In September 1969, John Roberts & Tony Barrand, graduate students at Cornell University, performed their first concert together as folk musicians. Singing informally at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival earlier that summer, they had met the redoubtable Maggi Peirce who hired them for her coffeehouse concert series, the Tryworks in New Bedford. With friend and supporter Mark Phillips (who owned the car!) they made the trek from Ithaca to New Bedford, marking the beginning of a long career.
In the following decades John and Tony played all the major folk festivals and venues, and became recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as the leading ambassadors of traditional English folksong in the USA, releasing over a dozen CDs, plus a half-dozen more with the quartet Nowell Sing We Clear.
This CD set, a live recording of one of their classic concerts, is released on the occasion of their 50th anniversary concert, September 2019, kindly hosted by the Brattleboro Music Center,
www.bmcvt.org.
PLAYLIST (Note: Missing numbers represent introductions)
CD 1
1. Set 1 Intro / Garners Gay
3. The Brisk Young Tailor
4. Peter Street
6. William Taylor
7. Mister Fox (story)
8. Reynardine
9. The Gas Man Cometh
10. Good Ale
12. Herrin's Head
14. The Two Magicians
15. Whiskey Before Breakfast / Bay of Fundy
16. Intro to Clog Dancing
17. Off to California / Brown Coffin / Navvy on the Line (clog)
CD 2
1. The Painful Plough
3. We'll Rant and We'll Roar
5. Lady Franklin's Lament
7. The Derby Ram
9. Ballad of the Cowpuncher
10. Set 2 Intro / I Wish They'd Do It Now
11. The Cheerful Horn
12. The Maid on the Shore
13. The Cluster of Nuts
14. Farewell She
15. The Shoemaker's Kiss
CD 3
2. The Bitter Withy
3. Albert and the Lion (monolog)
4. Henery the Eighth
6. Down Below
7. Come Day, Go Day
8. Country Gardens / Maid of the Mill / Glorisher
10. The Nutting Girl
11. The Baffled Knight
12. Barbara Allen
14. Congleton Bear
16. The Barley Mow
17. Thyme
released September 25, 2019