11. LankumBetween The Earth And Sky

The moment I heard Radie Peat’s voice, I was floored, absolutely pinned against the wall. It reminded me so much of [Irish traveller singer] Margaret Barry, who Alan first heard singing while walking through the streets of her hometown in Ireland. She was playing a banjo in an alley throwing her voice against the wall so it would bounce around and people should hear it. Radie’s got the same kind of voice: a true voice, a big voice that is hers.

I saw Lankum a couple of years at St George’s Chapel in Brighton, and it was heaving, sold out. I’d heard they’d reworked ‘Hares On The Mountain’, which Radie had first heard me and Davy doing on Folk Roots, New Routes. I didn’t speak to her afterwards, but I wish I had. She’s got one of the best folk voices I’ve heard in a long time.