Thursday 19th October 2023
Doors: 7:30pm
Happy Hour: 7:30-8:30pm
Chris Fox (support): 8pm
Hack-Poets Guild: 8:50pm
£19.80 (£18 plus £1.80 booking fee)
Age restrictions: This venue is 18+
Layout: Unreserved Seating / Standing
Book tickets through Manchester Folk Festival’s website: manchesterfolk.com/event/mff2023-hack-poets-guild-matt-phreds/
Please note that all tickets for this event are handled directly through Manchester Folk Festival. Matt & Phred’s is unable to assist on tickets, and will not be allocating tables in advance. Please contact Manchester Folk Festival with any queries.
Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann present a vivid new album and tour.
Three of the UK’s most innovative and prestigious folk artists present Blackletter Garland, a brand new album and live tour.
Inspired by historic broadside ballads – daily song sheets sold for pence from the 16th to 20th centuries – Marry, Lisa and Nathaniel rejuvenate and reinvent these stories. Fascinating interpretations and original compositions tell intricate tales of birth, love, conflict and death, with all the imagination of the folklore from which they’re based.
Arguably the forerunners of our modern news media, broadsides (also known as a broadsheet) often contained ballads and rhymes, which were sung daily in Britain’s streets and inns. Although part of living traditions of folksong, popular art and literature, these illustrated printed sheets are now rare and preserved in only a few libraries. They offer a vivid insight into the past whilst striking a chord with universal themes still relevant today. Songs about love, loneliness and kindness are interwoven with intriguing, humanist and dark stories.
Delving into the inky archives at the Bodleian Libraries and beyond, Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann lead a five-piece band bringing broadsides vividly to life for a new generation and offering a rare insight into Britain’s history.
Marry Waterson – voice
Lisa Knapp – voice, fiddle, autoharp
Nathaniel Mann – voice, bowed banjo, electronics and meat cleaver
Barney Morse Brown – cello w/ pedals
Laurence Hunt – percussion