This week’s featured music involves an instrument inventor and a lost folk classic.
Donald WG Lindsay is in the process of releasing Honeymoon Bridge, his new album with Roo Geddes, on which Donald sings some folks songs and some of his own songs, accompanied by Roo on fiddle and piano. Plus he plays the Scottish smallpipes throughout. But not just any smallpipes. Donald plays Lindsay System Scottish Smallpipes, his own invention which increases the range of notes the chanter can produce. It’s a development which is making considerable waves in the piping world. When he and Roo duet, you really get a sense of how he’s developing the instrument’s melodic potential.
We’re mixing the features around a bit, week to week. We always want to feature someone current, but if we were to also feature an archive album and a songwriter every week, we’d never have time to play all the other things we want to. So this time, just an archive album – but it’s something special.
Earlier this month in London, there was a prestigious concert to celebrate the legacy of Bright Phoebus, the legendary 1972 album on which Lal and Mike Waterson of the family folk group demonstrated their own songwriting. Which turned out to be eccentric and wholly original, though it completely failed to find an audience and subsequently has been mostly lost in contractual purdah. We’ll pull it out and give it a play this week.
The episode will appear here on the website at 7 pm on Sunday.
