Please note LP Release is late October
Jon Boden
& The Remnant Kings
Parlour Ballads
Released 27 Sep 2024
Jon Boden
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“Parlour Music” is a genre that has been much derided over the centuries. Its heyday was the Victorian era when many middle-class houses had pianos and many middle-class sons and daughters could sight-read piano scores to a high level, musical literacy being highly prized. Many parlour songs are cloying, nationalistic, pompous and irritating to modern ears, but nestling among the dross there are many shining gems to be found. The early folk song collectors despised all these songs as fakery, usurping the place of the naturally occurring folk songs of the rural working class.
This album is not a collection of parlour songs in the technical sense of the term, but it does seek to awaken the sound of the old, well loved, slightly out of tune domestic piano and to reunite it with (or introduce it to) songs that might feel glad of the acquaintance.
I have been toying with the idea of a piano-based folk album for many years. Although I consider myself a competent-at-best pianist (my sight reading would certainly not have passed muster in the middle class Victorian parlour described above) I adore playing piano and have probably spent as many thousands of hours trying to get to grips with it as I have the fiddle or the guitar. In particular I love using it to accompany slow, sentimental ballads such as several of the tracks on this album. Lockdown brought a gaping hole in my schedule and I was fortunate enough to be awarded an Arts Council England “Developing Your Creative Practice” grant to help explore (with the band) ways of approaching folk song repertoire with the piano front and centre. In 2022 the Remnant Kings returned to touring but Richard Warren was unable to join us so M.G. Boulter took over guitar duties, bringing with him the sublime sounds of the pedal steel guitar. Of course this instrument was not invented until about hundred years after the heyday of the Victorian parlour song, but Matt’s sensitive use of it as an orchestral bedrock for these songs was the final piece in the jigsaw, and we were keen to get into the studio to get it down on tape.
Parlour Ballads was produced by long time collaborator Andy Bell and features The Remnant Kings – Sam Sweeney, Ben Nicholls, Rob Harbron, Sally Hawkins & M G Boulter. Paul Sartin was a key member of the Remnant Kings for ten years and was involved in the early developments of this album and we can hear his influence across the record.
Tracklist
- On One April Morning•
- Bonny Bunch of Roses•
- Clock O’ Clay•
- Merry Mountain Child•
- Mortal Cares•
- Oggie Man•
- Old Brown’s Daughter•
- Prentice Boy•
- Danny Deever•
- Rose of Allendale•
- London Waterman
Credits
- Jon Boden vocals, piano, guitar, fiddle
- Rob Harbron vocals, concertina, harmonium, banjo
- Sally Hawkins fiddle, oboe, cor anglais
- M.G. Boulter vocals, pedal steel guitar, dobro, guitar
- Sam Sweeney vocals, drums, fiddle
- Ben Nicholls vocals, double bass, bass guitar
- Andy Bell Recorded, Mixed, Produced
- Sam Proctor Master
- Emma Ledwith Photography
- Robin Beatty Design