
ONE HARE ONE OWL: new album by Jenny Bray
I write my own lyrics and also have collections of poems written by friends, Brenda Kirk, Cheryl Baldi, Eric Hammer and Matt Kohut. I am inspired by their work. On this album I used Eric’s ‘Poem For Julia’. Sometimes lyrics also form after conversations I have had and a friend can influence a lyric, eg. ‘Alone To Write’.

Sidetracks And Detours present PASS IT ON 28 weekly walkabout Sunday Supplement
Inventive cuisine is the star of the biggest food and wine event in the Canary Islands. Follow these steps through the Festival Saborea Lanzarote and you’ll forever be part of this unique gastronomic culture in the world.

ALREADY ON MY PLAYLISTS
Zach Bryan is a prolific songwriter and enjoys performing, so he’ certainly has his career cut out for him he is well-positioned to continue challenging established fans and turning on new ones.

SOUND ROOTS sounds right
Whilst there are limits to what a single organisation can do, what English Folk Expo, now Sound Roots, delivers is impressive. They have continually responded to what artists need in changing circumstances. The reality perhaps doesn’t match the expressed aspiration every time – as with diverse and non-English cultures in the festival – and there is an overemphasis on support for artists to work abroad. Still, a whole layer of folk artists and industry people have benefitted in multiple ways from their work

MUSIC OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR ERA
the multifaceted roles of music in culture

CINTIA MACHIN, sculptor
I remember being so impressed, when I was visiting schools in the UK as a poet and writing facilitator, how familiar teaching staff with preferred, and perhaps non-traditional, preferred learning methods amongst their pupils. Wonderful work like Cintia´s, all available to school children to in familiar environments will lead many of them to want to learn more about the history, geography and culture her sculptures represent

THE REAL AMBASSADORS
: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors.

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE?
When asked about seeking distance from the genre, she told the LA Times, “I had to take a step back. The way I grew up was so wrapped in country music, and the way I write songs is very lyrically structured in the Nashville way of doing things. But I think I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we’ll market it. “

TALKING ALL THINGS AMERICANA
When Marty Stuart performed Hillbilly Rock at Bristol, Rhythm And Blues Festival in the USA recently it still crackled with a Buddy Holly-like popabilly energy. Stuart’s gray hair stood up like a rooster’s comb atop his head, and the black fringe on his jacket flew when he twirled back to the microphone after a guitar break

JUST ANOTHER MOURNING
having been warned not to wander she now graces fields of tall red poppies in black and white films shot on an exotic island that could be a past or could be memory or could be the inevitable outcome of meeting a grieving widow on a day beneath a sky Picasso-blue rolling away with the ocean in wave after wave after wave of barely controlled emotion
