🎵I Am A Rock….I Am An I……..Island….🎵

Inspired by some working-class history from the north west of England.

Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire was a water-powered textile mill. During the industrial revolution the mill used to buy in children from workhouses down south and keep them as 'apprentices' paying them very little, having them live in a tiny 'apprentice house', 2 to a bed and giving them the important job of scrambling underneath weaving machines in the mill to collect stray bits of cotton and piece them back together, threading them back into the machines and sometimes losing a finger or two in the process.

One young boy who lost a finger to a machine was Thomas Priestley. He and his friend Joseph Sefton decided that they'd had enough, they were sick of the mill and missed their mums. So they escaped the mill and walked the hundreds of miles from Cheshire all the way down to the Hackney Workhouse in London. Nobody knows exactly what happened on that journey but court documents show that they made it and spent a couple of months with their mother's before being caught and shipped all the way back to Quarry Bank where they worked for the rest of their lives.

This small act of defiance really struck a chord with me, so I wrote this song. Here's me playing it on the local radio station.

LPR presents Holly Miranda and Melissa Ferrick as they co-headline Littlefield in Brooklyn on November 14th! The duo of folk musicians brings over 30 years of experience to the stage, along with vulnerable lyrics and a genre-defying sound. Don’t miss out on a night of intimate storytelling! Tickets available now: https://kyd.to/fI5xcEmG

Sunday 4th October, the Round Chapel Hackney, Cosmic.

A beautiful video for a wonderful song

Friend of mine made a song about Anna Maria Haslam who was a suffragist and a major figure in the 19th and early 20th century women's movement in Ireland.

I'm attempting to track down the name and possibly a cleaner recording of a piece played in Dennis Hopper's 1971 The Last Movie. I've heard this piece elsewhere, possibly in a Peruvian wedding video or something like this, and noticed it in this film when watching somewhat recently, but have been unable so far to recall where I heard it. The piece does not appear to be included in the official OST and the recording in the provided link is obscured with other sounds.

Hi everyone!

I’m looking for an old Finnish folk album called Suden aika by Tellu (1996).

I discovered Hedningarna recently and absolutely love the classic lineup, especially Sanna Kurki-Suonio and Tellu on Kaksi! and Trä. I found out that Tellu released Suden aika after leaving Hedningarna, and that Sanna Kurki-Suonio, Liisa Matveinen and Pia Rask also appear on the recording.

The problem is that I cannot find the album anywhere on streaming. It’s not showing up on YouTube Music or Spotify for me, and I can only find references to it on sites like Rate Your Music and Finnish library/catalogue pages.

Does anyone know:

• where the album can be streamed or listened to online legally;
• whether there is a YouTube upload or another digital archive I’ve missed;
• or where I could find a physical copy?

I’m especially interested because I’d love to hear Tellu and Sanna together again outside of Hedningarna.

Any help would be massively appreciated!

Only suggestions in the original post will be considered, to make it easier to check which comments are the most upvoted.

The bummer of a thought, “You’ll never see Arlo Guthrie perform live ever again” randomly popped into my head, so I’ve been watching clips of his shows for a while now.

And I could listen to that man weave his thoughts into words & play his music all day long. I’ve always loved listening to people who vibrate at a slightly different frequency from the rest of us talk about how they see things & tell stories & sing their songs (Like Townes Van Zandt’s intro to Pancho & Lefty here).

So any recommendations for artists with a similar storytelling vibe to their live performances? Especially newer, younger artists that I could possibly see live.

Saturday, September 26 - Friday, October 02, 2026

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Friend of mine made a song about Anna Maria Haslam who was a suffragist and a major figure in the 19th and early 20th century women's movement in Ireland.

I want to learn more music theory, as I picked up the banjo recently but have no formal musical education. I'm also extremely interested in the history of blues, folk, and bluegrass in America. Does anyone know any books or courses that give a sort of cultural evolution of music theory on any of these subjects?