Oh Dear. Poor the Robin James. He sounds sad. Unfortunately for him, he also sounds hilarious. The voice is purest Orville the Duck in beak-trembling ‘I wish I could fly’ mode, but this time Keith Harris didn’t skimp on the more brutal truths of the matter. Or Nick Drake after a 12 hour mogadon and [...]

Raucous country-blues exponents Hey Negrita are back on tour and with a new acoustic album – Burn The Whole Place Down (Fat Fox Records).

Stars of last year’s Americana documentary, We Dreamed America, Hey Negrita (named after the Stones song), have supported Alabama 3, The Beach Boys and Tony Joe White and made quite quite [...]

Hazel Davis wanders off, dejected

Churches shouldn’t smell of beer. That’s my first point. I could leave it there and cry into my glühwein but there’s so much more to say.

“Ooh isn’t this atmospheric?” said a couple of people I knew as they wandered over in one of the many breaks. No. It wasn’t. [...]

I have been an atheist for as long as I can remember but certain events of late have made me consider giving it up. Richard Dawkins’ desperate tantrums do nothing to make me want to bang my non-God’s drum and Show Of Hands’ latest single Evolution actually makes me be ashamed to call myself an [...]

Joy Thomas finds herself creatively excited

My friend Lenny always says that a room full of folk fans looks just like a room full of murderers: all those furrowed brows, arran knits and beards. Happily, this was not the crowd awaiting Jackie as she ventured out from her adopted Devon homeland into the stinkpit of central [...]