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NAOMI BEDFORD & PAUL SIMMONDS - Singing It All Back Home 

NAOMI BEDFORD & PAUL SIMMONDS - Singing It All Back Home 
Dusty Willow Records DWR005 

Songwriter Naomi has always demonstrated a considerable understanding of the traditional ballad corpus with which she’d been familiar during her childhood years; her 2011 debut CD, Tales From The Weeping Willow, partly showed this. But Singing It All Back Home, her latest project with long-time musical and life partner Paul Simmonds, goes the whole hog, presenting a full set labelled “Appalachian Ballads of English and Scottish Origin”. Naomi and Paul’s premise is “to rediscover, explore and celebrate the ballads”; to enable this, they also thoughtfully take on board (and duly acknowledge) Shirley Collins’ song researches.

Naomi is a charismatic singer with a vital, strong and forthright voice that readily lends an immediate authenticity and gravitas to her interpretations. Paul’s fine harmonies are similarly authentic in the best American folksong tradition. It’s not for nothing that Naomi’s commanding voice has been compared (and very favourably) to that of the late American singer, Hedy West.

This album’s menu of musical magic is completed by the production of Dan Stewart and Ben Walker, who also supply inordinately tasty guitar, banjo and mandolin lines; other contributing musicians include Ben Paley, Lisa Knapp, Rory McLeod and Andy Bramley.

Singing It All Back Home is literally that – and much more, for Naomi and Paul have given us persuasive evidence of the timelessness and durability of these songs: a fresh, up-to-the-minute take on the stories they tell. A pity, then, that the liner notes are almost non-existent, and as a result the listener learns next to nothing about the songs or their sources.

www.naomibedford.com

David Kidman

 

This review appeared in Issue 129 of The Living Tradition magazine