On June 23rd, father and daughter duo Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy will release their new CD, ‘The Moral of the Elephant’, in Canada. It has already been released in the UK and I have had a chance to listen to some of the tracks. They seem to me to be quite excellent! Also, trusted ‘Faith, Folk and Charity’ English correspondent Jonathan Hagger has heard the whole thing and he thinks it’s ‘bloody brilliant’. So that’s good enough for me! Martin and Eliza talk about their new CD in this YouTube video.
Readers of this blog will know of my huge admiration for Mr. Carthy, now in his seventies and a huge figure on the English folk scene. I haven’t enjoyed everything he’s done over the years, but I’ve come to have a huge respect for his integrity as an interpreter of traditional folk songs. He and his daughter Eliza have played together in the ‘Waterson: Carthy‘ group which includes Martin’s wife (and Eliza’s mum) Norma Waterson, and Eliza has contributed fiddle tracks on a few of her dad’s CDs over the years, but this is the first time they’ve done a full-fledged album as a duet. You can find out more about Martin here and Eliza here.
To celebrate the release of Martin and Eliza’s new CD, ‘Faith, Folk and Charity’ will feature some of their best videos over the next few days – both separately and together. To kick things off, here they are playing one of the songs on the new CD at this year’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. This is ‘Died for Love’.
