song of the week 31: cecil sharp project - meadows of dan

Here's a song I heard at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival at the weekend.

I told various friends I was going to the festival and almost all of them asked straight away: "Who's on?" Other than the ubiquitous Bellowhead, who claim to have performed at twenty-two festivals this summer, I couldn't particularly remember any names I was particularly looking forward to. Generally I don't go to festivals just because of the headliners but in the hope that, among the maybe twenty or so artists I'll be seeing in the space of a few days, there'll be the unexpected discovery of new artists who I haven't heard of before.

One such was Caroline Herring whose solo set was one of my highlights of the weekend. There's not a great deal of her own material available on the internet although the Cecil Sharp Project*, to which she contributed and who also performed at Shrewsbury, has received a fair amount of media coverage. Here's a pleasingly tuneful number from the resulting CSP album featuring Caroline Herring on lead voice and guitar:



* The Cecil Sharp Project is a suite of songs and tunes based on the life and work of the famous song collector composed and performed collaboratively by a number of folk musicians. This YouTube clip explains more.