Exciting news....

At the festival we're going to be announcing another patron to serve alongside our founder patron and all round good bloke John Jones from Oysterband. However, we're going to keep you guessing about who it is until August bank holiday - but let's just say we are really pleased this person has agreed to join the Shrewsbury Folk Festival family!

Don't forget your kids' wellies....

....not because it might rain (we have put in an order for a full weekend of sun) but because this year, there'll be some workshops in South African gumboot dancing as part of the children's programme. Led by Jenny Read and Appakella, it should be the most fun they can have with their wellies on! They'll also be the chance for them to learn hamboning and Appalachian step dancing. For more about the children's festival and this year's theme of myth and magic have a look at the festival website www.shrewsburyfolkfestival.co.uk/children/index.shtml

Cecil Sharp Project on tour, January 2012

The Cecil Sharp Project will be heading out for a short UK tour in January, and will visit

Bristol
Buxton
Derby
Glasgow
Burnley
London

Full details are below on the tour flyer, hope to see you at one of the shows..

Cecil Sharp Project CD & DVD

The Cecil Sharp Project CD and DVD twin packs have been away at manufacture for the last few weeks and we expect to have finished copies delivered here by early July.

We've just started taking pre-orders for shipment in July on the project website

The official release date for regular stores and digital downloads will be Sept 5th.

There is more information and song samples available on the project website, but you can download a FREE song right here!

Download Child's Song / Barbara Allen and read the liner notes below

Sharp was struck by the cross-generational interest in singing in the Appalachians. His diaries frequently mention songs given to him by children and teenagers and their desire to perform for him and Maud on their visits. Barbara Allen was one such, this version collected from Ellie Johnson of Hot Springs, North Carolina. Kathryn Roberts


The shadows hung round the fireplace on the night he came to see us.
I stood in the door and I heard some more of the songs Mama won't teach us.
But I know more than she'll ever guess; I've grown with my ears open.
So I'll wait in the dark and I'll take his hand and sing him Barbara Allen.

I've heard these songs since I was a child and I know how to sing them,
You throw your head back and take a breath and let the song come rising.
These tales of old, they touch my soul, though I don't understand them
So I'll wait in the dark and I'll take his hand and sing him Barbara Allen.

Sweet William's down in his dwell today, he's down in his dwell a-drinking,
He passed the wine to the ladies all, he slighted Barbara Allen.
It wasn't very long before William's taken sick, death was all he dreaded.
He sent his love for Barbara to come, she come, she's come a-running.

And all she said when she got there, young man I think you're dying,
Oh I am sick and I'm very sick and never be no better.
It wasn't very long before Barbara started home; she heard the corpse bells ringing.
She looked East and she looked West and saw the pale corpse coming.

Sweet William died on Saturday night, and Barbara on a Sunday
The old woman died for the love of both, she died on Easter Monday.
On William’s grave a turtle dove, on Barbara's grave a sparrow.
The turtle dove is a sign of love, the sparrow was for sorrow

Chuck Brodsky - Sunday 26th June

We have our final concert of the 10/11 concert series this Sunday, where we welcom Chuck Brodsky back to Shrewsbury after his fantastic festival appearance last year.

Full details on all our Hive Shows are here Shrewsbury Folk Events

We've uploaded some exclusive video from Chuck's festival appearance to our Facebook site, but here's a taste of what we can expect on Sunday - it will be an amzing gig and the whole festival team will be there for this one...we can't wait!

2011 t-shirt design winner

We received a good number of really high quality entries for our 2011 t-shirt competition, thanks to all those who took the time to enter, we really appreciate the efforts you went to. It's certainly something we'll be running in future years....

The winner was Peter Farrell from Cheshire, who will see his design printed on all our shirts this year (and a few bits of other merchandise that we'll announce closer to the festival); he won a family ticket with camping for his efforts. We should have the shirts here later this month so will post pictures of them when they arrive.

Tuneworks day in Shrewsbury

Summer's here and it's time to get your tunes polished up for festival season!

Tuneworks are running a beginners and Improvers day at The Hive in Shrewsbury on Sunday 3rd July from 11am to 5pm. Concentrating on the mainly English and Irish tunes in our tunebook (free to download at www.tuneworks.co.uk) we will be starting slowly and over the day building up speed and quality of playing.

At 3pm, there will be a free ceilidh and we will put the tunes to good use by playing for the dancers! Find us on Facebook or email izzy@tuneworks.co.uk for more information.

The cost of the day is £5 for players and FREE for dancers (3-5pm only) and tickets are available from the The Hive, 5 Belmont, Shrewsbury SY1 1TE. Tel 01743 234970.

Yoga at SFF 2011

We're pleased to announce that this year, we're introducing a session to help you kickstart your festival day - yoga!

British Wheel of Yoga teacher Faith Page will host an all-abilities session from 8.30am to 9.30am upstairs in the Pavilion on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

She's promising an invigorating and relaxing class that's suitable for everyone including beginners. Bring a mat if you've got one but don't worry if you haven't.

New Facebook Page

The festival's Facebook page was set up a couple of years ago, but the 'group' format is no longer being supported by Facebook and soon the page will be archived.

We've now started a new page on Facebook, and have started uploading some festival pics and videos - in the coming days we'll be uploading more, and this is the place (along with the blog and twitter) to pick up up-to-date festival info.

To join the new group, please click LIKE below!




We can upload lots of official festival pics and videos, but part of the fun of the old page was that we had lots of your pics up there - please feel free to upload your pics again!

SOLD OUT!

We're pleased to announce that we've now sold out of all our tickets for this years' festival.

Demand has been really high and we really hope you managed to buy the tickets you wanted. See you in August!

Songlines Top 10 UK Summer Festivals

We're proud to be listed in the Songlines 'Guide to Festivals 2011'
clicking the image below will open the page featuring Shrewsbury as a PDF, but for the full feature (and a great monthly read) pick up issue 76 of Songlines

Cecil Sharp Project - Child's Song / Barbara Allen

Child's Song / Barbara Allen
Sharp was struck by the cross-generational interest in singing in the Appalachians. His diaries frequently mention songs given to him by children and teenagers and their desire to perform for him and Maud on their visits.
Barbara Allen was one such, this version collected from Ellie Johnson of Hot Springs, North Carolina.

Caroline Herring, Steve Knightley, Andy Cutting, Kathryn Roberts,
Jackie Oates, Jim Moray, Leonard Podolak, Patsy Reid

Cecil Sharp Project - Dear Kimber

Important ticket info

Almost 90% of the 2011 festival tickets are now sold.

This has never happened before at this early date, so if you’re thinking about coming to the festival this year we would recommend you make your decision quickly.

It is difficult to say how quickly the final 10% will go we have never experienced this level of demand before, but once they've gone that's it, we have no extra tickets to release.

Early bird offer ending

Today is the last day for the earlybird offer tickets - from midnight tonight the tickets rise to their full price.

Our ticket sales are way ahead of where we've been before and we WILL CERTAINLY SELL OUT well in advance of the festival, and probably in the next month or so.

Please don't leave it too late as once they've gone, that's it - we don't have any more to release.

Full ticket details here

Cecil Sharp Project feature in Shropshire Star

Feature in the Shropshire Star today - click on image for PDF version

Andy Cutting & Patsy Reid

Andy Cutting and Patsy Reid working on the Cecil Sharp Project
photo by Carey Gough

Cecil Sharp Project Press Day

We had an open house on the Cecil Sharp Project this afternoon, with the press invited to spend some time in and around the house interviewing artists.

The articles for the project will be appearing online and in-print in the coming weeks, here's a few shots from the day...

Songlines Top 10 Festival Award

Really pleased to say we've been given the accolade of being one of Songlines Magazines Top 10 Summer Festivals of 2011.

Full details and more in their upcoming festivals supplement.

Site developments for 2011

This year there are a handful of changes to the marquees on site

Marquee 2 will be replaced by a new larger Clearspan marquee with increased capacity, providing a much more comfortable space with better sight lines.

Sabrina will be replaced with a scaled down version of our marquee two, blue and yellow tent; again this will be made more comfortable providing more space for workshops and acoustic performances.

Dance Tent will be a new larger, better quality tent with extra seating. There will also be a new dance floor covering the whole floor space at 1000sq mtrs (25m x 40m).

Children’s Marquee will be almost twice the size of last year’s tent, again to give more capacity and make sure kids have even more fun.

The whole idea behind the marquees with extra capacity is to reduce the need for “House Full” signs going up.

Screens the two large screens remain in the main marquee, but over the past couple of years we've noticed many people love to sit on the grass outside the marquee and listen. We're going to install a huge screen here so you can still sit outside the marquee and not miss a thing (you can see the screen in action here)