Adam Clark - Folk & Fold

Featuring an impressive roster of local guest musicians, Folk & Fold is Clark’s love letter to his native Norfolk, the title referring to the people (folk) and places (fold) of East Anglia. Mining themes of exile, home and becoming ’unhomed’, Clark variously plays guitar, Anglo concertina, melodeon, bodhran, octave mandolin, tenor guitar and shruti on Folk & Fold, comprising both original material and traditional tunes drawn from the repertoires of legendary Norfolk folk figures Harry Cox and Peter Bellamy.

Featuring Alex Patterson on fiddle and Nic Zuppardi on octave mandolin, it’s the latter’s singing that provides the robust album opener, Bungay Roger, the first East Anglian song he learned. Sometimes known as Muddley Barracks, it’s an anti-recruiting song in which, persuaded to take the King’s shilling, Roger finds life as a soldier a bit of a bugger wishing he was back home on the farm “among the beef and mutton”.

No traditional folk album worth its salt would be complete without a song of transportation, provided here by the waltzing Australia from the singing of Geoff Ling of Suffolk, in which the singer laments “When I was a young man, about seventeen, I was ready to fight for Victoria, her Queen/But to keep her like a lady I went on that highway/And for that I was sent to Australia…"

The first original, co-written with his brother and featuring Georgia Shackleton on fiddle and Matt Clark on double bass, is the slow and moody I Walked By Night. Based on the story of Frederick Rolfe, the self-styled King of the Norfolk poachers, the title and lyrics are largely taken from his memoir about his first imprisonment in Norwich Castle aged 20, the final lines (“Now I tie my last snare to this stable beam.”) alluding to the fact he committed suicide.

Another of a poaching persuasion, Georgie comes from the singing of Harry Cox, telling of how the narrator encounters a weeping woman on London Bridge, lamenting that her lover and father to her seven children is to be executed for stealing the King’s deer and wishes to plead for his life. It’s all in vain though, since George is apparently of noble blood, he does get to be hung with gold chains. The number ends with an instrumental snatch of The Cuckoo’s Nest by Patterson and Zuppardi. Interestingly, comparing justice systems, the Scottish variant has him condemned for killing a man in battle but his freedom is bought by a collection from the crowd.

Again with sparse but jaunty fiddle and octave mandolin accompaniment The Female Cabin Boy is probably the best known of the tradition’s tales of gender-blurring, here set to a naggingly familiar tune, the crew all protesting their innocence when she gives birth to a daughter.

With Patterson on fiddle, two jigs, The Hearty Goodfellow / The Perfect Cure, the first an original by Clark and the other a Norfolk Long Dance traditional, launch the second half. moving on to another from Bellamy’s singing, with the gently jogging Fakenham Fair. With accordion and plucked mandolin, Clark has tweaked the lyrics to remove the female objectification so that now, instead of a carnival lass with a shapely form, it’s the dancing that’s the finest prize.

The two remaining originals come back-to-back, the Celtic-tinged acoustic guitar instrumental Home, written in a glow of contentment as his daughter lay sleeping in bed, and The Passing Year, a reflection on the changing seasons inspired by walking the Norfolk countryside with his daughter, accompanied by just shruti and double bass and featuring landscape field effects.
The album ends with Adieu to Old England, featuring Alden, Shackleton, Aaren Bennett, Patterson and Zuppardi on backing vocals and taken from Cox’s singing on his eponymous 1965 album. Another transportation broadside, but here sung in the very present context of being homeless or ’unhomed’, or perhaps ’unfolded’.

Unfussy and masterfully performed by all involved, Folk and Fold deserves to be recognised as one of the year’s finest folk albums.