Jon Boden in the Loxley Valley

Folk on Foot

Matthew Bannister

Music Interviews, Performing Arts, Music, Nature, Arts, Science

4.8 • 526 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2018

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

The former Bellowhead lead singer takes Matthew on a walk near his home on the outskirts of Sheffield. This landscape inspired his 2009 album “Songs from the Floodplain”, which creates a vision of a post apocalyptic future when industrial architecture is decaying and people are returning to a more rural way of life. As they walk down the valley, Jon sings “Going Down to the Wasteland”; by a whirlpool in the River Loxley, he performs ""April Queen." Next we visit a disused brick factory - where empty kilns and rusting girders are being overwhelmed by trees and weeds - the perfect setting for “Dancing In The Factory”.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're on the edge of the Loxley Valley on the outskirts of Sheffield, the city where I was born and brought up. A few minutes from the rows of terraced and semi-detached houses, you're out in the countryside with spectacular views over this wooded valley, where Robin Hood was reputed to have been born, hence Robin of Loxley, and where agriculture turned to industry one of them.
0:47.2	John Bowden, former lead singer of the big band Bellowhead, and a top folk mover and shaker,
0:52.5	who has no fewer than 11 Radio 2 folk awards on his
0:56.2	mantelpiece or in his loo or wherever he keeps them. He's a multi-instrumentalist, a singer of both
1:01.9	traditional songs and his own compositions. And he lives in the Loxley Valley with his partner,
1:07.0	the singer Faye Heald, and their two children. But last night, we caught up with him in
1:12.1	the village hall in nearby Dungworth.
1:18.4	I've had a fantastic pie this evening. I've had the minced beef and onion pie. They're quite special.
1:24.1	Yeah, at the Royal Hotel in Dungworth here. And now I've walked up the road to meet you here in the village hall.
1:30.1	Yes. And there are a load of chairs set around. What are the chairs here for? Well, so we stussed up a village choir a couple of years ago to help support the village hall, which was struggling a bit for income. So we give all the money to the village hall and have a bit of a sing on a Monday night and then go to the pub and do the quiz.
1:45.2	Right.
1:46.1	Very civilised.
1:46.8	Sounds wonderful. come so we give all the money to the village hall and have a bit of a sing on a Monday night and then go to the pub and do the quiz.
1:45.2	Right.
1:46.1	It's very civilised.
1:47.1	It sounds wonderful.
1:47.8	There'll be one blood to me and go, to bow and sow, to reap and love to be a farmer's boy, to be a farmer's boy.
2:10.1	And what sort of repertoire are you learning?
2:12.9	Well, we do quite a lot of the carols that are sung at the Royal,
2:16.7	from November onwards, there's a regular sing. There's a thing called the Sheffield Carrels, isn't it? Yeah. Can you explain about that? Well, it's a pretty massive thing, particularly in this area of Sheffield. There's a kind of network of pubs that sing this strange repertoire of carols that aren't sung anywhere else, you know, and they're all old carols.
2:34.5	They're all from before all the carols got sort of tidied up.
2:38.5	Sanitized by the Victorians, weren't they?
	...

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