Joshua Burnside on “Teeth of Time”: Folk Album of the Year 2025 Nominee
Folk on Foot
Matthew Bannister
4.8 • 526 Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recorded in a former office space in Belfast City Centre, Joshua Burnside’s Folk Album of the Year Nominee “Teeth of Time” was inspired by his experience of becoming a father for the first time. He tells the story behind the album and plays tracks from it in this conversation with Matthew Bannister.
---
We rely on support from our listeners to keep this show on the road. If you like what we do please either...
Become a member and get great rewards: patreon.com/folkonfoot
Or just buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/folkonfoot
Sign up for our newsletter at www.folkonfoot.com
Follow us on Bluesky/Facebook/Instagram: @folkonfoot
---
Keep up to date with the Folk Album of the Year Award: https://www.folkonfoot.com/award
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This special folk album of the Year Award episode of Folk on Foot is showcasing the extraordinary album Teeth of Time by Joshua Burnside. |
| 0:18.3 | And I'm delighted that Joshua joins us now. Joshua, first of all, |
| 0:22.4 | congratulations on your nomination. Thank you very much. It's an honor. And I suppose that the |
| 0:28.2 | most important thing for us to know in understanding this album is that you quite recently became a father. |
| 0:35.5 | Yeah, that's right. I mean, it doesn't feel that recent now No, he almost, he'll be turning the three in a week or two. A week, actually. When I started writing the songs, my wife, Emily, she was pregnant then. And then, so it was the first of the songs I wrote for the album were sort of about that news and thoughts about that. And then the last song I wrote my son was about a year old then. |
| 0:55.3 | So yeah, it was a time period of a couple of years. And that's definitely the backdrop to the |
| 1:00.7 | album. We'll talk more about that in a moment. But first things first, because I wanted to say |
| 1:04.8 | that this is the only album I've ever heard that starts with an advert for a waterbed. |
| 1:10.6 | I just wonder where that came from and |
| 1:13.3 | why you decided to use it in the intro to the title track. Yeah, well, a lot of the album is also |
| 1:19.1 | sort of about the way we're going as society, I think like modern sort of capitalism and, |
| 1:25.2 | you know, I reference sort of environmental problems as well I've |
| 1:29.1 | always had it in my head like the waterbed is the ultimate symbol of you know reinventing the |
| 1:35.1 | wheel trying to sell someone something twice basically it's the ultimate symbol of capitalism |
| 1:39.5 | gone around I think is the waterbed and I kind of stumbled by chance across that little clip of that |
| 1:45.2 | of an advert from the 70s, an American advert and I just thought it was so funny and so interesting |
| 1:50.4 | and I love the accent. I love that Boston sort of accent. I don't know. It just sort of fit with |
| 1:55.5 | some of the themes of that particular track. |
| 2:01.6 | Hi, Tom Lebray for Lebray's Waterbed Warehouse. |
| 2:04.6 | You know, I get a lot of mail from people who would like to have a waterbed, |
| 2:07.6 | but they have bedroom furniture that has been in the family for years, |
| 2:10.6 | and won't have trouble matching it, or parting with it. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matthew Bannister, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Matthew Bannister and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.