Thank you for following Uncanny Landscapes. Here’s a new episode of the podcast; an interview with folk-music duo Stick in the Wheel. As you know, this is a free project, both newsletter and podcast - nothing is paywalled. If you're able to support my work through a donation (aka paid subscription) - thank you!! I truly appreciate it. And if you're not, perhaps you can support by telling a friend (or two, or 100) about the Substack's free subscriptions and accompanying podcast.
The podcast (and all back ‘issues’) are also available at:
https://uncannylandscapes.podbean.com/
… and on most podcast platforms. I’ve got gigs performing The Great Satanic Swindle in Stockton and in Leeds, coming up in April 2025. Links are below. And as always, books, records and events ‘n’at here: https://linktr.ee/oldweirdalbion
Links:
Stick in the Wheel’s website
A Thousand Pokes album
Upcoming SiTW tour dates
Justin Hopper presents The Great Satanic Swindle in STOCKTON and LEEDS
Stick in the Wheel is the duo of Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter - school friends from Northeast London who’ve made music together, off and on, for many years. Now they concentrate on collecting, writing, recording and performing folk songs - largely about their native London - for an increasingly obsessed fanbase.
The pair’s latest album, A Thousand Pokes, is a fierce collection of stripped-back and yet extremely powerful songs originating from lullabies and criminal ballads; 60s singer-songwriters and 17th-century songbooks and the marginalia of monastic writing, all whipped into various degrees of frenzy. It’s a tour of a London folk-song collection that might have been, and does for the city what has long been relegated to the countryside: gives its folk songs an empathetic and modern ear.
Peppered in amongst my conversation with Nicola and Ian, you’ll hear several of the songs discussed; but delving into the Stick in the Wheel catalogue is an extremely worthwhile use of your time. As would be a visit to your local venue to see them on their upcoming UK tour.
I hope you enjoy my chat with Nicola and Ian and find in it, as I did, a new way of mapping London through mistakes and triumphs; wishes and crimes; the legacy of change.
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