The Polly Bolton Band: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I wrote this in 2008 about a memory that was already more than a dozen years old:

Much Wenlock is not just the spiritual home of the Olympics. It also the venue for Festival at the Edge, which I attended a couple of times back in the 1990s.

Although it is chiefly a storytelling festival, my chief memories of it are musical. I heard a young Eliza Carthy play (with Nancy Kerr) and, best of all, I heard the Polly Bolton Band.

That year everything was running hopelessly late, and it was after midnight when the band (Polly Bolton, John Shepherd and Steve Dunachie) took the stage in the marquee. Everyone's breath was steaming in the cold air. The band played traditional folk songs and their own settings of poems by Kipling and A.E. Housman. Above all I remember Polly Bolton's wonderful folk voice.

Now, at last, I have found a recording by the Polly Bolton Band on YouTube. It's a setting, not of Kipling or Housman, but of a poem by their contemporary W.B. Yeats.

Polly Bolton: Brief Encounters

Released in 1987, Ashley Hutchings' By Gloucester Docks I Sat Down and Wept is the story of a doomed love affair, which I suppose makes it a folk-rock concept album.

As well as a great title, it boasts the cream of this genre of music as collaborators. As Folking.com says:

As one would expect, Hutchings has a Who’s Who of great musicians on this album including Albion Band veterans Phil Beer, Graeme Taylor, Dave Whetstone, and John Shepherd, Steve Ashley who was in the Albion Country Band, and the much-celebrated drummers Dave Mattacks who was with Fairport Convention.

Best of all, the voice of the woman is provided by my favourite unjustly neglected female folk singer Polly Bolton. (John Shepherd was a member of the Polly Bolton Band when I saw them in the late 1990s.)

Polly Bolton: If There's No Other Way

Human Nature is a 2003 album by Ashley Hutchings billed as "A collection of new songs observing the human relationship with creatures and plants."

If There's No Other way depicts a woman turning to "omens, symbols and charms, potions and prayers" to win her love.

It was written by Hutchings with Joe Broughton and performed by one of my favourite singers, Polly Bolton.

Dando Shaft: River Boat

I have written in praise of Polly Bolton before. Here she is singing with the band Dando Shaft on their second, eponymous album.

The Wikipedia entry for the band, citing Richie Unterberger, says:

Bolton's contributions to the band received praise with her voice described as pure and expressive and Bolton herself has been described as a half-forgotten female vocalist of the era ranking alongside Pentangle's Jacqui McShee as well as other contemporary legends like Shirley Collins, Sandy Denny, and Maddy Prior.

Ashley Hutchings All Stars: My Bonny Boy

To celebrate my latest visit to Shropshire I looked for something from The Polly Bolton Band's Loveliest of Trees, but none of those Housman settings is to be be found on Youtube.

So instead, here is Polly Bolton singing with the Ashley Hutchings All Stars on their 1988 album As You Like It.

This song is known under several titles, with "The Trees They Grow So High" being perhaps the best known. Another of them is "The Bonny Boy" and that may be what the song should be called here, as "My Bonny Boy" is the title of another song entirely.

Anyway, I have blogged before about my admiration for Polly Bolton.

Dando Shaft: Rain

Three years ago I wrote about the wonderful Polly Bolton. I was looking for a Dando Shaft track that featured her, but I liked this one best. The band must have recorded it before she joined them. The loose, rhythmic guitar playing put me in mind of Nick Drake.

I turned to Electric Eden, hoping to that Rob Young had written about them, but they get only a passing mention. But I did find that he now has a blog called Electric Eden too.

Polly Bolton: Call of the Siren

Much Wenlock is not just the spiritual home of the Olympics. It also the venue for Festival at the Edge, which I attended a couple of times back in the 1990s.

Although it is chiefly a storytelling festival, my chief memories of it are musical. I heard a young Eliza Carthy play (with Nancy Kerr) and, best of all, I heard the Polly Bolton Band.

That year everything was running hopelessly late, and it was after midnight when the band (Polly Bolton, John Shepherd and Steve Dunachie) took the stage in the marquee. Everyone's breath was steaming in the cold air. The band played traditional folk songs and their own settings of poems by Kipling and A. E. Housman. Above all I remember Polly Bolton's wonderful folk voice.

I later found that she had recorded with a lot of people, including Ashley Hutchings. You can read more about Polly Bolton's career on her own website. As well as performing and running singing workshops, she runs a garden centre in the shadow of Brown Clee.

This video features Polly singing with Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra and is accompanied by footage from the film Ithaca.

Incidentally, the Festival at the Edge was founded by the late Richard Walker, known as "Mogsy" in storytelling circles. He was also the founder of the Malcolm Saville Society, but when I first met him at a storytelling evening at a pub in Leicester, I did not know of this shared enthusiasm.