Bring It On Home

In the beginning was the voice and then came the acoustic guitar and thus was “modern” folk/roots music begotten. Its heyday was in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s until electricity and pop music began to hold sway but it never disappeared. The idea behind Bring It On Home is to explore to legacy of acoustic guitar picking among Britain’s young musicians. There are plenty of players who performed at, say, Les Cousins back in the day and would be happy to contribute but that would be missing the point. This is about young musicians keeping the repertoire alive and even adding to it.

Older readers will recognise more composers than players: Muddy Waters, Gary Davies, Thelonious Monk, Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (an early exponent of the electric guitar and often cited as the godmother of rock’n’roll) amongst them. The performers may be less familiar unless you’re a devotee of the modern acoustic scene. All the players are British and the set opens with Holly Carter and a medley of ‘John Henry’ and ‘Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot’. She gets to bring the album to a close in the company of veteran Joe Wilkins on ‘Blueberry Hill’. Joe was turned on to music after seeing The Last Waltz which really makes me feel old!

Andy Twyman is well known as a one-man-band with a comedic turn which makes him someone to watch out for. I particularly enjoy Abi Budgen’s interpretations of a couple of spirituals and I really have to single out Dariush Kanani’s version of ‘Love In Vain’ – as far from the Rolling Stones as you can get and absolutely gorgeous. Oli MacDonald, (Mississippi) as he’s known in the US, breaks the pattern by contributing two of his own compositions proving that the genre is not just about looking back.

Bring It On Home is split roughly equally between songs and instrumentals – it is about acoustic guitar finger-picking, after all – and whether you are deeply immersed in the scene or merely curious you’ll find much to enjoy here.