Here’s what’s in the Winter 2018-19 issue of fRoots, the fourth in our new bigger! better! quarterly format.

THE EDITOR’S BOX

Ian Anderson’s comment column. Read it here.

RANTING AND REELING

Tim Chipping’s column. Read it here.

THE ELUSIVE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST

Elizabeth Kinder’s column. Read it here.

fROOTS PLAYLIST

Recent stuff we like. Read it here.

REVIEWS

Our key section reviewing all the latest CDs and more – loads bite the dust. No punches pulled! We’ve got some here for you to read now.

ROOTING ABOUT

What’s happening: packed pages of festivals, gigs, tours, radio, CDs and all kinds of roots-related stuff. The most you’ll find anywhere…

fROOTS 71 

Your free download compilation album. Find out about it here.

ROOT SALAD 1

Up’n’coming trio Solasta, US old-time-inspired duo The Other Years, Turkey’s Fulya Özlem, Gullah band from SE USA Ranky Tanky, Latvia’s Tautumeitas, Ghanaiian/UK teaming Onipa, and Maarja Nuut answering the Rocket Launcher questions.

Sam Sweeney (photo: Judith Burrows)

WARNING: CONTAINS VIOLINS

Sam Sweeney hasn’t been short of a project or two since leaving what’s-that-band, including releasing an album of straight British fiddle on a major label and directing the National Youth Folk Orchestra. Not to mention Leveret, the Remnant Kings… but Colin Irwin does anyway.

THE BEST OF 2018

With no BBC Folk Awards in sight until the end of 2019, our 33rd annual fRoots Critics Poll is the main recognition that 2018’s releases will get. And as Ian Anderson says, it has been a great year. Read it here now.

O’NEILL’S FAVOURITE

Lisa O’Neill’s musical career trajectory has accelerated upward this year with the release of her album Heard A Long Gone Song. Cara Gibney talks with the woman with an old voice.

GO WITH THE FLO

Flo is a multi-talented Italian artist whose latest album La Mentirosa was so good that we made it our pick of our Autumn issue. Elizabeth Kinder was an instant convert too.

LIFE WITH A NINE-STRING

The composer of blues classic Baby Please Don’t Go, the legendary Big Joe Williams was the realest of real deals, a country blues singer on the road for over 60 years. Dave Peabody talks to Axel Kustner, the German blues researcher who met Big Joe at a young age and became a family friend.

MIDSOUTH BOUND

Elizabeth Kinder had never been to Sidmouth Folk Week. Nor had her mother. So off they set for a few days of mother-daughter bonding, with ukuleles and morris bells…

FIVE FINGER FRANK

Frank Kidson, one of the Victorian pioneers of folk song collection, profiled by fellow Leeds resident Chris Nickson.

ROOT SALAD 2

Northumbrian super-trio The Andy May Trio, much-compiled Bert Jansch, Welsh songwriter Lleuwen and Danish-Swedish group Dreamers’ Circus.

IT’S FOLKCHESTER!

It always rains in Manchester, they say, so it’s probably a good thing that the Manchester Folk Festival is held indoors! A photo spread by Judith Burrows.

HAPPY/SAD LIFE

“I didn’t realise I was making an album about my dad,” confesses Jackie Oates to Tim Chipping about her latest one, The Joy Of Living.

TEXAS-CALIFORNIA LINE

Two veteran American songwriters and twangists of a rootsy persuasion, Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, have been recording and touring together. John Kruth hears road tales.

GENTRY DOES IT

The release of a sumptuous, career-defining boxed set allows an overview of an underrated artist forever defined by her first release. Tim Chipping pens an ode to Bobbie Gentry.

SURPRISEKING

Baffled? Jim Hickson explains all about Australia’s Mr Retro, C.W. Stoneking.

A BODY OF WORK

Haruomi Hosono has been a Japanese equivalent to Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel, to mention a few that he doesn’t sound the remotest bit like. Paul Fisher meets a legend.

BRISTOL FASHIONED

Not this Bristol, that Bristol, Tennessee, where 1927 sessions that discovered Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family happened. Tim Chipping visits the Birthplace Of Country Music Museum that marks the ‘big bang’.

CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE

The Basques and Okinawans both have unique cultures and languages while being part of larger nations. So what happened when the Basque-Ryukyu Project was put together by John Potter…?

ROOT SALAD 3

Eastern European music expo Budapest Ritmo, Appalachian lined-out hymn singer Frank Newsome, Chinese state traditional music show Xuanzang’s Pilgrimage and a look back at Trojan Records.

ALL TOGETHER: EQUATE

Back Combing: So what had we here then? The fleet-fingered future of folk music in an upwardly mobile package – or a bunch of pushy young upstarts? In fR143, May 1995, Sarah Coxson put pencil and paper to The Equation

THE CURSE OF fROOTS

Put an artist on the front of this magazine and they sometimes vanish without trace. Whatever did happen to The Equation? The Lakeman Brothers, Kate Rusby, Kathryn Roberts and Cara Dillon don’t want to talk about it, but apparently the individual parts have done quite well, reckons Colin Irwin…

BIFF!

Our exclusive cartoon strip.
Plus dozens of pages of essential adverts.