NEXT EFC GIGS: June-July 2018

LATE NEWS: Tickets are now on sale at Summerhall box office for the Miriam Erasmus gig there on Wed 18 July.

MARTYN WYNDHAM-READ

Wednesday 13 June 2018

The Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 The Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ
Time: doors 7:30pm / showtime 8pm
Admission: ... £10 (non-members), £9 (conc), £8 NHS & emergency services staff, £7 (EFC members), £5 (students)

Tickets are available on line or at the door from 7:30pm

Martyn has been involved with folk music for over 50 years. In his late teens he left his mother’s farm in Sussex and headed off, with his guitar, to Australia where he worked on a sheep station in South Australia. It was while he was there that he heard, first hand, the old songs sung by station hands and became captivated by the songs and the need to know more of them and where they came from grew. He headed off to Melbourne and became part of the folk song revival there and throughout Australia during the early1960’s..

Back to England in 1967 where he met up with the renowned singer and song collector Bert Lloyd, who himself had spent time in Australia. Martyn was asked by Bert Lloyd to be part of the album ‘Leviathan’ on the Topic label and soon after he started recording for Bill Leader and touring extensively worldwide.

In the early 1970’s Martyn started the ‘Maypoles to Mistletoe’ concerts which portray the seasons of the year through song, music, dance and verse and illustration. Martyn is also the instigator of the Song Links Project. Martyn worked with Shirley Collins on a production called ‘Down the Lawson Track’ (2009) featuring stories, poems/songs of the great Australian 'Poet of the People', Henry Lawson with Pip Barnes, Iris Bishop, Gary Holder and Jackie Oates.

Martyn's CD Jackeroo portrays his life through songs both old and new.

ROBB JOHNSON

Wednesday 20 June 2018

The Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 The Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ
Time: doors 7:30pm / showtime 8pm
Admission: ... £10 (non-members), £9 (conc), £8 NHS & emergency services staff, £7 (EFC members), £5 (students)

Tickets are available on line or at the door from 7:30pm

Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters working in the UK today. His songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, from Roy Bailey to acclaimed cabaret diva Barb Jungr, and he enjoys a similarly diverse spectrum of critical acclaim – “a modern-day Dostoyevsky” (Dirty Linen mag, USA), Mojo made the double CD Gentle Men Folk Album Of The Month (1997), while The Daily Telegraph made it their Folk Album Of 1998, and the late Tony Benn said Johnson’s “Winter Turns To Spring” was his favourite song.

Johnson has played pubs, clubs, pavements, pickets and benefits, arts centres and festivals, local radio, BBC Radios 3 and 4, Belgian Radio 1, Nicaraguan TV and Channel 4 TV and London's Albert Hall. In February 2006 Robb appeared at the Barbican as part of the prestigious BBC “Folk Britannia” series, where “for the encore, Robb Johnson leads all the artists (and the audience) in the World War I song (‘Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire’)” (BBC Folk Britannia website) in a concert that was screened later that month on BBC4.  Robb also plays extensively in Belgium, Holland and Germany and he has toured Britain supporting Chumbawamba and the US with David Rovics.

Robb has worked with a variety of bands, with friend and fellow songwriter Leon Rosselson, as well as solo. In 1997 Robb wrote the song suite Gentle Men, an ambitious family history of the First World War for the Passendale Peace Concert, where the musicians were a jazz combo led by Belgian jazz legend Koen De Cauter, and he subsequently toured it successfully in Britain. Robb’s album Metro (released in September 2005) featured piano accompaniment by the late Russel Churney, who had previously worked with Julian Clary, Barb Jungr and Fascinating Aida. Again, the album received widespread praise in both music and national press: “unquestionably classy... excellent songs (that) show again what a fine, if provocative writer Johnson is” (The Daily Telegraph).

His label Irregular Records has also facilitated releases by a variety of song-orientated artists, including an album celebrating the work of Jacques Brel that has done much to focus a renewed interest in the chanson genre. He has translated several of Brel’s songs and performed concerts celebrating Brel’s life and work. Robb has also co-written Woman, a biography of Yoko Ono, published by Chrome Dreams.

MAIRI CAMPBELL

Wednesday 27 June 2018

The Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 The Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ
Time: doors 7:30pm / showtime 8pm
Admission: ... £10 (non-members), £9 (conc), £8 NHS & emergency services staff, £7 (EFC members), £5 (students)

Tickets are available on line or at the door from 7:30pm

Mairi Campbell is an extremely talented and gifted musician who works in folk music - singing and playing fiddle - as well as in theatre. For the latter genre, Mairi has a new show on the stocks ("Auld Lang Syne") for this year's Fringe in August.

"her voice can stop the clock" (The Scotsman)

Mairi Campbell is a pioneering figure in Scottish music. Her music has a rooted and powerful quality and her musical interests are wide ranging: from playing Scottish dance music to pushing the boundaries of the traditional music scene with her soundings and improvisations.

We last saw Mairi at Edinburgh FC earlier this season when she appeared as part of the Himmerland show in early November 2017 but, in her own right, it's over a year since she guested for us.

Mairi has won multiple awards including, at the annual Scots Trad Awards ...
Scots Singer of the Year
Female Musician of the Year
Tutor of the Year.

Plus separately an award for the Neil Gow Composition of the Year

In 2015 Mairi created her first solo theatre show Pulse, an autobiographical account of a musician seeking pulse, co-devised and directed by Kath Burlinson. Tracks from her 2015 album Pulse, a collaboration with the producer David Gray, feature in the show.

WIKIPEDIA
YOUTUBE (Scots Trad Awards - "Auld Lang Syne")

SKIP GORMAN with KATE MacLEOD

Wednesday 4 July 2018

The Pleasance Cabaret Bar, 60 The Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ
Time: doors 7:30pm / showtime 8pm
Admission: ... £10 (non-members), £9 (conc), £8 NHS & emergency services staff, £7 (EFC members), £5 (students)

Tickets are available on line or at the door from 7:30pm

Skip Gorman was introduced to traditional music at eight years old, when he received his first guitar and a Jimmie Rodgers record. A few years later, he was lucky to have the opportunity to see musicians like the legendary Bill Monroe and Maybelle Carter at Newport Folk Festival. An encounter with Monroe at age 14 years was pivotal in young Skip’s life and, aside from being a masterful cowboy singer and fine fiddler, Gorman is one of the premier mandolinists in the style of Bill Monroe.

In 1995 Skip's album, A Greener Prairie (Rounder), was released to universal acclaim and was named one of the top ten folk recordings of the year by the Boston Globe, “one of the most masterful and flat-out gorgeous cowboy albums to lope down the trail in years.” Gorman’s 1996 release, Lonesome Prairie Love, was a finalist for the prestigious NAIRD Traditional Folk Recording of the Year award. In 1999, he released his eagerly awaited third Rounder album, A Cowboy’s Wild Song to His Herd, which had the honour of being selected by Amazon.com as one of the Top Ten Folk CDs of 1999.

While he pursued a degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish at Brown University, Gorman played in various old-time music and bluegrass bands, including a stint with bluegrass legend, Frank Wakefield. After graduating, Gorman traveled to Ireland, where he explored the Celtic roots of American music and to this day, Skip remains an accomplished Celtic-as well as Western-style fiddler.

In 1973, he headed to graduate school in Utah and began collecting rare recordings by early cowboy singers like Carl T. Sprague, Jules Verne Allen and Powder River Jack Lee. While in Utah, he performed the music of Western pioneers with the Deseret String Band and in 1977 went on to record his first album of old-time cowboy songs and fiddle tunes, Powder River. This seminal recording on Folk Legacy Records along with his Trail to Mexico (1983) was among the very first attempts by a folk revivalist musician to reintroduce the older traditions of the music of the American cowboy.

Skip returned East and taught high school Spanish and history for twelve years. During these years, he performed with Rick Starkey of Martin Guitars in a bluegrass duo, Rabbit In A Log, and released a solo instrumental recording, The Old Style Mandolin Vol 1. One of the tunes from this album, Cowboy Waltz, was featured in Ken Burns’ acclaimed BASEBALL PBS documentary behind the slow motion pitching of the great Walter Johnson.

LATE NEWS ... On this trip Skip is bringing over his partner, Kate MacLeod and says: "Kate is a great singer and fiddle player. She will be singing harmonies and helping me out for a week while in Scotland on fiddle and guitar."