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As it is that time of year and if you are keen on folk traditions then you might be interested in the Tradfolk Wassail Directory which has appeared for the last 3 seasons including the 2024/25 season last year. It is not clear whether it will be updated yet for 25/26 but it is still a useful resource to find out what is going in the way of ‘Wassailing’ in each county and the dates for this year are likely to be quite predictable based on last year’s information. There are also some other listings for Wassail events which may be useful including a well stocked one exclusively for the county of Somerset, comprising some free and family events, and another produced by the National Trust. The nearest to Royston is Dunton Wassail on Saturday 3rd January and details can be found in the ‘Featured Events’ section on the home page of the main Unicorn Folk website.

I am sure that at least some members of one organisation which I came across recently will be joining in with the nearest Wassail and that is the Chiltern Folk Association. I was most impressed with their Autumn newsletter sent to Unicorn Folk recently covering as it did a wide range of dance related activities around the area that is covered by the chalk escarpment known as the Chiltern Hills. I hope to be including a lot of their various club’s activities in the Unicorn Folk LISTINGS in future and in the meantime you can have a look at their website for further information and browse their newsletters going back several years.

Filby’s Folk Christmas podcast (Show 112) has just been published and it includes a fine range of festive songs, well in my opinion anyway, and it features a brand new album from the Winter Wonderband a four piece group consisting of Jennifer Crook, Saul Rose, Maclaine Colston and Beth Porter all very well established and respected names on the folk scene. The album called Joy Illimited contains some lovely new arrangements of well known traditional songs and carols plus a couple of covers of more recent songs – Last Christmas (yes, the one by George Michael but a much better version! ☺) and The Fairytale Of New York. Ideal listening over Christmas dinner I would say – either the album or the podcast!

Once the festive season is done and dusted there are plenty of things to look forward to in the New Year including at The Stables in Milton Keynes. They are once again running their popular Ceilidh Experience course which provides a chance for musicians interested in traditional and folk music to play in a band and play at a Ceilidh. All the details can be found by clicking on the link on the poster in the ‘Featured Events’ section on the home page of the main Unicorn Folk website.

I hope you are enjoying all the festive gigs listed in the current edition of the Unicorn Diary and I’m looking forward to the Royston Live Christmas Party this coming Thursday 18^th December. Do keep your eye on the update to the Diary which is coming in the week between Christmas and New Year which will contain all known details of folk club and other folk events in the principal Unicorn Folk area covering Beds, Bucks, Cambs, Essex, Herts and beyond into East Anglia and to the West, not to mention the national coverage given to folk festivals and some other events and tours which you can find in the LISTINGS one of the main menu entries at the top of the home page of the main Unicorn Folk website.

All Smiles Tonight – Poor Creature (reviewed by The Guardian): Teleology – Peggy Seeger (interviewed by The Guardian and BBC Oxfordshire); Auchies Spikkin’ Auchie – Grace Stewart Skinner (featured on BBC Scotland); Curlew’s Cry – Barry Kerr; Teeth of Time – Joshua Burnside; Shimli – Cynefin (reviewed by The Guardian); Tomorrow Held – Spafford Campbell; Turnstone – Gigspanner Big Band (reviewed by Unicorn Folk) & Varipasi – Edith WeUtonga

There is some encouraging early news about Cambridge Folk Festival 2026 and Frank Turner, Suzanne Vega and Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips have been announced as the headliners. It seems that there is a plan to have more events taking place in Cambridge itself around the time of the festival and tickets go on sale on Wednesday 3^rdDecember at 10am. More information can be found on the festival website HERE.

We are fast approaching the festive season and St Agnes Fountain will be on the road again in December (see Gigs & Tours Listing on the main Unicorn Folk website) though you will be lucky if you can get tickets for most of the gigs which are already sold out including our most local venue Hitchin Folk Club. To compensate you can listen to their just released new album, Flakes & Flurries, on Spotify though at the time of writing it didn’t seem to be quite yet available on the St Agnes website.

On the subject of festive gigs, the Unicorn Diary has just been updated to include 40 plus gigs which are taking place in the region, and a little further afield, during December. If you would like yours included as a FREE listing in the Unicorn Diary then just email info@unicornfolk.uk with the details. The Diary will be updated soon for the new year so any details/listings of events at clubs and other venues will also be very welcome.

Three of those festive gigs involve a combination of Honey and the Bear & Kyson Point performing under the title of Wintersong (see Featured Events on the main Unicorn Folk website) and I have been quite impressed by the latter’s new debut album Underwater Sky. You can hear a couple of tracks from that album on the latest Filby’s Folk podcast which I hope to complete and have loaded under Podcasts on Unicorn Folk by the end of today or Monday 1^st December at the latest. The following edition of Filby’s Folk coming mid-December will be a Christmas edition and feature some of the best ‘folky’ Christmas songs you are likely to hear anywhere.

In the meantime do consult the Unicorn Diary in the top menu Listings on the main Unicorn Folk website and enjoy the festive gigs at your local clubs and venues.

Since the last blog I have reacquainted myself with one of my favourite bands, Blowzabella, and I have done so by attending one of their concerts for the first time since the early nineties before the children came along to interrupt my regular folk clubbing. The concert was everything that I would have hoped for and was also my first visit to Cecil Sharp House which seems to have eluded me all this time despite living in London for many years.

You can read a review of the concert HERE on Unicorn Folk and I would recommend that you go and see Blowzabella whilst you have the chance as the band plan to disband in 2028 on their fiftieth anniversary – and none of us are getting any younger!

I have also been listening to a variety of new music recently including the new album from Elizabeth and Jameson, Way Out West, which I promised to review in the last blog and it’s a good illustration of the range of their music which can be witnessed in concert on a regular basis in the Unicorn Folk region but also nationwide on their current tour. You can find details of that in the Featured Events section on the home page of Unicorn Folk as you can their gig in Royston later this month and can read the review of the album HERE.

Another relatively new collaboration between Seb Stone, Matt Quinn and Lizzy Hardingham resulted in the traditional harmony singing trio called Culverake who are beginning to make a name for themselves and have recently brought out a new album called Unto The Sky which can certainly be recommended.

I have also been listening to Mikey Kenney’s new album, his fourth, called Tiny Little Light, which the press release describes as the “… culmination of ten years of attempting to create harmony between the two sides of his musical personality; the experimental, psychedelic, freak-folk, alternative singer-songwriter and the informed, rooted and academic traditional fiddle player.” It is certainly an eclectic album but I am finding that it does repay more listening. You can listen to a track or two from the album on the latest edition of Filby’s Folk also available from today and the first since Sunday 17th August owing to my involvement with and recovery from Royston Arts Festival which took place in September. There are also tracks to listen to from Blowzabella, Culverake and Elizabeth & Jameson, all mentioned above, along with some from the UK Folk Album Charts, together with tracks from a currently available bargain CD from Fairport Convention, a live recording from their 2017 Cropredy Festival.

Elsewhere on the main Unicorn Folk website you will find there have been a few changes so that the main menu system is a bit more logical and, of more importance to advertisers, there is a new price list which offers significant reductions and makes it much more cost effective for cash-strapped folk clubs and festivals to advertise.

If you are a folk fan then you can plan all your festive folk activities in this region by using the Unicorn Diary. If you are organising folk events do let Unicorn Folk know if we have missed anything and you would like to have your event listed for FREE in the Diary – just email the details to info@unicornfolk.uk.