Folk duo Tim Laycock and Alastair Braidwood perform Autumnal words and music across Dorset over the next few weeks.
Esteemed and respected folk singer and musician Tim Laycock is joined by his protégé Alastair Braidwood for their feted show ‘To Yollow Autumn Turn’d’, an evening of traditional folk songs and music, readings and storytelling relating to the turning of the year towards Autumn: the harvest, countryside ways and, most importantly, cider!
Tim Laycock was one of last year’s recipients of the English Folk Dance and Song Society gold badge, given for his life-long contribution to folk music and associated traditions. Alastair Braidwood is an actor, musician and singer born and bred in Dorset who, with Tim, has created this show celebrating the Westcountry traditions and rural ways, developed over the last several years. The duo have also recorded their first album together, which an Autumn tour around the south of England is celebrating the upcoming release of.
Alastair says ‘We’re both very excited to be bringing our music to so many lovely venues through the Autumn. Some are firm favourites with whom we’ve built a rapport over the last few years, and some are quite new to us. We look forward to making lots of new folky friends in these places, as well as seeing again some old ones.’
Tim and Alastair’s unaccompanied close-harmony singing has proved particularly popular with audiences in the past, and mixed with toe-tapping traditional tunes and readings of poems and stories from Dorset’s own Thomas Hardy and William Barnes, an evening with these two ends up being educational as well as entertaining. Expect the strains of squeezebox blended with the shrill piping of the six-hole whistle, performing tunes that were enjoyed and danced to in Dorset 200 years ago. The burr of Dorset dialect in Barnes’s poetry brings the bucolic idyll of rural life into the room. And even the Hardy extracts avoid the tragic bits!
The show has several performances in Dorset: a CD launch at the Mill House Cider Museum this Sunday 21st September at 2pm; and evening performances at Athelhampton House on Friday 3rd October, with the option of an apple-based pre-show dinner, and the Drax Arms in Bere Regis on Tuesday 28th as part of the Bere Regis Folk Nights. Tickets are on sale now via each venue, and are best booked in advance!
Tim Laycock and Alastair Braidwood. Photo credit: Dorset Morri’arty.