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The Albion Band - Lark Rise (1985)

Track listing:
  1. Tune 1:56
  2. Lemady / Arise and pick a posy 4:01
  3. All of a row 2:02
  4. Broom dance 1:38
  5. Sally drive the geese home 2:42
  6. Tune 0:45
  7. Tune 0:37
  8. John Barleycorn 2:55
  9. Haste to the wedding 2:03
  10. John Dorey / Tommytoes / John Dorey / Upton upon Severn stick dance 4:37
  11. Tune 0:57
  12. Honey bee 1:09
  13. Tune 1:31
  14. Down the middle 2:02
  15. Tune 1:27
  16. Witch Elder sequence 3:54
  17. Pub songs 3:52
  18. Dialogue / Bonnie Breastknot 5:21
  19. Til the time we meet again 3:47
  20. Tune 3:05
  21. Dance to concertina 1:50
  22. Abroad for pleasure 4:09
  23. Speed the plough 2:00
  24. Hymn - The day thou gavest 1:24
  25. Laura's dialogue 0:35
  26. Roll call after the Great War / Battle of the Somme / Circle dance 6:59

Notes

Almeida Theatre London


audience cassette master


The trilogy of books Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson are regarded as a classic sampler of English village life at the end of the 19th century. The book begins:

"The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn. For a few days or a week or a fortnight, the fields stood 'ripe unto harvest'. It was the one perfect period in the hamlet year. The 1880s brought a succession of hot summers, and day after day, as harvest time approached, the children of the end house would wake to the dewy pearly pink of a fine summer dawn, and the swizzh, swizzh of the early morning breeze rustling through the ripe corn beyond their doorstep. . . ."

The plays Lark Rise and Candleford were written by Keith Dewhurst to be performed as promenade productions. That is to say, there was no distinction between stage and auditorium, the seats were taken out, the audience was free to walk around and the actors performed the play in the middle of them. They were first performed at the National Theatre in London in March 1978 with the Albion Band - the John Tams line up, providing the music. A recording exists at the National Sound Archive in London.

In 1985, The Albion Band once again provided the music for a revival of Lark Rise, a seated production, first at the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester and then at the Almeida Theatre in London during the period August to October.

"After the Jubilee, nothing ever seemed quite the same. The old rector died and the farmer retired and machines put people out of work. Early in the nineties some measure of relief came, for then the weekly wage was raised to fifteen shillings; but rising prices and new requirements soon absorbed this rise, and it took a world war to obtain anything like a living wage."


Ashley Hutchings bass
Phil Beer guitar/fiddle
Cathy Lesurf vocals
Trevor Foster drums
Tim Laycock concertina
Anthony Ingle keyboards

Although Doug Morter was a member of the Albion Band at that time it was thought that 2 guitars were not appropriate for this production. Tim Laycock and Anthony Ingle were drafted in for this production only.