Folk for today
The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe is on Wednesday at 2pm on Radio 2. Add it to your collection.Cast aside clichéd preconceptions about folk music as the domain of bearded men drunk on real ale singing with a finger in one ear, or waif-like women in floaty dresses bewailing their latest abandonment. The always convivial Mark Radcliffe has real fire in his belly when it comes to folk music being unfairly dismissed as old-fashioned. “Folk music is not a museum piece. It’s a drop-in centre with a big archive! It moves forward because it must, because we are telling stories of now,” declares the Radio 2 and 6 Music presenter and there couldn’t be a better introduction to 21st Century Folk as it returns to Radio 2 for the third year. Each day this week on the Jeremy Vine show (Mon–Fri 12 noon), five artists commissioned to create a piece inspired by someone connected to the railways will debut their song, along with the person who inspired them. Meanwhile, Radcliffe has a train-song special in The Folk Show, and will be talking to folk star Peggy Seeger.His interview with Seeger is particularly apt, given this year’s theme is connected to Railway 200, celebrating two centuries of train transport in the UK. Back in 1958, Peggy worked on the first of the ground-breaking Radio Ballads with singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl (whom she later married) and documentary producer Charles Parker. It was called The Ballad of John Axon and told the story of a driver from Stockport, posthumously awarded the George Cross when he refused to abandon his runaway train, sacrificing his own life to save others.
That’s a lot to live up to when it comes to a story but, as Radcliffe explains, listeners to these five new inspiring narratives are not going to be disappointed. There’s the tale of a man left as a two-week-old baby in a waiting room at Reading station; a railway worker who’s had a locomotive named after him to recognise his family’s 157 years of combined service; a female accountant-turned-steam-locomotive-fireman on the Llangollen Railway; and an 85-year-old man from the Windrush generation who still loves his shift in customer services at Elstree and Borehamwood station.Most remarkable of all is the story of Charlotte and David, on the surface just an ordinary couple who live near Bradford. As Radcliffe reveals, however, “Charlotte was considering taking her own life by a railway line and David was the train driver who stopped to help her. They are married now. This is like a film. It’s amazing! These songs deal with an issue, tell us something about the times we’re living in.”Those charged with bringing these true stories to life are the folk musicians Richard Thompson, Kate Rusby, Findlay Napier, Chris While and Julie Matthews (working in partnership) and Bill Ryder-Jones. Did any of them baulk about the amount of work involved? “No, I think they realise it’s what they got into folk music for, to tell stories. It’s one of the basic traditions of folk. And, let’s be honest, they get on daytime Radio 2, which doesn’t happen all the time.”
Although, thankfully, not so dramatic or life-changing, Radcliffe has his own happy associations with train journeys. As children, his grandma Doris took him, his brother and sister on a daytrip from their home station in Bolton to Blackpool – except they ended up, several hours later, in Edinburgh. And he honeymooned with his wife, Bella, on a journey through the Rocky Mountains from Vancouver to Banff, which was the first time he’d ever slept on a train. He loved the experience.So, will this year’s 21st Century Folk season manage to pick up a new audience without derailing the purists? “I know I sound like I’m reading a BBC-prepared statement,” joshes Radcliffe, “but the phrase that always comes back to me is: ‘It’s a wholly noble endeavour.’ It brings folk music to the mainstream and breaks down prejudices. It brings stories of real lives, people whose lives may not necessarily be covered by the media, and it sets them to lovely music. I think it’s an entirely victimless crime!”
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