Nottinghamshire’s Lawrence County (LC), have been rightly described as a ‘sepia tinted blend of Americana, Alt-Country and folk music’. When the band decided it was time to record a new album of 10 ‘folk songs’, there was no better place to start than with Nottamun Town. 

Nottamun Town - (Roud 1044) the title track of the new album, is an old traditional song made famous by the mother of Folk herself, Jean Ritchie. Like most songs that come under the genre of ‘trad folk’, it is a song that, unsurprisingly, is of disputed origin.

The Bagthorpe (UK) based Americana, alt-country and profoundly folk influenced outfit, have long had an interest in the migration of folk songs and tunes from the British Isles (and England in particular) to the rest of the world. Jean Ritchie’s Nottamun Town, the tune/melody of which was famously used (without permission) by Bob Dylan on Masters of War is the perfect example. It is a particularly romantic notion that the song made its way from the band’s hometown of Nottingham to Kentucky, USA. Cecil Sharp the English folklorist discovered it there around 1917, from the singing of Ritchie’s sister Una, and published Ritchie’s version (with her modified lyrics) in his 1932 book Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians.

The rest of the songs on the album are an eclectic mix of well-known folk songs from the British Isles and beyond, all interpreted in the LC style, with a little touch of British folk rock, blended with the twang and drive of Americana and Alt-Country.