PRICK & DING #13: THE FOLK

25 Jul 2012
by Johnno Casson
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Each week Fresh On The Net invites and artist or band to answer a short series of questions in Prick & Ding: the thwo and a hlf minute interview. It's convenient and quick - like enjoying a tasty microwave meal!

THIS WEEK: THE FOLK

The Folk are a 3 piece all girl acoustic pop group from Hertfordshire.

The Folk should be familiar to regulars of Fresh on The Net as they have twice had songs featured on our Fresh Faves & in turn been played by our own Tom Robinson on his BBC 6 Music shows

After hearing them on FOTN I approached a lovely lady called Helen on Twitter who I thought was the bands PR person.I was genuinely impressed with her honest,open & friendly approach to promoting the band.Turns out Helen was one of The Folk’s Mum!(Though I still don’t know which one). And though they are now moving onto new management she has done a great job in singing their praises without ramming it down people’s throats.

I haven’t in the past seen too many all teenage girl groups making what might loosely be called folk music and I certainly haven’t seen many girl groups who have such engaging songs as The Folk ;with chorus’s that stick in your head like those soft sticky jelly like toys stick to a wall (I like the monkey ones though other animals are available).

Great voices,great melodies and a gentle blend of acoustic pop and folk music is what you get from The Folk and I think when they reach the heights of the chorus of When it rain’s (below) they showcase very big potential indeed.

I think they will split opinions if they haven’t already just by being so young ,with their band name and by making music that does tap into the traditional genre that is ‘folk’.For my penny’s worth I think they are smashing,fun,relevant to their peer group & have arrived at just the right time to tap into folk music’s latest flirtation with pop music and vice versa.Though they are bringing their own flavour they put me in mind of Kate Nash when she first appeared with ‘Merry Happy’

We on Fresh on the net are all about championing fresh new music and this is very fresh & very new so give The Folk your ears for a few minutes and see how you get on together.

They are barely out of school and they already have a live schedule in place-being hard working, enthusiastic & talented bodes well for the future.If they can maintain their organic earthy feel I expect to hear them blaring out of radios for a long time to come.From Fresh on the net we say good luck girls.
The Folk – When it Rains ( as submitted to Tom Robinsons’ Freshnet page) by The Folk

Find them online at the following places Website , Twitter  , Facebook , Soundcloud

1. What are you up to at the moment?

We are having a ball at the festivals – being based in the south east we have been able to get onto festivals in Hertfordshire ( where we live ) and neighbouring Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. Proper stages too, with cool lighting and great sound. We have had our share of muffled vocals and whole instruments missing from the mix, and I am sure that will happen again, but for now, we are enjoying the better festivals locally :) In terms of our plans, we have been approached by a few people regarding management. Proper industry representation is a real possibility with a manager who is working with one other breaking female artist who you can’t avoid on radio or tv, so that’s very exciting. If that works out we will be recording another demo with producers he knows, getting some new pics, get a tour under way and then he will approach his industry contacts, so fingers crossed !

2. Favourite childhood memory?
Lucy being chased by chickens, while naked, and then being cornered and being pecked on the bum !

Rose doing outdoors things with my dad like rockclimbing in the lake district from when i was about 7. Walking is the nearest thing i can do to that at the moment, and I love to lose my self in nature.

Lauren, my top of the bunk bed was very close to the ceiling and one day I and my friends decided that drawing on the ceiling in crayons would be a great idea. And I managed to reach further than everyone with my scribbles ! This one makes me smile, apparently my mum told me off for writing on some furniture, which I completely denied. Then she showed me the evidence.. I had only gone and written my own name… !! ( and spelt it wrong as I am ‘special’  ! ), still to this day I often mix up the u and a in my name and often forget the u completely !

3. Hero?

Spiderman-Lucy, Batman-Rose, Lauren-Dr Manhattan ( we spent a lot of time watching films, don’t have time now !)

4. Villain? 

Lauren – Green Goblin,Lucy-the joker, Rose couldn’t think of anyone !

5. What/who makes you laugh? 

Lauren ; lots of things, mostly each other ! Lucy, people falling over,Rose, awkward situations

6. Describe what you do?

We spend all our time now that we have left school ( dropping out after AS levels to do this full time ) writing music, rehearsing, photo and video shoots, doing interviews like this, going on the radio to sing and promote the band oh, and doing gigs ! As a band we are always pushing everyone’s expectations to the max, mixing different styles into our songs. Using ukuleles ( we have a range of eight ), mandolin, guitars and other instruments played by session musicians who add cello, clarinet and saxophone to the mix, we create songs that are all different from each other and we experiment. We wrote a rap type song last week and performed it at at festival ! It went down really well though ! and a Johnny Cash inspired one with the Kala Ubass ukulele having a very prominent role. Other songs are more ‘pretty’, most of them have some tempo changes and breakdowns, we are still developing our style really. Been doing this a year now.

7. Who’s hair would you like to have for just one day?

Lauren – Florence Welch, Lucy-Marilyn Monroe ,Rose -Newton Faulkner’s !! ( now you weren’t expecting that were you !)

8. Best musical experience to date?

Lauren, have to say it was until this last weekend, playing at the Natural history Museum at their first musical ‘ late night opening’ event… we had a lovely video created from that too, which is place over our second single, ‘Stay’ but having played at Rhythms of the Worldrecently, we were completely blown away by that, we also went to it for the whole weekend and couldn’t believe how often people came up and chatted because they recognised us ! So a complete high really, will never forget it !
For Lucy it was meeting Professor Green after a gig we both played at the The Forum, University of Hertfordshire’s Summer ball… and for Rose, it was stumbling across a group of children, singing in Africa, on one of her exploring expeditions, ( now you weren’t expecting a normal answer there were you ?!)

9. What artist inspires you?

We have a range here, which probably explains our unusual sound,we all write the songs and you can tell when you listen, who had the most input in each one, so Lucy’s inspirations are Nikki Minaj, Florence and the Machine and Rizzle kicks, Laurens are Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling and Lady GaGa and Rose’s are Johnny Cash, Bellowhead and Fleet Foxes.

10. What does Fresh On The Net mean to you?

it is the best place for us to see if a track is a goer or not… it’s quite nerve racking putting a song up, and we have not had them all accepted, but when we re worked one of them, Stay, and made it more ‘ earthy’, it did make the grade, and now can join our first single ‘When it rains’ in the short list of two that have been played on Tom Robinson’s Mixtape ( woo !) after making it through the voting to be one of the Fresh Faves. The hardest thing is not telling anyone about it as then it’s not a true reflection … so it makes the success even more sweet !  When It rains was digitally released on April 12th and Stay will be available on the 25th july, along with a number of other tracks on an EP via bandcamp, digital or physical available – which can be accessed from our facebook account.

Johnno Casson

Johnno Casson is a London-born/Colchester-based singer, musician, songwriter and show-off. He also compiles and releases compilations and is a serial supporter of new music. Johnno releases his own music as Snippet ,Old Tramp and also under his own name Johnno Casson.. As far as we know he was the most-played artist ever on Tom's legendary late night Fresh On The Net radio shows on 6 Music - having been featured no less than 18 times and appearing as an interview guest. You can also find Johnno on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube...

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