Martin Simpson got backstage when he was 15 and met Jimmy Reed and Big Joe Williams and it changed his life forever. He’s been on the folk circuit ever since, still at the top of his game and with the wealth of knowledge and experience reflected in this extremely entertaining podcast. His ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ album celebrates 50 years since his first record and he’s on tour in September. And talks to us here about …
… his operatic Dad born in the 19th Century
… the message carved with a knife on the door of the Bodmin Trad Music Club
… hearing Paul Robeson aged four and thinking “I want to make people cry for a living”
… ‘60s folk circuit snobbery and its disdain for “foreign songs”
… signing Big Joe Williams’ walking stick in a space between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez
… memories of Alex Campbell, Matin Carthy, Dave & Jo Ann Kelly and “that swarthy bunch of lunatics from Hull, the Watersons”
… the Nun & Ice Cream Cone, the Frog & Afterbirth: imaginary pub venues cooked up with June Tabor
… being managed by Tony Secunda, “an extremely unpleasant human being”
… “the only damage you can do to a folk song is to not sing it”
… supporting Steeleye Span and the night cash rained from the heavens
… Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, These Days by Jackson Browne, Mississippi John Hurt and other songs that never let you down onstage
… second-lining at a New Orleans jazz funeral: “the slow drag and the racing return”
… and how folk songs travel abroad and evolve.
Order copies of ‘Some Kind Of Jubilee’ here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/pre-order-the-new-album/
Martin Simpson tickets here: https://martinsimpsonmusic.com/
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