Adrift, Adrift - Rosie Hood

We continue our look at the fast rising young stars of the recent Cambridge Folk Festival with our next LCM featured artist, Sheffield based singer-songwriter Rosie Hood. It's a exciting time for Rosie, as she has just recently released her highly anticipated debut solo album 'The Beautiful & The Actual' through RootBeat Records.  Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the very timely and heartfelt 'Adrift, Adrift', one of the albums lead singles. A shout out as well to the very talent Elly Lucas who filmed and edited the video. The song was recorded & produced by Tom A Wright at Powered Flight Music and features Emma Smith & The Barber Sisters.

June 2017 saw Rosie Hood release her first full-length solo album 'The Beautiful & The Actual', a collection of old and new folk songs.

“I have tried to depict the beautiful and the actual”, wrote Alfred Williams in 1923 in the introduction to his book Folk Songs of the Upper Thames. A hammerman, poet, linguist and historian, Alfred Williams was also a prolific folk song collector. In the years prior to World War I he visited the towns and villages close to his home of South Marston, Wiltshire, just 10 miles from Rosie’s home village of Minety, and collected hundreds of songs, eight of which Rosie has arranged and recorded here. “I hope that my interpretations of these songs do the same”, Rosie says of Williams’ words that inspired the title of her debut album. “I feel that Alfred Williams was talking about the duality that exists within his collection of songs, but to me the title reflects the duality within the songs themselves. There’s life and death, love and betrayal, beautiful melodies and hauntingly sad lyrics,” Rosie explains.

'The Beautiful & The Actual' displays Rosie’s artistic progress and creative partnerships that have developed since releasing her eponymous E.P. in 2011. 'From A Furlong of Flight', lamenting an 11th Century monk’s unrealised dreams, effortlessly enhanced by the Barber Sisters’ strings arrangements, to the tragic traditional ballad 'Lord Lovel', sung in classic duo harmony style with Folk Award winner Jefferson Hamer, and 'Undaunted Female', the story of a bold young woman, simply accompanied by Emma Smith’s driving double bass, Rosie’s vocal holds these songs together. John Archbold’s poignant war song 'The Hills of Kandahar' features Ollie King’s sensitive melodeon playing, whilst the stark and haunting version of 'The Cruel Mother' is sung with Folk Singer of the Year nominee Emily Portman. These sparse accompaniments allow each track to breathe and for Rosie’s timeless singing to tell the stories that make up this superb debut album.

Rosie Hood a young folk singer from Minety in Wiltshire, is known for her strong, pure voice and engaging solo performance. A BBC Performing Arts Fellow in 2015 and a 2016 Horizon Award nominee at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, Rosie has become more than purely a traditional singer. Having started learning folk songs at an early age from her family, Rosie has a keen interest in the history of traditional songs, particularly those of her native Wiltshire, where she has spent time researching in the local archives and developing a broad repertoire of local songs. Rosie’s Fellowship year with the English Folk Dance & Song Society proved a pivotal point in her career giving her time and space to develop as an artist. The year saw Rosie develop her song-writing with mentor Emily Portman, hone her instrumental skills and even resulted in a transatlantic collaboration with New York based singer and guitarist Jefferson Hamer.