England - East Anglia & Kent

East Anglia is a flat landscape with sweeping sandy beaches along its coasts on the bulge of land to the north of London.  Above a beach in northern Norfolk.  Hailing from Norwich, the capital of county Norfolk is folk trio Alden Patterson and Dashwood, who weave rich vocal harmonies, fiddle, guitar and dobro around beautifully written original songs and melodies, some of them influenced by bluegrass.  Here's a song from their 2018 album By The Night called The Cobbler's Daughter:

Near Norwich is the village of Raveningham, where performer, composer and improviser Laura Cannell hails from.  She is mostly known for her baroque violin playing and the eerie drones of her recorder producing experimental sounds exploring links between medieval traditional and modern musical idioms.  Last year she got together with fellow East Anglia singer Polly Wright to record a purely vocal album called Sing As the Crow Flies, which is a collection of haunting melodies inspired by the landscapes of Norfolk and almost puts you into a trance like state.  The source of their material apparently was a 19th century book snappily entitled 'The Norfolk Garland: A Collection of the Superstitious Beliefs and Practices, Proverbs, Curious Customs, Ballads and Songs of the People of Norfolk'.  This is the opening track called One for the Rook One for the Crow:

Folk singer, guitarist and concertina player Nancy Wallace was born in East London, but was raised in an unspecified Suffolk seaside town, but now resides in Montreal, Canada.  Her songs have featured on many compilation albums, but only released one full length solo album in 2009 called Old Stories.  This is a song from that album called I live not where I love:

Finger-style guitarist and singer/songwriter Adrian Nation was born in the Essex seaside village of Holland-on-Sea in Essex.  He lists his influences as the theme song of TV series Black Beauty, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot and is said to have something of a young Martin Simpson about him.  Here's a demonstration of his guitar skills called Five Finger Rapids from his 2009 album Fall or Fly:

Legend in his own lifetime Billy Bragg was born in 1957 in Barking, Essex.  It's hard to believe the singer/songwriter and political activist is only 62, as he seems to have been around forever playing his brand of folk punk and protest songs.  Here is one of his classics, The World Turned Upside Down, performed live.  I like this version because of the intro, which says it all really.  It features on his 2016 release Back to Basics amongst other places:

Mother and daughter duo Belinda Kempster and Fran Foote have traditional folk running through their veins.  They've decided to record songs they have learned from Belinda's uncle Ernie, who was a farm labourer near Colchester in Essex, to document their family tradition.  The result is an album called On Clay Hill released in 2019, which just features the voices of these two women, plus a short bonus song, sung by Uncle Ernie himself.  This is a song called Dark-Eyed Sailor off the album:

Another family affair are multi-instrumentalists and folk singers Emily and Hazel Askew known as the Askew sisters from London (as we are passing through London again).  They aim to give ancient traditional songs a contemporary feel accompanying their voices with fiddle, melodeon, concertina and cello.  Their latest 2019 album is called Enclosure and this is the opening track, I Wandered by the Brookside:

Folk singer Chris Wood started out his musical journey as a choir boy at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent.  He has been part of the Oysterband and many other collaborations including with Andy Cutting and others, playing English, French and Québécois folk as well as his own compositions.  Here's a slightly dark song called Non the Wiser, which is the title track from his 2013 album:

And talking about the Oysterband, they are a folk punk band who started life in 1976 in Canterbury as the Oyster Ceilidh Band, then as the Oyster Band and finally adopting its present name with various changes in personnel over the years.  Here's a song from their 2008 album The Oxford Girl and Other Stories called Early Days of a Better Nation:

Also from Canterbury are progressive folk band Arlet, whose music according to their own words falls somewhere between the folk club and the chamber music hall.  Composer and accordionist Aidan Shepherd creates a fresh sound, which is drawing from English folk tunes, reminding one of the Penguin Café Orchestra and hints English composer Vaughan Williams.  Here's a tune from their 2013 album Clearing called V12:

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Tim Edey was born in the Kent village of Broadstairs near Dover, but lives in Donegal these days and is involved there in the Irish folk scene, having been part of the Chieftains and Lúnasa.  He also collaborated with New Zealand harmonica player Brendan Power to produce according to a BBC reviewer "one of the more colourful folk albums of 2011" entitled Wriggle and Writhe.  This is the title track off that album:

Sorry this was a bit of a longer post, but this concludes our trip around the British Isles, around Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland and its islands, England and Wales.  After one year and almost 5 months, covering 5,120 miles or 8,240 km, stopping at 178 places, we're next heading over the channel to France and the rest of Europe.  As usual you can follow my virtual tour on my tripline map.