The South Yorkshire musician Jim Ghedi is a man well-versed in, and highly respectful of the grand history of folk music. He seeks to keep that traditional flame very much alight. Yet he is also happy to routinely reimagine that particular past through his often spectacular experimentation and arrangements.
And that is very much the case in his haunting new single, ‘What Will Become of England’, a song that has even greater emotional resonance when located in this country’s current time and place.
“It felt uncanny that this was recorded in 1953,” says Jim Ghedi. “Everything about it feels like it was plucked from the times we’re living in at the moment, the collective sense and existential anxiety of: how much worse can things get? or what’s next?”
Jim Ghedi found the song in the Alan Lomax Archives from a field recording of an English singer and farmworker, Harry Cox, taken in 1953 at his home in Catfield, Norfolk. Harry Cox recalled learning and hearing the song from a bloke in a pub who used to play a tin whistle and was the only singer he knew who sang it. Originally it had 8 or 9 verses but apparently, Harry could only remember two of them.
The contributions on ‘What Will Become of England’ come from Jim Ghedi’s regular collaborators Neal Heppleston, David Grubb, and Guy Whitaker, and the renowned Sheffield electronic musician and producer, Dean Honer (I Monster, All Seeing I, Eccentronic Research Council, The Moonlandingz, International Teachers of Pop).
Bandcamp Link for ‘What Will Become of England’.
The song is accompanied by a powerful, apocalyptic video created by Poor Creature – Ruth Clinton (Landless) and Cormac Macdiarmada (LANKUM).
Jim Ghedi will tour the UK in October 2022
5th – Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham
8th – The Band Room, Farndale, North Yorkshire
9th – Cumberland Arms, Byker Bank, Newcastle Upon Tyne
10th – Broadcast, Glasgow
12th – The New Adelphi Club, Hull
13th – HOME, Manchester
15th – Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot
17th – Prince Albert, Brighton
18th – The Old Church, Stoke Newington, London
19th – Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
20th – Trades Club, Hebden Bridge
21st – Future Yard CIC, Birkenhead
Ticketing information for all of these shows can be found on the Jim Ghedi website
