, it’s easy to see the impact of Avril Lavigne on Olivia Rodrigo, or Lily Allen’s earliest records on PinkPantheress (and, actually, Olivia Rodrigo again - she brought Lily Allen onstage with her at Glastonbury in 2022. Both these musicians were at their prime just before nu-folk hit the scene.3 Hope, then, that someone will discover a new way to make ukeleles bearable and banjos inescapable in 2026. Until that point, we’ll happily make do with the elder statesmen of the scene as they continue to deliver a more refined, more thoughtful, altogether more moving sort of modern folk music.

Matthew and the Atlas play Peggy’s Skylight for Folkroom on Wednesday, November 12th. You can buy your tickets here. The band are also touring across the UK, with shows in London, Newcastle, Birmingham, and Lewes, among others.

I still have a lot of love for the music that brought me to Folkroom in the first place, but I’m more grateful still for the music that I’ve been able to discover since. I think anyone who loves music can relate to how one can fall into a routine. How easily our once exploratory minds hit adulthood and willingly flop down upon the same old records, like a cat on its favourite pair of trousers.4

Here’s what I do to fight this: when new records are released each Friday, I go to the website of my favourite record store and look over everything in the ‘new releases’ section. I add the first track of anything that sounds interesting to my ‘Albums to Explore’ playlist, and over the coming week, I use that list as a launch point to listen to all the records. I still have time for my repeat listens (King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard! Sabrina Carpenter! Father John Misty!), but I also discover a great new selection of records - that I know my favourite record store has in stock when I inevitably want to buy the physical format.

This method works for me because it also opens my eyes (and ears) to all sorts of sounds and genres I might not otherwise have listened to. There’s a lot of world out there, and it’s a shame not to explore it sometimes.

One of my aims for Folkroom at the moment is to expand the traditions that inform the music at our gigs. Folk music isn’t a British phenomenon, and it exists in different, beautiful forms anywhere in the world where there are people. I’m working on bringing some of those sounds to Folkroom in 2026, but for now, our second November gig can act as a soft intro.

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It’s true that America shares a great deal of its cultural history with Britain, but we still do a very good job of ignoring some of its best folk music. While Americana and country music have both made increasingly large waves over here for the last few years, old-time music doesn’t get nearly as much attention.

Riley Baugus is one of the living greats of the genre. His music was featured on the award-winning Cold Mountain soundtrack and has been inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame. If you’re looking to discover something new (and, to be fair, very old) this November, you could do a lot worse than coming to his gig at Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on November 16th. Riley is also on a short tour of the UK, which will include stops in London (at both Broadside Hacks Folk Club and Walthamstow Folk Club), Sheffield, York and Birmingham. Tickets for our Nottingham gig are on sale here.

A moment, please, for some non-folky news: my debut book came out last month! It’s called Disney’s Animated Classics, and it’s a film-by-film run through of each of, well, Disney’s animated classics. It’s also much more than that, though, with each film acting as a launching point to look at wider ideas, be that portrayals of drunkenness in children’s cinema, or Disney’s various failed attempts to adequately represent the Black community through the years. Or, yes, the sheer sexual power of Robin Hood, the cartoon fox. I wanted it to read like a Bill Bryson book, if Bill Bryson got super into Beauty and the Beast. It’s available to buy now - Hive has the second cheapest price at the moment. It’s only two pence more expensive than Amazon, but also comes with the satisfaction of, well, not supporting Amazon. Buy it here!

Later this month, I’m back in my old stomping grounds of Brighton to host a Disney-themed pub quiz. It’ll be a fun, relatively silly evening and there’ll be plenty to enjoy even if you aren’t a big old Disney nerd. Case in point: Folkroom’s good friend (and cover artist for the book!) Chris Riddell will be on hand to draw the picture round live! Tickets are here, and it’d be lovely to see some Folkroomy faces.

If you’re in Nottingham, I’ve yet to organise a full-on event for the book, but I will be speaking at my regular haunt Peggy’s later this week, introducing a night of jazz interpretations of Disney songs. Buy your tickets here, and keep me company!

Our first two gigs for 2026 are now on sale! I’ll cover these in more detail next month, but I’m very excited to launch the new year with two Nottingham gigs: a Peggy’s Skylight show for singer-songwriter Chloe Foy and an intimate event at The Grove with cult Newcastle musician Nev Clay, who has been a pivotal influence on Rich(ard) Dawson. Tickets are available from the links above!

That’s plenty to be getting on with, then. I’ll leave you with a final recommendation: Folkroom favourite Sophie Jamieson released a new EP via Bella Union last Friday - her second release this year, because we’ve all been so good. You can find it on all good streaming services - and Spotify, who are definitely a streaming service, but at this point are widely understood to be generally malevolent.

See you in December!

Stephen

Here’s the big downside of traditional folk song and, indeed, large swathes of our broader history: much of it is dredged in the fallout of intrenched supremacy across multiple generations. Our songs, our folklore, and the very actions of those who came before us are sculpted by beliefs that one person (usually a wealthy white guy) is better than, well, more or less everybody else who was not rich, and white, and male.

Folk music, then, acts as more than simply a cultural record of the songs and music of an era. It is also an historical record, keeping score of the casual prejudices of its time and, frequently, of the almost off-hand violence towards women that has pervaded much of human history.

But folk music is more than an artifact. It is also a living, breathing artform. It is performance, which means that it exists in, and engages with, the contemporary world in a way that so much of the past cannot. All of our engagement with art happens, to some extent, within the context of our present moment. If you want to appreciate the Mona Lisa today, it is inevitable that you’ll do so through a 21st century lens, either looking at the picture on a computer screen, or in person, with some part of it obscured by the dozens of smartphones that are pointed in its direction. And yet, the Mona Lisa herself has barely changed since her paint was still wet. The cause of her enigmatic smile remains the same now as it was five hundred years ago. She isn’t, for example, watching a video of red pandas set to the Tiktok banger ‘Lil Boo Thang’ on a phone just behind the artist. We know this because, if she were, the smile would be bigger; there’d be some teeth in the mix.

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Folk music is a little different, though. It doesn’t exist as a single article, preserved over half a millennium - instead, your engagement with even the oldest of folk tunes will usually be through artists who themselves are disconnected from the original songs by generations. Hell, even the songs themselves have usually evolved and changed drastically through hundreds of different interpretations over decades, or centuries.

I always find it interesting, then, to see how contemporary artists approach their own performances of songs that were borne of a different era. How they engage with themes - often of physical or sexual violence towards women - that exist in a very different context today (less widely accepted, perhaps, albeit with a worrying resurgence in the acceptability of misogyny among certain groups in recent years).

For a while, it felt as though the most popular artistic response to misogyny in folk music was to rewrite the lyrics, resolving the issue, or turning it on its head. A spectacularly unexpected Guardian piece earlier this year spoke with members of Echo vom Eierstock, a Swiss feminist yodelling choir whose name translates to ‘echo from the ovary’. Not content with simply providing a safe space for female yodellers in a male-oriented (literal?) field, the choir has also taken to rewriting lyrics that don’t match their ethos:

In one traditional song, a girl asks her mother: “Is dancing a great sin? Look, Franz is already waiting, may I go dancing with him?” and tells her later: “Don’t worry – I’m not going to be a nun; look at my curly hair! I saw how pretty I am in the mirror today.” In the version performed by Echo vom Eierstock, the conversation is a radically different one, with the girl asking: “Does the world need more children? Should we still be mothers in this day and age?” “The world is a gift,” her mother reassures her, but the daughter counters: “You don’t know in advance what kind of gift it is.”

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Closer to home, Kirsty Merryn has taken a different approach to addressing folk’s misogynist history. In her debut album, 2017’s She & I, each of the eight tracks was an original composition that approached the folk genre with fresh, feminist eyes. ‘Bring up the Bodies’ was about women having ownership over the bodies, alive or dead. ‘The Fair Tea-maker of Edgware Row’ was, as Kirsty puts it herself, ‘a loving send-up of bawdy ballads about saucy women’. The title track of her (excellent) follow-up album Our Bright Night looked at the impact that the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1500s had on women of the time; convents were also closed, taking away vital women-only spaces and sources of refuge.

This week, Frankie Archer plays The Grove in Nottingham for us, as part of her Demon Lover tour. I’m excited to see one of the most bold interpreters of trad-folk in Britain today as she joins us for the evening - not least because Frankie’s music represents a third option for feminist folk artists.

On ‘The Demon Lover’, the song at the heart of her current tour, Frankie offers up a new take on a folk song whose history stretches back until at least 1657. The version listed in The Child Ballads is titled ‘A Warning for Married Women’, which is suitably ominous for the song, in which a young woman opts to follow the ghost of her ex-fiance rather than stick with her current husband. The exact details of the song have changed over the last four hundred years or so - but one thing that remains constant is the woman’s fate: eternity in hell.

Frankie says that ‘The Demon Lover’ is ‘one of those old songs that was meant to scare women into behaving properly.’ And while her version makes some small changes to the lyrics, none go so far as to change the ultimate meaning of the song, nor the fate of the woman at its centre. What is added, though, is Frankie’s own contemporary understanding: ‘The feeling of repressed sexuality came through to me so much in the lyrics I leant into it to create this driving, dizzying sound where you almost become possessed yourself when you hear it,’ she says. In her version, the history of the song and of man’s desire to control and put fear into women remains. But inherent to the recording is also the story of modern feminism, and of taking control of the narrative, even if only to recognise the unspoken truths of the past.

Frankie Archer plays The Grove in Nottingham this Wednesday, October 8th. Her music comes into its own in a live setting, becoming entirely immersive in a way that few other folk artists can be. Tickets are available here, and support comes via the fantastic Ben McElroy.

There are no gigs at Peggy’s Skylight this October, but I’m going to make it up to you in November with two gorgeous events! First up, on Wednesday November 12th, we’ll be hosting an intimate gig with UK alt-folk heroes Matthew and the Atlas. Matt Hegarty first broke onto the music scene in the midst of the late 2000s folk rock revival, and his though his music continues to evolve, he remains perhaps the most consistent artist of the Communion stable. We’ve a mixture of standing and seating available for this gig - grab the ticket that best suits you, and join us for a rare intimate performance from the band.

Just a few days later, on November 16th, I’ll be back at Peggy’s Skylight for the last Folkroom gig of 2025. This is another rare treat: the American old time folk musician Riley Baugus will be playing a double set as part of his UK tour. Recent Folkroom headliner Sarah Jane Scouten described Riley as a ‘musical teddy bear’, which is the sort of compliment I’d love to be paid. He is also one of America’s finest folk talents, featured on the award-winning Cold Mountain soundtrack and unlike almost anyone else who you’ll see in Nottingham this year or next. Tickets are available here.

Our first gig for 2026 is on sale, too! On January 23rd, we’ll be back at The Grove in Nottingham for a headline performance by Nev Clay. I suspect I’ll do a real deep dive on Nev in our December edition of Modern Folk, but he’s a fascinating artist. Something of a cult figure, Nev is a local legend in Newcastle, but rarely plays outside of the north east. I absolutely adore his last album, So Little Happened For So Long, and I’m hoping this gig will be a chance to share Nev with a whole new audience. I’ve brought in Catmilk and Peter Hall as supports for the gig, and tickets are on sale here.

And finally, a moment of personal promotion. I have a book out! It isn’t, as you might reasonably suspect, about folk music. Instead, I am the author of ‘Disney’s Animated Classics’, a book that runs through every film in the Disney animated canon, from Snow White to Moana 2, chapter by chapter.

I’m really proud of this book, which doesn’t just nerd out on production notes for the films, but also uses each film as a launching point to explore themes and ideas from across the canon. The Dumbo chapter looks at the representation of alcohol in children’s films, Robin Hood considers sexual awakenings prompted by cartoon characters, and The Princess and the Frog explores race in Disney films. If you have ever enjoyed Disney’s films, or know anyone who does, you’ll find plenty to love here. I believe retailers will be starting to send out copies next week, so grab yours now - Hive.co.uk have the best price currently, I believe.

There are also two events happening in support of the book’s release: on November 6th, my friends at Peggy’s Skylight will be hosting an evening of live jazz interpretations of Disney songs - I’ll be on hand to introduce the music and flog a few books in person. You can buy your ticket here!

Then, on November 25th, I’ll be at The Folklore Rooms in Brighton, hosting a special Disney pub quiz. There’ll be a cash prize for the winning team, as well as other prizes throughout the evening, a pop-up store run by the neighbouring Waterstones and, excitingly, a live-drawn picture round provided by former Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell. Get your tickets here - I’d love to have a lot of fun with this one!

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Case in point: this month sees Jon Wilks play Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham. Jon’s one of those folk artists who is almost universally admired by other musicians - the two big Martins of English music folk both adore him (M. Simpson calls him ‘the real deal’, and he has toured extensively with Martin Carthy, a sold-out tribute to whom Jon co-curates this autumn). Carl Barât of The Libertines describes him as ‘a badman fingerpicking guitarist and leading exponent of the songs of old Albion’, which is an inherently cool sentence to say about a person, and possibly the most on-brand thing a Libertine could ever say. I caught up with Jon to ask him a few questions ahead of his Folkroom headline later this month.

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You've described your new album as "a patchwork of memories". What role do you think folk music has in preserving the memories and experiences of an individual in a world that has more ways than ever of documenting these things?

I once heard someone at a Broadside Hacks event describe folk music as "an act of solidarity through time", which really resonates with me. It's rare in any art form to share the same words and tunes in the same place as someone 200 years ago, and to feel that solidarity across the centuries. That's unique and irreplaceable. These days we've got endless ways of documenting life, but most of it gets lost in the noise. A song cuts through in a different way — it doesn't just preserve memory, it makes meaning from it.

The only non-original track on the album was written in the 20th century by a Birmingham-based sailor, and you picked it up from a recording by another Birmingham singer. What role do you think local scenes could have in creating or fostering new folk standards over the coming years?

I like to think of traditional songs as "songs with a postcode". They've travelled far and wide, but when they put down roots somewhere they often pick up quirks that are exclusive to that place. You can hear "The Wild Rover" in countless places and, more often than not, there'll be something about it that nails it to that locale. Local scenes are where that process begins. If songs are sung often enough in one spot, they become part of that area's story, and that's how new standards can emerge.

In July, you removed your music from Spotify in response to the company's investment in AI weaponry. How much power do you think artists have to protest against systems that have an increasingly overwhelming influence on listeners?

Individually, not much. But collectively, artists can shift things. Even if we can't change the whole system overnight, we can at least draw attention to what's happening and offer alternatives. All the platforms have issues — even Substack has a problematic record when it comes to hosting far-right publications. It's hard to find a utopia, but I think it's worth striving for. At the moment I'm watching a collective called Subvert with a hopeful eye. They're working on a platform owned by musicians as a co-op. It hasn't launched yet, but the idea of artists shaping the ecosystem they depend on feels like a step in the right direction.

Jon Wilks plays Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on September 21st. Tickets are available now! He’ll also be playing Croydon Folk Club in (well, let’s face it, near) London on November 24th.

Back in June, Folkroom hosted its first event at The Grove in Nottingham - a lovingly run indie venue that celebrated its first birthday this weekend. I’ll be doing a lot more events with The Grove going forward, and I’m thrilled to kick off this more regular run of events with Frankie Archer this October. Frankie’s one of the most exciting new folk artists of the last few years - her music draws heavily on folk tradition while filling the room with sound. Each venue on her October tour has been hand-picked to offer a really intimate gig for audiences - probably the last time you’ll get a chance with Frankie before she is selling out bigger rooms. Get your tickets here while you can.

Tickets are now up for all remaining 2025 gigs! Folkroom has always been about celebrating every corner of the genre, and our two November events capture this perfectly. On Wednesday November 12th, we host Matthew and the Atlas, who were born amid the nu-folk movement of the 2010s and have since grown into one of the best contemporary folk acts in the UK. Another rare intimate gig here, as we welcome them to Peggy’s Skylight. There’s a mix of standing and seated tickets available here, but be quick - the seated ones have almost sold out!

A few days later, on Sunday November 16th, we’ll be joined by Riley Baugus - a true icon of the old time American folk scene. Riley’s music was featured in the award-winning Cold Mountain soundtrack, and he remains at the very heart of the genre to this day. Tickets are available now, so don’t miss out.

I’ve also put up tickets this week for one of Folkroom’s first gigs of 2026! I’m thrilled to bring a real cult folk artist to The Grove in Nottingham on January 23rd. Nev Clay is a beloved figure on the Newcastle music scene. He released his first two albums at the turn of the millennium, and then made his name in the north-east as a unique live act, playing for over twenty years until finally releasing his third album in 2024. He’s a good friend of Rich(ard) Dawson, whose music has very clearly been influenced by Nev’s. I cannot wait for Nev to play for us in January. His last album is an absolute joy, and it feels like a real chance to share one of the UK’s best songwriters with a completely new audience. I’d love you to join me at The Grove to discover him for yourself. Tickets are available here.

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21/09 - Jon Wilks (TICKETS)

08/10 - Frankie Archer (support from Ben McElroy) (TICKETS)

12/11 - Matthew and the Atlas (support tba) (TICKETS)

16/11 - Riley Baugus (TICKETS)

23/01 - Nev Clay (support from Catmilk and Peter Hall) (TICKETS)

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Other news from Folkroom’s friends:

• Patch & the Giant are playing Green Note on Friday December 12th! They’ll be playing old favourites as well as songs from their recent Folkroom release, Fragments. A bonus for London audiences, too - our good friend Catmilk, one of the best acts in Nottingham, will be joining the band as support on the night! Tickets here.

• Kirsty Merryn has been a bit quiet on the music front since Life and the Land, her 2021 collaborative EP with Ben Walker. But good news! She’s working on new material - and sharing some glimpses of the process via her Instagram account.

• DG Solaris is currently crowdfunding a new album - there’s a week left, and rewards are due to be sent out in November, which means they’ll make a perfect Christmas gift. You can also get tickets to the annual DG Solaris and Friends gig at Green Note on October 2nd. These gigs - which started as a Folkroom event a few years back, are gorgeous collaborative events with a wonderful selection of special guests. This year’s line-up includes Ella Clayton, Grace Elizabeth-Harvey and friend of Folkroom Chris Riddell, among others! Tickets here.

• The wonderful Daudi Matsiko headlines Metronome in Nottingham on October 2nd. It’s a must-see gig that I’ll be at as a punter. Daudi is a completely unique entity in British folk music right now - the sparsity of his music is masterful, and you’ll not find so vulnerable and yet joyful a performer anywhere else. Tickets here.

That’ll all for September. I’ll be back in your inbox next month with some insights into 2026's gigs!

My festival would be called The Folkroom Rotating Orchestra, and from the beginning of the day right through to curfew, the music would never stop. Instead, as one band came to the end of their time onstage, all but one member would leave, and that person would play their own set. They’d bring up a friend to collaborate on a tune, and then would wander offstage leaving said friend to play a set of their own.

The festival never happened. Of course it didn’t. It was an absolutely ridiculous idea that, best case scenario, would have driven even the most patient sound engineer to the very brink of their sanity. But the fact is this: for a long time, it really did seem possible. And it was bands like Patch & the Giant that made me believe this.

Patch & the Giant are the mycelium that runs underneath the Folkroom forest. You might not realise it at first, but in one way or another much of the life around us is tied together by the band. Patch were always a sprawling presence onstage - and they drew in new members from the London folk scene as readily as they offered them up for others. Sometimes it felt like there was some sort of Premier League transfer system in place. Early members Liam Hoflay and Alex Betancourt transferred out to join Sophie Jamieson’s live band. Steve Watkins, formerly of Long Dead Kings, transferred in. Former Patch drummer Ben Wiseman had been borrowed from We Used To Make Things.

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Today, Patch & the Giant release their brand new album, Fragments. It’s been a long time in the works, but it has been well worth the wait. I’m really proud to be releasing a Patch & the Giant album on Folkroom Records. Partly because it feels like a homecoming: we released their debut EP in 2013, and I’m honoured to have a chance to work with them again. But also because community and collaboration was always at the heart of what Folkroom stands for, and Patch & the Giant might just be the epitome of that. Alongside founding members Luke Owen, Angie Rance and not-quite-founding-but-certainly-era-defining member Gabriel Merryfield, the line-up includes Nick Edward Harris, a singer-songwriter who also performs in another collaborative project, Mit Hiss, and Derek Yau, who is also a long-standing member of former Folkroom labelmates The Lost Cavalry.

Fragments feels like the bands most cohesive, mature work to date - and perhaps that’s because the band’s line-up feels as decisive as it’s ever been. But there’s always room for more collaboration with Patch. The album is produced by Folkroom’s own Ben Walker, and mastered by Mike Hillier, who is behind releases by so many of our community that it’s safer just to think of a record and assume it was his work. Even the band’s drummer on the album, Tobias Humble, was introduced to them by former Folkroom alumnus Andrew Butler.

I hope you’ll take time to give Fragments a listen today. You’ll be hearing more than the output of a single folk band. Contrary to its title, I reckon Fragments might just represent the whole of the Folkroom scene in microcosm. I doubt I’ll ever put on the Folkroom Rotating Orchestra festival - but bands like Patch & the Giant are our rotating orchestra, and that’s more than enough for me.

Buy Fragments on Bandcamp as a digital-only release, or find it on your preferred streaming platform. Join us for a very special album launch show at St John on Bethnal Green on Saturday 17 May. Tickets are available here, and support comes from The Lost Cavalry (Derek is pulling a double shift).

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We have a whole host of gigs coming up. A ridiculous amount, to be honest, and it’d be great if you’d like to come along to one (or two, or all of them. This May sees Folkroom gigs in London, Brighton and Nottingham. For ease, let’s go city by city.

London:

May 12th: GAELYNN LEA at Cafe OTO, Dalston. Support from Miss Jacqui. TICKETS

May 17th: PATCH & THE GIANT album launch at St John on Bethnal Green. Support from The Lost Cavalry. TICKETS

Brighton:

May 11th: GAELYNN LEA at The Rose Hill. Support from Kelli Blanchett and live illustration by Chris Riddell. TICKETS

Nottingham:

May 15th: GAELYNN LEA at By Our Hands We Make Our Way, Sneinton Market. Support from Kelli Blanchett. TICKETS

May 18th: JACKIE OATES at Peggy’s Skylight, Hockley. TICKETS

May 22nd: LOUIS BRENNAN at The Grove, Sneinton Market. Support from Modern Coven and Lindsay Clark. TICKETS

June 15th: GWENIFER RAYMOND at Peggy’s Skylight, Hockley. Support from Valerie Van Roey. TICKETS

July 23rd: JOSHUA BURNSIDE at Peggy’s Skylight, Hockley. TICKETS

Sept 21st: JON WILKS at Peggy’s Skylight, Hockley. TICKETS

Folkroom will also return to Home Farm Festival in Somerset this June 6th-8th. Discover our full line-up and book your weekend tickets via the Home Farm Fest website.

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I don’t know about you, but I had a pretty busy March for gigs. I caught the Brazilian musician Gustavo Andrade and his 10-piece band in the jazz bar we host our monthly Nottingham events at, and a set of experimental storytelling songs by Marco Woolf. I was lucky enough to squeeze into the second of two sold out instore performances by one of the most exciting new bands in the UK, Divorce.1 My highlight of the month was probably a rescheduled show by the band Honeyfeet (above), who are among the most irrepressible live acts in the country right now. Fronted by the recently crowned RTÉ Best Folk Singer, Rioghnach Connolly, Honeyfeet keep finding their way into folk festivals - perhaps because nobody has quite worked out what to do with their distinct brand of soulful, swagger-laden, brass-and-flute-fuelled music. Whatever the case, they - and every other act I saw in March - were an absolute joy to behold, and I knew they would be. Which is why I bought my tickets the first chance I got.

I don’t want to be that bore, but there’s a reason everyone is always banging on at you to buy the things you love long before they happen. Musicians are sharing crowdfunding campaigns for albums that may not arrive for another year. Authors are sharing pre-order links for their books the moment they have them (give me a couple of months, just you see). And promoters are begging you - begging you - to book your tickets in advance.

The thing is, you see, the arts aren’t thriving anymore. They might have been once, when government funding was ample, and competition was low. But things have changed. In the folk club peak of the 1960s, advance ticketing wasn’t a thing. There were enough people willing to turn up on the night and shell out a couple of coins with names that gave absolutely no hint of their value whatsoever. It was that, or choose between (at best) three TV channels.

The competition is tougher now. Tonight I finished watching the new season of The White Lotus, streamed via one of the ten (TEN) services I have on my TV (which itself is big enough to give any 1960s television a serious complex). Each year my Spotify Wrapped tells how many tens of thousands of minutes I listened to for a monthly subscription fee that amounts to less than two hours of work at my full time job.2 On any given night, the choice is between going out to a live event, or sitting on your sofa and devouring art to fit almost any mood you could conceivably be in, very likely at no cost beyond what you’ve already paid for the month.

And so it’s tough. Not just for folk musicians, but for anyone creating art right now. Every month my local concert hall emails me with last minute discounted tickets to classical concerts. Authors are pleading with potential readers to take a risk on their books because, in a dazzlingly broken system, these pre-orders determine which books the shops order.3 Musicians are funding their own albums because it’s the only way to get their music out there - and they aren’t earning enough money from their music to put aside the thousands of pounds necessary to record an album.

As a live music promoter, I know as well as anyone how terrifying it is to put your energy into a project and not know if it will work out - if you’ll coming away breaking even, or take a hit that will impact your personal finances for a little while. A few years ago, we’d see sales trickle in over the course of several months, and have some sort of idea of just how well a gig was going to do. Now - and particularly post pandemic, when we all became so much more afraid of committing to something that we may end up missing - tickets simply don’t sell until the very last minute, and it’s impossible to work out whether the right people are hearing about what you’re doing, or adjust your promotions to ensure you’re reaching the new crowds. So on behalf of all the artists, musicians, authors, playwrights and promoters who are creating and sharing exciting new art, I say one more time: buy more art, and buy it as early as you can.

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And now, as they say, for something completely different:

Upcoming Folkroom gigs and releases that are available for purchase right now:

Gaelynn Lea is responsible for two of the most evocative Folkroom memories I have from the past fourteen years of running gigs. One of these was very personal - stepping out into the tunnel below Brighton station during her soundtrack, and watching as passers-by were mesmerised by her accompanist’s theremin, echoing through the space like an other-worldly siren call. The other was strangely communal at a time when we needed it most - during her stunning set during our pandemic-fuelled live-streamed Pillow Fort Festival, a lightning storm broke out above the south of England. Though Gaelynn performed half the world away, from her own home in Duluth, Minnesota, much of her audience shared this moment of wonder. I still have people bring up their own recollections of that moment to me.

Now Gaelynn, who won the NPR Tiny Desk Competition in 2016, is back for her first tour of the UK in years. Folkroom is hosting her in three cities, and I couldn’t be more excited. Gaelynn remains a unique artist, and I’d love you to join us in London, Brighton or Nottingham to see her play this May. In London she’ll be supported by Miss Jacqui, a spoken word artist and songwriter. In Brighton and Nottingham, we will be joined by Kelli Blanchett - a really exciting new singer-songwriter who has spent much of the last few years working with the deservedly inescapable Self Esteem.

May 11th - The Rose Hill, Brighton

May 12th - Café OTO, London

May 15th - By Our Hands We Make Our Way, Nottingham

If you caught our email last month, you’ll have seen that our old friends Patch & the Giant are back with their long-awaited second album. Fragments is their most accomplished work to date, and is available to pre-order now.

To celebrate the release, our good friends at Nest Collective are hosting an album launch gig at St John on Bethnal Green in London. As well as a headline set by Patch & the Giant, support comes from Folkroom alumni The Lost Cavalry. This promises to be a real reunion for a lot of the Folkroom crowd from our last fourteen years - and I don’t even have to run it! Which means I’ll be extra available to hang out and talk to you all about what you’d like to see from Folkroom in the future.

In the spirit of entering into an unbalanced competition with your sit-at-home options, this gig just happens to fall on the same night as this year’s Eurovision. And look, I get the temptation. But ask yourself: is it better to watch competitive singing from organisers who continue to let countries compete even as they commit war crimes on your screens each night, or to come to a live grassroots gig by a band who are so sweet they once wrote a song for their bandmate after they lost his violin?

You know the answer to this one.

May 17th - St John on Bethnal Green, London

What are you doing on Easter Sunday this year? If you live in Nottingham and your answer is anything other than ‘stuffing my face with a huge Sunday roast at lunch, and then staggering down to Peggy’s Skylight to loosen my belt and be soothed by some beautiful fiddle music from acclaimed folk musician Mikey Kenney’, you’re doing it wrong.

Our monthly gig at Peggy’s might fall on Easter Sunday this April, but that’s no reason to miss out. Mikey’s music is perfectly suited to soothe the soul as it recovers from devouring half a lamb and anywhere between three and eight whole Easter eggs.

Support for this gig comes from Dan Chapman, a Nottingham-based singer-songwriter with a spring-water voice and a talent for putting together gorgeous trad-folk sets.

April 20th - Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham

Our May gig at Peggy’s Skylight sees Jackie Oates join us. With two BBC Folk Awards to her name, Jackie is one of those artists who is as capable of rendering old songs new as she is of writing her own arresting folk music. I just know this gig is going to be breathtakingly beautiful.

May 18th - Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham

And rounding off a busy May for Folkroom,4 I’m really excited to be bringing Louis Brennan up to Nottingham. This is going to be a fun little gig at The Grove, a gorgeous new independent venue in Sneinton Market (my personal favourite corner of the city).

Nottingham readers of this email may not be familiar with Louis Brennan yet - this is my first attempt at changing that. Louis is one of my favourite lyricists, who manages to combine the wit of Father John Misty with the darkness of Leonard Cohen and the playfulness of Loudon Wainwright III. He is a towering songwriter in every sense, and I’m hoping you’ll be up for taking a chance on some new music. I’ll be announcing supports for this gig shortly, but do get your tickets now.

May 22nd - The Grove, Nottingham

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This is a big one: it’s almost time for Home Farm Fest!

Folkroom has been a mainstay at the Somerset charity festival since 2013, and I’ve always tried to ensure that our tent is filled with an unmissable line-up of talented upcoming folk musicians. If you’re looking for a small independent festival to go to this summer, and can make your way down to the Yeovil vicinity for June 6th-8th, the Folkroom stage at Home Farm Fest will ensure you’re well rewarded.

This year I’m proud to have put together one of our strongest ever line-ups. Ahead of the official announcement by the festival tonight, I wanted to give our Substack readers an exclusive first look.

Alongside headliners The Lost Cavalry, Neev and The Water Chorus, I’m excited to bring some of the best new artists from across the UK (and beyond!)

For the first time, the Nottingham scene is represented with Catmilk and My Friend Wolf. First time Folkroom artists include Mezanmi, Chloe Leigh, Isa Howie and Zoe Eliza. Lindsay Clark joins us from the United States and Valerie Van Roey (more of whom in a minute) makes the trip over from Belgium.

We are also celebrating our fifteenth year as Folkroom with a rare set from our first ever headliner and label signee, Andrew Butler, as well as familiar Folkroom faces Patch & the Giant, Forty Elephant Gang and March. Our dear friend and award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell will also be back, live-drawing to each of the sets on our stage.

Here’s the full line-up for Home Farm Fest 2025: Andrew Butler, Catmilk, Chloe Leigh, Forty Elephant Gang, Isa Howie, Jack Pout, Lindsay Clark, The Lost Cavalry, March, Mezanmi, My Friend Wolf, Neev, Nick Edward Harris, Patch & the Giant, Phil Maguire, Valerie Van Roey, The Water Chorus, Whatcook, and Zoe Eliza.

You can get your tickets here, supporting the School in a Bag charity with each purchase!

We’re back with our monthly Peggy’s Skylight gig in June, bringing the phenomenal ‘Welsh Primitive’ guitarist Gwenifer Raymond to Nottingham. Gwenifer is one of my favourite guitarists on the planet - and I keep good company! She’s also a computer games programmer with a PhD in Astrophysics, which makes her easily the coolest one (sorry Ben).

Support on this one comes from the aforementioned Valerie Van Roey, one of the most exciting new folksingers I’ve heard over the last year. This will be Valerie’s first tour of the UK, so it’s a chance to get in early and discover a new artist you can boast about seeing in years to come.

June 15th - Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham

And finally, for now, a real treat: Joshua Burnside, who is behind perhaps the first great folk album of 2025, will be playing for us at Peggy’s in July. Anyone who has heard Teeth of Time will understand that it’s something special, and Burnside’s folk feels as vital as anything out there right now.

July 23rd - Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham

I suppose this email is as much proof as you’ll ever need that there’s plenty of great folk gigs out there for you to wrap your ears around. But this only works as long as you - or people like you - are there to enjoy it, to buy the merch, to support the artists you love. So do consider buying a ticket today, and share this email with anyone you know who might be interested in discovering great new music in gorgeous, intimate surroundings.

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They’re back!

Patch & the Giant have returned to Folkroom Records to share their new album, Fragments - available to pre-order now ahead of release on May 9th.

It’s been eight years since their acclaimed album, All That We Had We Stole, and twelve years since the band’s debut EP, The Boatswain’s Refuge, was released on a then-fledgling Folkroom Records. Now, we’re proud to come together again to bring you their most accomplished record to date.

Long-time followers of Folkroom will be more than familiar with the band, but here’s the rundown for anybody who has joined us since: way back in the early 2010s, just after I’d first launched our gigs in a small corridor pub in Kings Cross, I was invited to a Sunday afternoon show in the north of the city.

What I walked into was a sort of indie folk idyll. Four, maybe five bands were playing over the course of the day. An Irish singer-songwriter was in the beer garden warming up while people watched on from the picnic benches. The huge windows in the bar meant each set was bathed in warm summer light. Best of all, the organisers - also the headline act - were set up in the kitchen, where they’d knocked together a cheap chilli con carne that was available to punters for a few quid. It was Patch & the Giant’s monthly residency at The Boogaloo, and it was a reflection of everything I wanted for Folkroom, only with added mince dinners.

The band quickly became a mainstay of the early Folkroom community (as did every other act playing that afternoon), and for a while you were in with a good chance of spotting at least one member at any given Folkroom gig: sometimes as the full band (I believe at one point they had eight regular members), or frequently just watching from the audience, or playing individually as a backing band for another artist.1

Fragments is the next step in the evolution of a band that have been integral to grassroots folk music in London for over a decade now. I’m really proud to be able to bring them back to the Folkroom label for the release of the record. You, the listener, are in for a real treat. In Fragments, the band have delivered their most accomplished collection of songs to date - an album that offers a more mature, more refined take on the familiar Patch sound. It’s a record that’s been a long time in the making, but it’s also a record that has made the most of that time.

Produced by Folkroom’s very own Ben Walker, and mastered by long-time label collaborator Mike Hillier, Fragments feels like a classic Folkroom album reimagined for 2025. The band are the best they’ve ever been, their songwriting and their music as grand and moving as ever.

The album comes out on May 9th, but pre-order now to get your hands on a sneak peek. You’re going to absolutely love it.

- Stephen

Pre-order Fragments now

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There’s a line in the recent Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, that caught my ear the first time around. The whole film (which, by the way, is really very good) teeters between two questions: what does it mean to know an artist, either as a audience member, or as a friend? And: how does folk music evolve? It is the latter of these questions that Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo address when she states ‘there was a time when the old songs were new’.

It’s an idea that I’ve been percolating on for as long as Folkroom has been running, and one that is closely tied to the way we define folk music. Is it a genre, recognisable by the sounds and playing techniques alone, or is it a storytelling tradition, for which the most important property must be the content of the lyrics? What they say. Who they say it to.

Bob Dylan has long been the most famous case study for this question, and his choice to veer into an electric sound is a focal point of the film. It’s interesting to lay modern eyes upon the sheer anger that was unleashed upon the man for the grand crime of: plugging in his guitar. Nowadays we tend to have a much more fluid idea of genre. Taylor Swift released two folk albums, and little fuss was made about whether or not they really belonged to the genre. Beyoncé released a country album and the world as a whole dived in without thinking twice.1

I’ve long settled on seeing folk as a living tradition. The stories are what matters. Who tells them and what they sound like matters less - as long as people can take the songs and make them their own.

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Whether or not a song develops a life beyond the original artist is another thing entirely. There is little one can do to control it, besides getting their music out into the world at every possible opportunity and hoping that something, somewhere sticks. There are songs I’ve seen performed at Folkroom gigs over the years that felt to me as though they could have been the next great folk standard. Kitty Macfarlane’s ‘Wrecking Days’ is one - as, indeed, are almost all the other tracks on her sublime debut, Namer of Clouds. I first heard the Canadian singer-songwriter Camille Deléan sing ‘Tomorrow I Will Leave’ acapella in a crowded London pub. It still sounds like the sort of song that would be as suited to Frank Sinatra as it would to Rhiannon Giddens.

Sometimes I’ve seen these songs start to make an impact, however small it might initially be. There’s a small, perfect pleasure in seeing the song of one friend performed by another in a room full of strangers. Here’s a good song, they’re saying. It’s not mine, I just want you to hear it. That’s how folk music begins. In 2019, the legendary Irish songwriter Christy Moore recorded ‘Ringing That Bell’, a track originally by Rob Corcoran. One that I had first heard at one of Folkroom’s gigs in the basement of a London pub. Rob’s a fantastic songwriter, and here was an artist with real influence championing him. That’s how folk music grows. That’s how it lives.

We all have a part to play in this process, whether we are internationally renowned recording artists, or amateur gig promoters, or the audience facing the artists and asking to be entertained. It is easy - so, so easy - to opt for the familiar every time. The songs that made us famous, the acts that guarantee a sold out gig, the headliner we’ve seen six times before because they’re always a good time. But for folk music to live, we need to keep seeking out the new artists, and the new songs that we hope might someday become ‘the old songs’.

Sophie Jamieson is the perfect example of an artist sitting on the edge of modern folk. She’s a woman with a guitar, telling stories. But the guitar is electric, the stories personal, and frequently very sad. I’ve watched her from the near beginning, writing, performing, getting better and better - both at knowing who she is as an artist, and at writing songs that take hold and do not let go.

This month she joins us in Nottingham (readers can also catch her at non-Folkroom events in London, Brighton, and all sorts of other places as she tours her new album, I still want to share, which came out on Bella Union three weeks ago). Mojo magazine recently compared her to Joni Mitchell and Karen Carpenter in a four star review. She shares irrefutable qualities with Sharon von Etten and Marika Hackman, too, both of whom are fans. But she is also - and this is the critical thing - someone completely new, completely fresh. Or at least as much as anyone can be when they’ve been quietly honing their craft over the course of a half-lived life.

Joni and Karen and Sharon and Marika were new and fresh once. So, too, was Christy Moore, Bob Dylan. I’m not claiming Sophie will be any of those artists to you - but she could be something else. And you won’t know until you see her play.

Sophie Jamieson joins us at Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on February 16th. Tickets are available here.

Chris Wood is one of Britain’s biggest contributors to the new folk canon. I first worked with him at our first Brighton & Hove Folk Festival in 2021, and was struck by how timeless his music felt, even when it was tied specifically to distinct moments in time (‘Hollow Point’, perhaps his most powerful song, sounds like a traditional folk song but dissects the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in 2005).

I’ve been waiting for a chance to work with Chris again ever since his headline slot at our short-lived festival. This March 16th, he’ll join us at Peggy’s Skylight for a gig that’s already sold around two thirds of the tickets. If you aren’t amongst those already prepared for this gig, you can get your tickets here.

Talking of returning artists that I’ve been wanting to work with again for several years: I’m thrilled to say that Folkroom will be hosting the magnificent Gaelynn Lea for three gigs across London, Brighton and Nottingham this May.

Gaelynn first played Brighton for us in our much-missed Toy Museum series, before joining us in the midst of the pandemic for the live-streamed Pillow Fort Folk Festival. This will be her first tour of the UK since 2019, and we’re honoured that she’s chosen to include three gigs with Folkroom in this run. We’ll be announcing the gigs properly next week - this is just an exclusive sneak peek to give our newsletter readers a chance to get in early. Keep an eye out for more news via our Instagram next week!

Finally, Liverpudlian fiddle player Mikey Kenney will be joining us in Nottingham this April. I caught Mikey live a couple of years back and immediately fell for both his deft musicianship and his onstage charm. Mikey plays Peggy’s Skylight on April 20th, and you can get your tickets here.

That’s all for February - we’ll be back in your inbox in early March with more info on that Gaelynn Lea tour, another folk great joining us in Nottingham, and news on the latest release on the Folkroom record label!

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I’ve heard rumours, in the past, about folk clubs that place the most stringent of rules upon performing artists. A friend once told me of a club that would accept no original tunes, instead offering a pre-approved list of traditional numbers that, I suppose, had been deemed safe by the hosts. Nothing that would upset the long-standing regulars. Just your straightforward, reliable tunes about murders and drownings, most of which are set sometime before noon in May.

Folk should be a living, breathing genre. A world that changes to adapt to the people and customs of its time. The old songs are performed not only to preserve our past, but also to connect it to contemporary life. Lyrics that speak of war, of social injustice, of the mistreatment of minorities: these are not historical artefacts. Folk music just offers early examples of songs that address contemporary issues.

But still, there remain a few who engage instead in a sort of musical taxidermy, attempting to preserve folk music, rather than sustain it. To frame it, rather than feed it.

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Booking acts for Folkroom, it never struck me to approach the genre as a museum piece. It helped, of course, that I came to folk at a point in time at which the definition was perhaps the broadest it had ever been. When I launched the first Folkroom night in 2010, ‘folk music’ had re-entered the public vernacular in no small part as a result of the phenomenal success of the debut Mumford & Sons album. Around the time of that initial gig, the Mercury Prize was announced, drawing from a list that included not only Mumford, but also Laura Marling and Villagers.

Now, it isn’t my place to deliver the deciding vote over whether or not Mumford & Sons are folk. But there is something telling about the way that opposing factions made their case regarding the band. For some, the case was clear: the band featured a banjo, and so must be folk. Naysayers, on the other hand, shrugged off the instrument and focused on the broader sound. The Evening Standard once described them as ‘Coldplay with a banjo’.

Both parties essentially based their argument around the sound of the project, and doing so betrayed a misunderstanding of what folk is about. The fact that each viewpoint cancels out the other highlights how difficult it is to define folk by sound. The factors that qualify a song for some will disqualify it for others. It’s like defining whether or not a breakfast is a ‘Full English’ based on whether the sauce is red or brown. These are - or can be - components. But if somebody serves me up a plate with sausages, bacon, black pudding and fried bread, I know exactly what the situation is (and I’m not complaining for one second, whichever sauce is provided).

Besides, it’s entirely possible to deliver engaging and innovative folk music regardless of the instruments at hand. I have, over the last decade and a half, watched acts at Folkroom nights deliver dazzling folk sets using synthesizers and saxophones, theremins and electric, bodyless double basses. One evening, Deerful performed an entire set using only the noises they could make with a Game Boy Color. It was mesmerising. It was unexpected. It was resolutely folk.

The most frequently cited definition of the genre is a line by the blues singer Big Bill Broonzy, though it is generally misattributed to Louis Armstrong: ‘All music is folk music,’ it goes. ‘I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song’. I’m broadly in agreement with this statement.

When I book for Folkroom, I have to balance this approach with audience expectations - the question is rarely ‘do I think this artist is folk’, but instead ‘can I get away with calling this artist folk’. Audiences, for the most part, are happy to let me decide for them. Though someone may occasionally approach me after a gig and say ‘it was good, but it wasn’t folk’, most people understand that the labels we give our music aren’t what matters. They exist for marketing purposes, or to help the Spotify algorithm define your year.1

Next week we’ll host Burd Ellen at Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham. Their music, which combines traditional folk songs with evocative (and occasionally provocative) vocals and instrumentation, is the perfect balance between the old and the new. Gayle Brogan creates sweeping sound-washes and has drawn on zithers, violins, harps and an array of synthesizers to create the duo’s dark and experimental music. Debbie Armour’s vocals often feel as though they have been drawn from a dangerous, other-worldly place. Hers is the voice that beckons you into the woods in the dead of winter.

Like so many of the best folk acts before them, Burd Ellen are doing the hard work for you - digging through the annals of British folk music and presenting their findings the way they see fit. When I named Folkroom’s newsletter ‘Modern Folk’, I intended to capture the breadth of our contemporary understanding of the genre, to allude to the grand scale of what folk is and can be in the world today. But, equally, there is no more accurate and succinct description of Burd Ellen than those two words. They are modern folk. They are also one of the most enthralling live acts on the planet right now.

Burd Ellen play Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on December 15th. They’ll be supported by another act who is reimagining the way we look at folk music, Rosie Brownhill. Tickets are available here.

Of course, if folk music is about keeping tradition alive, there are few more important living champions of the genre than Martin Carthy. A leading voice in the English folk revival of the 1960s, Carthy’s work not only helped introduce audiences across the nation to traditional music, but also famously influenced iconic American artists too. Without Carthy, we do not have Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Scarborough Fair’. We do not have Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl from the North Country’.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Carthy on a number of gigs over the past five years. He has played the Toy Museum in Brighton for Folkroom, and Green Note in London. I am always blown away by his sets, in which his encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre is on full display.

At 83, Carthy still charms and plays with his audience, and he remains a champion both of folk clubs and young folk artists. I always relish the opportunity that his gigs afford me, a chance to introduce a new support act to the audience of folk devotees. In January, Folkroom will bring Carthy back to Nottingham, and alongside him audiences will enjoy a set from The Water Chorus - an act who might be the best new interpreters of traditional folk that I’ve seen in the last five years. Their music teeters between the old and the new, and will be the perfect fit for a Martin Carthy gig.

Martin Carthy plays Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on January 19th. The Water Chorus support. Tickets are available here.

I’m deep into the process of booking gigs for 2025, and there are some very exciting events on the horizon. Nottingham folk fans can already book tickets for Sophie Jamieson in February and Chris Wood in March.

Folkroom will return to London and Brighton in May, with a visit from one of our favourite international artists. The theremin will be making a comeback. Keep your eye out for more updates in our future emails. I’m really excited by some of the plans brewing behind the scenes and - after a few years of transition for Folkroom - it feels good to be closing 2024 out with our new night in Nottingham flourishing. Have a happy Christmas folks. A sparkling Hanukkah. A hangover-free New Year. Folkroom will be back in 2025, and we’ll be as liberal with our definition of ‘folk’ as we’ve ever been. It’s the only way we know how.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for my wife. I have tickets to see Bob Dylan live early this month when he passes through Nottingham as part of his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, and in preparation for his gig, I have been listening through his entire studio album discography, from beginning to end.

That’s exactly forty albums from one of the most notorious singers in music history, blasting out of my office at a rate of roughly two to three each day. My wife has been exposed to every version of Dylan: the nasal whine of his early years, the country croon of Nashville Skyline, right through to the latter-day gravel.

Dylan’s voice - though a barrier to entry for many - has always been one of my favourite things about his music. He’s not a beautiful singer by any stretch of the imagination, but as someone whose own singing voice appears to operate in a key hitherto untamed by man, I can appreciate the musicianship it must take to deliver each line with such clear intention. Bob Dylan might not be able to deliver his song ‘Make You Feel My Love’ with the sheer vocal velocity that Adele can, but boy, does he know how to make a line land.

I was speaking about this recently with Paul, the owner of Folkroom’s new home in Nottingham, Peggy’s Skylight. We were discussing another musical great whose voice doesn’t necessarily match up to his broader talents. Peggy’s puts on a lot of fantastic jazz, and I was chatting to Paul about some of my favourite albums in the genre - including ‘Chet Baker Sings and Plays’, in which one of the greatest trumpet players of all time also offers up his dream-like (but not exactly dreamy) vocals. Baker’s singing has long been a divisive subject - his voice has a curious flatness to it that many jazz fans simply can’t abide. But just like Dylan, I can’t help but admire his efforts. There’s something about the ability to harness a flawed vocal to ensure that it hits the right notes spiritually, even when it can’t quite reach them literally.

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One act who won’t have this concern is Hattie Whitehead, who joins us in Nottingham on Sunday November 17th for our monthly gig at Peggy’s. Hattie has been playing Folkroom gigs for a few years now, and long-time fans will know that she has perhaps the most irresistibly gorgeous voice in folk music right now.

As much as I love the challenge that vocalists like Dylan present their listeners, few would deny that one of the simplest pleasures for a music fan is watching a phenomenal singer sing phenomenally. Hattie has been enjoying more and more opportunities to do this in recent years, as part of the band Hejira, who exist solely to celebrate the music of Joni Mitchell.

Hattie is the band’s vocalist, and I’ve enjoyed watching a wider audience discover one of the purest singers around as Hejira perform to sold-out venues. Last month, Hattie released her debut album as a singer-songwriter, though, so it feels right that everybody takes a moment to explore ‘Bloom’, and give its extraordinarily talented artist her dues.

Hattie Whitehead plays Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on November 17th. Tickets are available here. She’s supported by another of our favourite singers: March, whose latest release ‘Cross St Demos’ comes out today. Hejira are also playing Peggy’s Skylight this December 13th, with tickets available here.

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The idea of voice in folk music is eternally interesting to me, and there is, of course, a completely different approach to the question that involves the stories being told, the subjects being explored, and the interaction between these and the people doing the telling.

Many of the songs that have long been staples of the traditional folk canon are, for example, drenched in misogyny. Literally drenched, in the case of the numerous women who are drowned by murderous men in cruel lyrics. Our musical history is filled with violence against women, and I have a lot of time for contemporary folk acts who actively reckon with the legacy of the genre, and offer up work that centres the voices of these figures.

Burd Ellen, who headline our December 15th show at Peggy’s, offer up some of the most interesting folk music in Britain right now. While all of their music is hugely innovative and inventive (they’re a must-see for fans of Lankum), they’re also an act who are constantly reframing the genre as we’ve come to expect it. Their 2021 album ‘Says the Never Beyond’ is filled with evocative carols and wintersong, and Debbie Armour, one of the band’s two members, has spoken about the ‘quiet joys of Mary’s motherhood’ that leapt unexpectedly from the lyrics. On their debut album, ‘Silver Came’, a performance of ‘Fair Annie of Lochroyan’ was inspired by the ‘agency and determination’ of the title character, which the duo recognise as a rarity within the genre.

Burd Ellen’s most recent album, ‘A Tarot of the Green Wood’ is perhaps their most engrossing record to date, and continues to explore how contemporary voices can unearth new meanings in our traditional folk songs. ‘The Fool’ touches on man’s tendency towards war, and remains agonizingly relevant some three hundred years after it was first noted down.

This is, ultimately, the reason folk music remains so relevant, and so popular today. Our lives may change, our instruments may evolve, but human nature remains broadly the same, and the voices we sing with - as honeyed or gravelled as they might be - are simply calling out across the centuries to remind our present and future selves that we cannot change without reckoning with what has come before.

Burd Ellen plays Peggy’s Skylight in Nottingham on December 15th. Tickets are available here. We’re busy working on our plans to bring Folkroom events back to London and Brighton in 2025!

Hello, and thank you for joining me for Modern Folk, the new monthly newsletter from Folkroom. Maybe you are an old friend, transplanted over from the now defunct Tinyletter. Maybe you are new to Folkroom. In either case, this feels like a good time to (re)introduce what we are, and what we’re doing.

My name is Stephen Rötzsch Thomas. Don’t worry about pronouncing the middle bit. I can’t do it convincingly myself, and I certainly won’t be testing you later. For just shy of fourteen years now, I’ve been running gigs - and occasionally releasing music by my favourite musicians - under the name of Folkroom.

Folkroom started impossibly small, in a tiny old Victorian pub deep in the heart of Kings Cross, London. In the beginning, it was just me, whichever three acts I’d booked for the night, and the most rudimentary of sound systems. Often there wasn’t even a real audience to speak of.

But before long, Folkroom had found a footing in the live music scene of London. We had regular fans, a burgeoning community of musicians who were passionate about supporting each other, and a growing group of artists and folk fans who had become a part of the Folkroom team. We outgrew our original venue, and moved around the corner to a bigger spot, which was frequently filled with attentive audiences. In 2017, I moved away from London, but the community around our events meant that they were able to continue even when I couldn’t be there. A few months after moving I was able to launch a new regular Folkroom night in the city I had transplanted to, Brighton.

I started Folkroom for two reasons, both of which were essentially selfish. Firstly, I wanted to be involved in the music that I love, even though I have no musical ability of my own whatsoever. And secondly, I wanted to make friends with interesting people in a city that was new and overwhelming to me at the time. But I was also able to put my all into those early years of Folkroom because, frankly, my all didn’t have a whole lot more to focus on. And, to completely miss the point made by one of the genre’s greatest living songwriters: the times, they are a-changin’.

Folkroom launched when I was 22 and unemployed. Now I’m 36, juggling a full-time job with freelance work, all while keeping an eye on the deadline for my first book. I’ve moved once again - this time to Nottingham - and am trying to build a home, and relationships, in this new city. I have two chronic illnesses, and really should get around to using my gym membership. Simply put: I’m not in the same place I once was.

By the time the pandemic hit in 2020, Folkroom was already over-subscribed. Myself, and the friends who support my often too zealous approach to the project, were running almost seventy gigs a year. And god knows we weren’t making any money - everything always went back to the artists. Folkroom was the size of a full-time job, but none of us could meet that commitment.

The pandemic itself wiped us out for almost 18 months. When we came back, the entire live music scene had changed. Audiences weren’t going out to gigs as much as they used to, and when they were, they were leaving the decision until the last minute - a disaster for a small enterprise like ours that needed to gauge audience sizes in advance or risk losing hundreds of pounds of our own money. Grassroots venues were decimated, and we found ourselves unable to continue at the London venue we’d called home for almost a decade.

Last year, I took some time off while attempting to buy a house - there’s only so much stress the human body can take at one time. As the process stretched out, I found myself unable to spare the time to revive Folkroom.

But obviously, I’m not done yet. It’d be a strange decision to launch a newsletter simply to say that I’ve given up, and am off to have a nice long nap.

I have this thing - Folkroom - that has already been built, and has already achieved so much. We’ve been featured in national newspapers, and won a BBC Folk Award for one of our releases. We’ve helped support developing artists, and celebrated established talent. Martin Carthy once stayed at my house after a gig, and complimented my father’s loganberry jam. You don’t give up on something like that.

I can’t believe the talent I’m surrounded with. Ben Walker, one of the most talented guitarists on the planet, played an early Folkroom gig with one speaker and no sound engineer, and inexplicably decided to stick around and help me out. Katie Carroll, despite having a ridiculous and immensely successful career of her own, gives so much of her time and talent to support our work, and my dear friend Michelle, who honestly doesn’t even like folk that much, has offered so much organisational guidance, solely because she believes in the community we have built together. And above all else, I’m spoiled by the musicians and artists that have been the heart of our events for the last decade and a half - many of whom keep coming back to Folkroom even as their careers flourish.

So now it’s time to relaunch Folkroom in a form that makes sense - not just for the gigs, but for me, and for the people who are still so dedicated to supporting this good thing that we have. And this relaunch is going to take two forms:

1. Fewer, better gigs.
   
   We’ll be changing how we approach our gigs so that we can best deliver memorable nights that can meaningfully support the musicians. In Brighton, we’ll put on around four gigs a year, bringing established folk names to the city, and pairing them with new and upcoming support acts so you can continue to discover new music via Folkroom.
   
   In London, where these established artists already have plenty of outlets, we’ll focus on giving opportunities to newer acts. We’ll host four or five great gigs each year, showcasing new talent and capturing that sense of reliable artist discovery that Folkroom fans have always expected from our gigs.
   
   And I’m thrilled to finally be bringing Folkroom to my new hometown of Nottingham, where I’ll personally be hosting a monthly residency at the much-loved Peggy’s Skylight. These gigs will represent the full spectrum of folk, from established trad legends to experimental new artists who are broadening the folk horizon. The first of these events will see Alasdair Roberts and Donald WG Lindsay take to the stage on September 15th. You can buy your tickets here. In October, we’ll have The Magic Lantern joining us for the night - tickets for that one are available here.
   

2. Modern Folk!
   
   At the same time, we’ll be making more of our newsletter. We might have fewer gigs to shout about, but there’s still so much to celebrate and explore in the world of folk! And so we’re launching Modern Folk, which will act both as a source of information about Folkroom gigs and, more broadly, as a sort of digital folk zine.
   
   Each month, Modern Folk will feature essays, articles or interviews that explore the expansive world of, you guessed it, modern folk music. I’ll be behind much of what you read here, but I also hope to draw on the talents of the myriad writers and artists within the wider Folkroom community. We’ll look at pressing issues impacting the genre, and touch on the traditions that inform the music we love. We’ll explore the boundaries of the genre, and the ways it seeks to connect with life in Britain (and beyond) - today.
   
   Modern Folk’s main zine will be free to subscribe to - it makes no sense to hide news of our gigs behind a paywall! But there will be extra content for anybody who does want to offer us a little extra financial support. Folkroom has always been about sharing new music with audiences, and we’ll have less opportunity to do that as we host fewer gigs than before. Paid members of Modern Folk will get regular emails directly into their inbox recommending new music that I’ve been listening to and loving. Founder members will get the biggest perk of all: a digital copy of any new release put out by Folkroom Records. Any money made through subscriptions will enable us to pay contributors to the newsletter, or offer better fees to musicians playing our gigs.

It’s be a strange few years for Folkroom, as we’ve come to terms with losing venues, and attempting to get our heads around the changing habits of our audiences. The year-long house move didn’t help, either! But we’re going to ease back in now, making sure we can do the best for audiences and artists alike. I’ll be excited to hear your thoughts on our plans, and will hope to see you at a gig in the near future. Until then, there’ll be plenty more to come here at Modern Folk!

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