Northumbrian Voices

Kathryn Tickell has recorded many of the great traditional musicians of her region, such as the shepherds Willie Taylor and Will Atkinson. She made those recordings for the music but, listening later, what interested her as much were snippets of conversation: about where they learned the tunes, how they walked miles to dances, their shepherding and the blizzards. She also recorded friends, neighbours and her family. In this somewhat haphazard way Tickell gathered a remarkable archive of Northumbrian voices. When she realised she wanted to make a piece of work with them, she transcribed everything. She had in mind some musicians, found appropriate tunes and songs, recruited theatre director Annie Rigby, and her father to speak the words. Between them they worked up Northumbrian Voices, a musical drama documentary.

It has been a great success at festivals and theatres, and this double CD is a recording made of the performance at Cecil Sharp House in London. The music is marvellous. There’s a surprising variety: as well as tunes by Will Atkinson there is Martin Simpson’s fine song about the man who, working for the council, ‘ changed every road sign from Alnwick down to Craster’. Hannah Rickard gives a fine rendition of the Hank Williams country classic ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ because, as well as local songs, that’s what they sing in The Grey Bull, a pub Tickell honours with a tune. Northumbrian Voices is a labour of love, and the stories of how quad-bikes have transformed the lives of shepherds, how once, when his sheep were lost in the snow, Willie Taylor dreamed where to find them, brilliantly capture the quality of the place and its people.