A Folk Song A Day… ten years on
It’s 2021 and Jon Boden’s recording of “January Man” is an anchoring encouragement amidst a world that’s seen so much upheaval in recent months. It’s an illustration of the timeless power of old songs, that the story seems at once familiar and new, as if it’s been there in the background listening all along whilst I’ve been focussed on the day-to-day.
For the first time humans are able to walk a path more than once, like retracing footsteps in something far better than snow at preserving what came before: the same website where Jon blogged his recording project as it unfolded… is there for all to see. The full January selection is up on all streaming platforms and, whilst filming your recording process was not yet the done thing back then, there is a YouTube playlist for those wanting a visual (albeit static: a photo against woodland). The conversations held on social media (FB had only just released Pages; I remember spending Stornoway’s first visit to Stornoway learning how to post photos to our new band Page now that MySpace simply wasn’t a thing) are preserved as if in amber, for us to go back and see what we said about songs at different times, how other reacted, and how it’s all dated so embarrassingly. It’s like scrolling back to the very start of your texting history with an old friend, except that it’s all public. The way you speak has changed… but the music seems the same. We’re able to relive in precise facsimile, those experiences that may have been deeply formative but now feel prosaic felt through a frame of erstwhile years.
What drove Jon to run the project in the first place, some kind of new year’s resolution? It kicked off on 1st July 2010, so that doesn’t quite tally. Perhaps the resolution was made at NYE but the team took 6 months planning ahead, secretly tracking & mixing the tapes ahead of time, even drafting the blog posts? If you were blogging in those days you’ll know scheduling was not as widespread a practice back then, with no Buffer or TweetDeck or Medium to help automate the many steps of releasing music into the ether. So it’s my belief (and sincere hope) that the songs were genuinely recorded on the day of release or, at least, in the same month as their release, capturing something of the surrounding atmosphere. Either way, you’d need a huge amount of discipline to sustain the recording of 365 songs and writing of the accompanying notes on their history & provenance. Who sits down and decides to do that; who sits down and does that?
One reason I’ve become so interested in the project, is that I’m seeking motivation & encouragement to pursue my own “positive habit” taking the form of recording (& releasing?) some new music each day, and I need to confirm there’s some precedent. If Jon did it for 365 days, surely I can do the same? I’ve started small: each morning, simply listen to a folk song. Don’t record, just absorb. It’s a magnificent feeling when you take five minutes out (twenty minutes in the case of ballads like Tam Lin) to forget everything that isn’t the track to which you’re listening. The image of the January Man is all the stronger for having been allowed to shuffle up to me in a moment devoid of distraction, sitting in the dawn light, deliberately making space for music.
