Mary Humphreys and Anahata

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Latest news

2009

8 April - More recording and some good gigs coming up

Anahata's been Recording Colin and Karen Cater who run Hedingham Fair. Over the years Colin has written some great songs, mainly adaptations of traditional material with either new tunes or new words, and some dance tunes. They will soon be publishing a book of these songs, accompanied by a CD, and we're producing the CD. Some was recorded at the Three Horseshoes, Duton Hill with rousing choruses provided by an invited audience, the rest in Anahata's studio at home. You'll get the official announcement on the Hedingham Fair web site when it's ready (not for a month or two yet, don't hold your breath...)

Meanwhile we're absolutely delighted to have got booked for the Friday night concert at the Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival an event that we've enjoyed several years either as spectators or playing for Gog Magog Molly (a few years ago) and Pig Dyke Molly (this year and probably next).

The Sutton Folk club in Bedfordshire is under new management after the Summer, and we're opening the new season on September 9th. The web site is currently here: Sutton Folk Club but that will probably move and Anahata (with his webmaster's hat on) has offered to set up a new site and domain name for the club.

7 March - New Album "Cold Fen" arrives

this was sent to our mailing list, but has been added here much later The album features songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in the Cambridge area, with tunes previously unpublished. These are wonderful song melodies that we're sure haven't been heard for 100 years, because RVW didn't often bother with words so Mary has had to do a fair amount of research to match up likely texts with the tunes. So not for the first time we have an album of songs that were nearly lost, yet some have familiar titles.

There are also instrumental arrangements of some of the dance tunes from the manuscript of William Clarke of Feltwell in Norfolk, unpublished so far, and one or two tunes from other sources.

22 Feb - more Recording News

Just back from a week with English Rebellion (ourselves + Nick & Mary Barber), first playing a ceilidh for a clog dancing weekend in Leyland, Lancs, then down to Wild Goose again to record an album with the band, and thence to Suffolk Folk's "Folk at the Riverside" day where we (mostly Nick and Mary Barber) ran a musicians' workshop in the morning, took part in a concert in the afternoon, and were the band for the evening ceilidh. John Kirkpatrick was among the guest performers for the day including a song spot at the ceilidh, and was visibly delighted to hear us playing one of his tunes for a dance.

The Cold Fen CD is in the works, and we're expecting it next week...

2009

19 Nov - New Album is Recorded

We went down to Wild Goose in Hampshire a couple of weeks ago and recorded more than enough material for a new album. Unusually we've not called on the services of any other musicians, except for Doug Bailey stepping out from behind the mixing desk to add some chorus harmony in one song - but two sets of bagpipes make a brief appearance, as well as the usual assortment of squeezeboxes, banjo and cello. Like Fenlandia, this album will have a number of songs and tunes from the Cambridgeshire area - the songs collected by Ralph Vaugham Williams when he visited Cambridge in 1906 and 1907, and tunes from the unpublished manuscript of William Clarke of Feltwell (in Norfolk, but on the edge of the fens). The album should be released in January.

27 July - we're on YouTube!

We're on Youtube! Many thanks to Hamish Currie for shooting some video of part of a concert at Saddleworth Folk Festival last week and putting it on YouTube.
The Nutting Song
Dennington Bell/March of the Men of Devon

We've just returned from Warwick Folk Festival where we've had a very successful weekend with Pig Dyke Molly. No singing, no performing in concerts, no worrying about set lists and instruments, just standing out in the sun playing for a great dance team! Hopefullly there will be photos soon...

19 June

About time for an update, and I haven't even mentioned Pig Dyke Molly yet. A molly dance team based in Peterborough, memorable for their startling black and white kit, band featuring a sousaphone and until recently, using their own unique tunes... Toward the end of last year Anahata was approached by Pig Dyke boss Tony Forster about joining the music team. Robin Griggs, their melodeon player and music composer of many years standing was suffering from severe health problems, they had another musician who was busy with many other committments and therefore not always available, and could we help?

Well, long story short - we've joined the team and have rarely met such a fun and friendly (and quite mad of course) bunch of people and we're loving it. Currently we've played for several pub nights and other outings and we'll be with the team at Warwick Folk Festival. Rob died in January and we never actually met him, so it's a strange journey into the unknown for al of us. We have been introducing new music for some of the dances, carefully choosing tunes that fit but aren't too well known and obvious, and so far it's proved very rewarding for us and (by all accounts, but they're being very kind to us) for the rest of the team too. Rob also created and maintained the original Pig Dyke web site and the first thing Anahata had to do was to take that over, and started afresh with a new design that was more amenable to easy and quick updates, though Robin's graphic design talents, like his music, were a hard act to follow.

Apart from all that, the festival season is well under way now. We've alread been to Loughborough, Chester and Gower festivals, and now we're looking forward to Saddleworth, Shrewsbury and Bromyard, and next year, rumour has it we'll be at Cheltenham Folk Festival, possibly with Pig Dyke Molly as well, which will keep us busy.

On top of that, Anahata is now officially editor of Suffolk Folk's Mardles magazine and well as the Suffolk Folk webmaster, and Mary continues as the organisation's treasurer.

13 March

We've had a weekend at WildGoose Studios adding instrumental accompaniments to an album Jack Crawford is recording. It's the first time we've been asked to do all the instrumental bits for someone else's album, and with cello, several melodeons, concertinas, banjo and one or two vocal harmonies I think we've created some quite satisfying variety that will break up a recording of otherwise unaccompanied singing. Look out for Jack - lovely voice and great songs!

We've just had a last-minute booking for Court Sessions Traditional music Club which has been out of action for a couple of months. Now they've found a new venue (actually one they've used before but the pub's been refurbished) and they're doing their best to hit the ground running. If you're within reach of South London do come along and support a good club. It's every Friday at the Selkirk, Selkirk Road, Tooting, London SE17 0ES. We're there on March 28.

We're ploughing though an old manuscript book of tunes - William Clark of Feltwell - trying to decipher them, find some interesting tunes andf transcribe them in ABC. There's a few goodies there and we'll be using them in festival tune workshops and our day of workshops at Lewes on September 20.

9 January 2008 - Belated New Year Greetings and a Mailing List

A happy new year (what's left of it...) to all our readers.

We've just sent off our first email newsletter. Some of you have subscribed to our list by filling in a form at a club or festival, others got put on automatically if you ordered a CD from us, and now you can also subscribe on line. See the new mailing list page for the subscription form and to find out what's involved. Very simple and safe - you can get taken off again if you change your mind, we don't give your email address away and we will rarely mail you more often than every three months!

We're just about to embark on our most organised tour yet:
Thursday Jan 10 - Maidenhead folk club
Friday Jan 11 - Cheltenham Folk Club
Sunday Jan 13 - Folk on The Moor, near Plymouth
- and on Saturday we'll be taking a break visiting friends in Cornwall!

Links on this year's gigs page.

2007

7 September - Post-Festival Recovery

I'm pleased to report that we've survived playing far more festivals in a short space of time than we've ever done before. It only took about a week to recover...

Recently we spotted a brilliant quote from Nigel Spencer, posted on the fRoots board, under the unlikely topic of "Acid Folk":

"the three CDs by Mary Humphreys and Anahata are about the most exciting thing I've heard since I discovered the Velvet Underground..."

Also Anahata is pleased to have got a favourable mention in Andy Turner's review of the EFDSS Hard Core English CD set. We have copies of both the book and CDs for sale, and many have gone, especially when we've run tune workshops at festivals.

2 July - We're on MySpace

We finally got around to putting up a MySpace profile on http://www.myspace.com/maryanahata with 4 full streaming music tracks (currently all from Fenlandia) and a gradually expanding clutch of friends. We're already getting surprise visitors making nice comments about the music so it must be worth it.

We're also busy putting together Mary's presentation on song collecting in Cambridgeshire, which she'll be doing at Whitby Folk Week and hopefully elsewhere. This will be a laptop-and-projector total multimedia experience with live performances of songs too.

Also in the works is a book of tunes to go with various workshops we'll be doing at festivals.

13 May - Radio Britfolk

Radio Britfolk has some terrific folk programmes on it, available for you to play for free any time of the day. The station needs your support in order to remain self sufficient. You can help by

• joining, which gives you access to extra features
• buying albums by your favorite artists
• Paying for a sponsorship advert which appears on the home page.

All our albums are now available for purchase via the Radio Britfolk site at the same price as you can buy them here.

13 April - Taplas Review and Article

Another first for us - an article in Taplas magazine, and our names mentioned on the front cover! In it Anahata is quoted as saying that we are planning to make a CD of Welsh music. We'd better do something about it - there's always a few people who ask why we don't do more Welsh songs.

Also a very nice review of Fenlandia, from Mick Tems, with the inevitable emphasis on the small amount of Welsh material that found its way on to the CD, on a label that specializes in English music!

23 March - Airplay!

Mary was interviewed on the phone for BBC Radio York on Monday, and Michael Brothwell played three tracks, two from Fenlandia and one from Floating Verses.

We've just heard from Verity Sharp that she's "very much enjoying" Fenlandia and will be playing The Nutting Song (a version of the Nutting Girl) on next Tuesday's Late Junction on BBC Radio 3.

7 March - Riverside Feedback

Feedback from the Suffolk Folk Riverside event: one couple who came to our workshop said it was "one of the best we've been to for a long time". More of the same at St Albans on the afternoon of Saturday 24th March. Several other enthusiastic emails from participants in the Riverside folk day, about the whole event.

5 March

We've just taken part in Suffolk Folk's day of folk music at the Riverside Centre, Stratford St Andrew. We ran a tunes workshop and did a spot in the afternoon concert. I've found that teaching tunes two bars at a time (with endless repetition of each 2 bar phrase, then 4 bar and 8 bar sections) seems to be a really good way of getting tunes to stick and developing some muscle memory. Several people came up afterwards to say they enjoyed it and found it a good format. This is very encouraging as we haven't done many workshops and we're never sure how well they go down. There'll be another at St. Albans on 24 March when we're there with CHARM. Note CHARM are doing concert performances on 23rd March at Halesworth New Cut Arts Centre and St Albans the next day, 24 March.

We've been contacted by Taplas Magazine to say the're going to run a mini-feature on us, and there'll be a review of the Fenlandia album too.