free mp3:
Farewell to Old Bedford
The Golden Harp

Concert was recorded on July 24, 2008 within the Folk Holidays festival in Náměšť nad Oslavou, Czech Republic.

Northern Roots music springs from the rich soil of a rugged infant nation to nourish the leaves and branches of Americana. It laps the morning dew from rural graveyard flowers
and spits it out as an itinerant preacher’s impassioned midnight sermon. It rushes forth with the raw intensity of shape note singing and the immediacy of murder balladry. It is New England gothic, the introspective precision of Emily Dickinson and the bloody grit of Henry David Thoreau. Northern Roots is "the best traditional ballad singer of his generation," the intensely gifted Tim Eriksen.
LA Times




DICTIONARY:

Sacred Harp is a Christian four-part choral style. The name „Sacred Harp“ refers to the human voice and a songbook published in 1844 in Hamilton, Georgia. Nothing is weirder than Sacred Harp. Its favored subject matter – the pilgrim, the grave, Christ's blood – is stark; its style – severe fourths and otherwordly open fifths – has been obsolete for more than a century. Its notation, in which triangles, circles and squares indicate pitch, looks like cuneiform. Yet exudes power and integrity. Five people sound like a choir; a dozen like a hundred. It is one of the most democratic choral forms: no audience, no permanent conductor – just people addressing one another and God.
TIME

Shape notes are a music notation designed to facilitate congregational singing. Shape notes of various kinds have been used for over two centuries in a variety of sacred music traditions practiced primarily in the Southern region of the United States.
Wikipedia

Northern Roots is the largely unknown, almost secret, music of New England. When people talk about "American roots music" they almost always mean old songs from the So.......
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