About 52fs

Written September 2011, updated April 2012

Welcome to Fifty-Two Folk Songs, which (if all goes well) will host rather more than 52 songs. (True: at the time of writing there are 72.)

My name’s Phil Edwards, and I’ve been singing in folk clubs for about nine years now. Rather more recently, around 2007, I became properly aware of traditional songs, and since then they’ve formed most of my repertoire.

Like many people, I was knocked out by Jon Boden’s A Folk Song A Day project (currently running through the year for a second time); when it ended I thought it would be good to do something along the same lines. Only not updating daily, obviously. (Also, I don’t play the concertina – not yet, at least.) Then I turned 51 and realised that I was (with any luck) living through the 52 weeks of my 52nd year. Spooky. Well, not very spooky, but still. If I was ever going to publish a folk song a week (say) for a year (say), this seemed like a pretty good time to start.

Doing a song a week – or maybe two – was (and is) a great opportunity to learn more songs and improve my singing. As it’s turned out, it’s also been an opportunity to brush up my playing, learn new instruments and start layering different sounds on top of each other. I still love unaccompanied singing, but playing around with recording software is an awful lot of fun – it’s amazing what you can produce with a whistle, a zither and a bit of patience.

So here we are. Share and enjoy! You can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed on the main page, or follow me on Twitter (LordBateman) – I hardly ever post except for announcing posts on here.