Midlands Folk Arts

The Traditional Arts Foundation (of which I’m a member of the board) is a Midlands-based charity dedicated to the promotion of the traditional arts in all their forms. The Traditional Arts Team organises events on behalf of the Foundation.

The Storytelling Cafe organises the most successful series of storytelling events in the country; “a great night out in a relaxed coffee house atmosphere and some of the greatest storytelling you will ever hear“.

Dance

I played accordion, concertina and various other instruments in the band for Foxs Morris for several years. They’re an excellent mixed border morris side, and very welcoming.

I fully intended to do more playing with Jockey Morris after visiting one of their Friday evening practises, but somehow events overtook me, as is always the way… they are an all-male Cotswold side, and again most welcoming.

Black Adder Morris practise in King’s Norton and are a North-west clog side. I seem to encounter them on a yearly basis at the Tolkein Festival at Sarehole Mill in Hall Green, Birmingham, but have yet to go down to one of their practises.

Folk Song Links

Mudcat.org is a phenomenal resource - a searchable database of songs, including MIDI.
Songs of the West Midlands at the Folk Mag site
Contemplator.com - although beware of the auto-playing MIDI if you’re at work and your computers internal speaker is on!

Concertina Links

Your first port of call for concertina-related information should be the very wonderful Concertina.Net. The forums are frequented by lots of really knowledgeable and helpful folks.

To buy a vintage concertina, visit Chris Algar, of Barleycorn Concertinas. Chris is exceptionally helpful and always has an impressive array of instruments available.

John Kirkpatrick, aside from being an inspiration to any of us who play English-style Anglo concertina, has some great tutorials in the “writings” section of his site.

Alan Day’s Anglo Concertina tutor, is now online and is a series of mp3 files - particularly useful if you want to learn by ear.

Mark Gilston is an exponent of the English system concertina and the mountain dulcimer (amongst other things!) from Austin, Texas. There are some really good samples of his English playing on his site.

Bayou Gumbo is the name of the group that features the superb Harry Scurfield on anglo. They’re from Otley and play Cajun/Old-time/African-influenced Rock’n'Roll. Ish. It’s wonderful stuff.

Dulcimer Links

Initially, I found that getting hold of any sort of consolidated information about mountain dulcimers was a bit of a chore - then a friend directed me to EverythingDulcimer.com.

The site is a huge resource of information for both mountain and hammered dulcimers, including one of the most welcoming discussion forums I’ve ever had the pleasure of participating in.

I’m a member of the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club which is another excellent UK-based resource for dulcimer players. I’m looking forward to attending some of their events.

Bing Futch is a composer, arranger and player - who regularly contributes arrangements to EverythingDulcimer.com; he also has a blog.

Mixed up strings are a group/folk club from Ohio who use “mountain dulcimers, hammer dulcimers, auto harps, banjos, guitars, fiddles (that’s “violin” to you high-brow types), mandolins, Celtic harps, bowed psaltries, tin whistles, flutes, concertinas, harmonicas, bodhrans, wash-tub basses, keyboards, “shakey” things, saxophones (don’t ask), and pretty much anything else we can drag through the door and tune to the key of D”. Their website has a couple of fantastic samples of group dulcimer-playing on it.

My other site about cacti - Blossfeldiana.com.

Autoharp Links

Cyberpluckers
UK Autoharps

Storytelling

Graham
Katrice
Annamation

Other Music & Comedy

The Fall
Echo & The Bunnymen
HMHB
The Nightingales
BIO
Syd Barrett archive
Ted Chippington at Wikipedia