Come Make My Bed was recorded live in the stunning St Saviour Church in Leeds, in collaboration with photographer, videographer and sound engineer Will Killen. Alongside recording the three tracks on this EP, Will also recorded a video of the title track which can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5HTQHnZxQ


Recently I have been involved as musical editor in the publishing of two books of traditional songs in collaboration with Nick Dow, Steve Gardham and Francis Boutle Publishers. The first of these books, Southern Songster was published in 2020, with A Secret Stream following in 2021, the former focused on songs collected in the south of England by George Gardiner and the Hammond brothers, the latter focusing on songs collected from Romany Gypsy and Traveller singers. Each book contained around 100 musical items that were brought into print for the first time, many of them probably hadn’t been heard for over 100 years. This process of musical rediscovery inspired this EP, with most of the material coming from one of the two books.


Come Make My Bed (Roud 32444)

While working on A Secret Stream there were a number of songs that I became deeply attached to, none of them more than this one. ‘Come Make My Bed’ is a very unusual song, only collected a handful of times, primarily in southern England. The song shares a number of verses in common with some classic ballads, indeed, folksong collectors and scholars of the early 20th century tended to classify it as a version of ‘Lady Maisry’ (Child 65, Roud 45) due to sharing a few verses with that ballad (though lacking some key aspects of the ‘Lady Maisry’ narrative). In A Secret Stream, Nick Dow and Steve Gardham speculated that ‘Come Make My Bed’ was a nineteenth century invention made up of common ballad verses joined together to create a narrative, whatever its origins, there is no doubt that it is a captivating story set to a haunting tune. This variant was collected by George Gardiner from James Ray of Passfield, Hampshire, on the 21st August 1908.

Henry Cave’s Country Dance 1 / Hunt the Squirrel

A pair of tunes which Cecil Sharp collected from two different fiddle players. ‘Henry Cave’s Country Dance 1’ was noted down from Henry Cave in Midsomer Norton, Somerset on 9th September 1907. Henry Cave and his father Tom Cave were renowned itinerant fiddle players and tinkers who travelled across Somerset, between them they had an extensive and interesting repertoire of tunes and this, combined with their skilful playing, made a great impression on Cecil Sharp. Over the course of several visits, Sharp took down a total of 22 tunes from the Caves: 16 from Henry and 6 from Tom. Second in this pair of tunes is ‘Hunt the Squirrel’ which Sharp took down from William Preece in Dilwyn, Herefordshire on 29th December 1909.

Canada I O (Roud 309)

The story of this song will no doubt be familiar to many through Nic Jones' ‘Canadee-I-O’, the opening track to his celebrated 1980 album Penguin Eggs. This version, which was collected by George Gardiner from Mrs Davy in Hampshire (and published in Southern Songster), differs in both text and tune from Nic’s seminal rendition, giving an opportunity to explore a different telling of this much-loved story.