Unicorn Folk News

Happy New Year everyone and there is plenty for folk fans to look forward to in 2026.

All the main ‘Listings’, the Unicorn Diary, Festival Finder and Gigs & Tours have now been updated on the main Unicorn Folk website and there is plenty to choose from. You can even find a festival or two in January if you are so inclined with Celtic Connections starting on the 15^th and the West Coast Folk Festival at Blackpool Winter Gardens from Friday 23^rd to Sunday 25^th. Seth Lakeman, Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings and The Webb Sisters are the headliners for the latter.

Amongst the many gigs listed in the Unicorn Diary in January Phil Beer and Johnny Coppin can be found at Hitchin Folk Club on the 11th and some of the artists listed in Gigs & Tours are also kicking off tours or playing dates in January, including Le Vent Du Nord.

The festive season is a time when many Morris sides are active and it would be good to get a Dance Diary off the ground in 2026 to include not only the activities of Morris sides but also folk dance societies. So, please send in details of your club’s activities for a FREE listing in the Dance Diary and maybe attract some new members in the process.

Other things to look forward to in 2026 include the Fairport Convention Winter Tour which kicks off on 17^th March and Cropredy tickets are already on sale for those looking ahead to the summer. An added attraction of the Winter Tour is that the support act is the very talented singer-songwriter Jenn Butterworth whose debut solo album appeared in 2025. A track from that album, Her By Design, rated one of the best for last year, can be heard on Filby’s Folk (Show 113) which is mentioned below. If you are reading this blog on the Unicorn Magazine you will find a link to both the tour and Cropredy ticketing sites in the Gigs & Tours Listing on the main Unicorn Folk website.

Filby’s Folk New Year/Best of 2025 podcast (Show 113) is now available and it includes the new music that I have enjoyed listening to during the past year. If I had to pick a best album of the year then it would have to be Turnstone by the Gigspanner Big Band. At seventy three minutes in length you can just close your eyes and imagine that you are enjoying the band in concert, as indeed I was lucky enough to do earlier in the year. Reg Meuross also produced a very fine album in Fire and Dust which tells the story of Woody Guthrie. The album consists of a dozen of his own songs coupled with covers of four of Guthrie’s and with the added benefit of a booklet containing biographical notes and lyrics I certainly felt much better informed about Guthrie’s music. The third stand out album in my opinion came at the end of the year courtesy of The Winter Wonderband and their seasonal album Joy Illimited which contained some lovely new compositions as well some interesting new covers. There is also plenty of other good music from 2025 to be heard in the podcast.

Finally, don’t forget that Unicorn Folk exists to promote folk music for the benefit of fans, musicians and music venues. It is run as a not-for-profit and all of the Listings are FREE with very modest charges (typically £10 for 2 months) made for events featured on the front page of the website in order to cover expenses. Some charitable events or those that promote the cause of folk music and/or folk traditions are also occasionally featured on the front page.

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.