Helen Lindley

Long time no blog!

It's been a busy time since my last post, with lots of things going on, some connected to music and some not.  In the ‘not’ category was getting our 16 year-old son, Will, through his GCSEs, and then the family taking a much needed ‘off grid’ break to our favourite Dorset campsite. Will did great in his exams, by the way, and is now in 6th form studying History, Applied Science, Philosophy & Ethics, and Arts Award Gold.

On the music side of things, throughout the spring and summer Matt…

It's been an exciting start to the year - I've been doing some work on a few podcasts! 

First up was a chat on Zoom with Karl Sinfield from Sing Yonder Publications about my journey into folk music as well as discussing my setting of the folk ballad, Lord Delamere. See the Sing Yonder Substack for more.

Next was a chat with Matt Quinn of the In The Roud podcast where we discussed the history of the song, Gil Brenton. Nancy Kerr was also on the podcast to talk about her setting of the song. 

Finally was another…

I bought a new fiddle - bringing the total to 3! The newest one is the reddish colour. It's not the prettiest of my fiddles (the light one in the middle is the best looking) but that's not loud enough for sessions and can be a little fussy. 

The new one has a much more mellow tone and is significantly louder. It‘s been to two sessions now - my most frequently attended, Royal Traditions in Dungworth near Sheffield - and it’s so much better. It's now become my favourite! At some point I'll be recording some…

Back in November 2022 I was privileged to be commissioned by the Lincolnshire author Neil S Reddy to write a theme tune to his recently completed book, Arise Giles Bastet, 9th Heavenly Cat, a folk horror tale with an Egyptian Cat God at the centre. He sent me over the book to read (well almost - he emailed the entire book as a word document as it was so recently finished that it was still in a document format!)  Neil and I have never met in person - we live on opposite sides of a big county, but we have…

It's out at last! My EP, that is. Awakening the Lady consists of 5 Child Ballads that I've composed tunes for and rewritten lyrics to make them either more manageable and/or easier to sing. The EP has only had limited production to retain the essence of the unaccompanied singing for which these songs were originally intended. The 5 tracks on the EP are: 

Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret (Child Ballad 260 Roud Index 109) 
Tom Potts (Child Ballad 109 Roud Index 66)
The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward (Child…

Another of the tunes which Karl Sinfield at Sing Yonder asked me to revive was Willie O’Douglas Dale (Child Ballad 101, Roud Index 65). This song features Dame Oliphant who, having fallen in love with the ‘wrong’ man and getting pregnant, isn’t standing by to wait for trouble. Willie wants her to go with him, so she gives him money, jumps over the castle walls (still very pregnant!), has a baby in the woods and elopes to Scotland with him. The ballad obviously fell out of use since it was first written. It…

When Karl asked me if I'd consider undertaking some songwriting for Sing Yonder, my initial thought was “What, me?” Because although I write songs and tunes, and have made no secret about my love of finding old folk songs that are no longer sung and bringing them back to life and into the modern folk song repertoire, this was Sing Yonder. It's a publication that features so many of the musicians I admire, respect, am inspired by (and a few have been my mentors/coaches/tutors!) But I thought it too exciting…

Some regular folk fans will be aware of the Sing Yonder book series that is the brainchild of Karl Sinfield. For those who don't know them, in 2021 Karl wanted to learn more folk songs so he decided to use the Roud Index (a beyond huge list of thousands of folk songs collated by the researcher Steve Roud) in a numerical fashion. Because why take on a small project when you can take on an insurmountable one, right?

Karl wanted to sing and play simple versions of the songs and soon realised that others might…

If you've found this blog you've found my new website! I'll use it keep you up-to-date with what I'm up to, share some of the work in progress, and probably review the odd album and upcoming gigs from other musicians I like (because what I love about music - and particularly folk music - is how everyone supports each other). I'll try to keep it fairly regular but, given my chatterbox tendencies, I'll try to not go on too much!

I have a to-do list that's quite long at the moment. I've just finished a batch of…