Mainly Norfolk Mentioned in Other Media

Roland in the Acoustic Music Forum Talkawhile on 12 October 2016:

Mainly Norfolk is an amazing website created by Reinhard Zierke from Hamburg/Germany. The first time I visited the internet—somewhere back in the beginning of the new century—I just wanted to know if there is something to find about Steeleye Span, the band I am in love with since 1976, when I was in the age of 13. This was what I found: ’Zierke, Reinhard—University Hamburg’. Several years ago, he had to change his site, so now it is ’Mainly Norfolk’. All his own work! In the beginning it was only Steeleye. And now so many artists more! All albums; all songs; lyrics; song history! Breathtaking! His days must have about 50 hours. For me still the best site for any information.

TradFolk Iona Fyfe interview by Jon Wilks, 15 April 2018:

[Iona] I also think Spotify is a great thing, and there’s this website called Mainly Norfolk. Do you know about that?

[Jon] Do I ever! Everyone loves Mainly Norfolk!

[Iona] [Laughs] It’s run by this German guy who is just all about it. He loves it! He will literally digitise everyone’s sleeve notes. If it’s got some kind of historical context to it that’s important and worth keeping, he will write them into his website.

Teachers at the conservatoire will use that to teach because it’s a great learning resource. But it’s difficult being taught a song when they open Mainly Norfolk and you are the citation!

Steve Gardham on Mudcat on 26 February 2019:

>>>>>It is when it is used to cram in anything that takes any fancy—the ‘singing horse’ school of non-thought<<<<<<
Whilst this would be impossible to police, Jim [Carroll]’s perception of this as a massive problem is way off the mark. Folk music, as more people have witnessed than have denied, is alive and well in England albeit not so much in the earlier format of the folk club. Festivals, singarounds, weekend gatherings, sessions, concerts, etc., are all very healthy in all of the places I visit. Here’s a new suggestion, Jim, have a look at the website ’Mainly Norfolk’ which deals mainly with recordings. This aspect looks very healthy to me. A wide range of young performers performing largely traditional material with a sprinkling of contemporary folk.

Sophie Crawford on Facebook, 17 April 2019:

OMG my album Silver Pin has made it onto Mainly Norfolk the fount of Serious Folk Knowledge! OMG OMG. This makes it Officially Folk.

George Sansome on the Beginnings of Queer Folk on Folk Radio UK, 6 June 2022:

I first came across Sophie [Crawford]’s music via one of my favourite websites, the incredible resource for English folk song that is Mainly Norfolk, and soon became a fan. When I released my solo album in lockdown 2020, I asked Sophie [Crawford] to do a support slot, and she very kindly sent me a song despite us having never spoken before. I had a feeling she might be queer but was too shy to talk about it. About a year later, Sophie saw one of my posts in a Facebook group for queer folkies called “Nowt So Queer As Folk” and dropped me an email saying she’d be interested in working together. We soon established that we were both keen to take our own research into queer traditional songs a step further, as well as to highlight the presence of queer people within the current folk scene, and so we started Queer Folk.

James Fagan and Sam Hindley talked with Janice Burns and Jon Doran on Thank Goodness It’s Folk, broadcast 2 December 2022:

[James] Jon, just holding your album in my hand I’m reminded of the fact of why I like physical copies of things, and there’s a lot of buzz at the moment that CDs are dead and that, unless you’re making extravagant coloured vinyl, that the future is all ever be downloaded or streamed, hopefully downloaded for our sake ’cause, ladies and gentlemen, this is not big news, streaming doesn’t make artists money, but downloading their albums makes ’em a bit. But a lot - I don’t know if you felt this on your tour, you can tell us in a second, our audience, folk audiences still seem to want to hold something in heir hand. They are interested in the artwork, they are interested in the process, and they’re interested in physical. What’s your reaction to that?

[Janice] I think that’s definitely true to an extend, I think every audience is different, and you have some gigs where you sell maybe one or two, but some gigs you do shift quite a lot of them. But I know from myself like I don’t have a working CD player right now, and I still buy CDs because I love having a lovely print of the artwork, a lovely look at the liner notes, you just get more of a connection, don’t you?

[James] I think so. Jon, what are your thoughts on that?

[Jon] Yeah, I think there’s so much about the songs that folk musicians love as well and folk supporters and fans love, because there are shared repertoire, a lot of them, and a lot of the songs that we’ve got on the album are songs that have been sung so many times before by so many different singers. And I think they’re generally interested where we got them from, and we’ve got that all in there.

[James] Definitely, and you know Sam and I with these Child ballad project, every week we go to online resources, one of which is Mainly Norfolk which has become such a key reference point, and, what strikes me every time I open Mainly Norfolk is that the single most interesting thing on Mainly Norfolk is that you see sleeve notes and so you can stream a thing a hundred times but unless people like that wonderful man on Mainly Norfolk go about keeping and preserving people’s sleeve notes we don’t have that information and it’s sometimes the sleeve notes the only place where you can hear what the artist actually meant or said when they made that track. The rest is speculation, but if Carthy writes something in the 1967 album about what he got on that day, that is an incredible archive. So and people are doing their little bit with downloading in other places, we can see it. But you know, long live, for me, physical stuff where you actually got notes on your songs, I think it’s really, really important myself. What about you, Sam, what’s your feeling?

[Sam] Absolutely, James, I love getting CDs and looking at the sleeve notes. Yes I do use streaming platforms but any chance I can get a CD I will get it.

Matt Quinn talked with Debbie Armour in the Folk Song Podcast In the Roud (Roud 4: Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor) broadcast on 29 May 2024:

[Matt] So but the version that you sing for this that you, I know later on we’ll hear, the version that you recorded for me for this podcast, um, but you came to this song properly for Karl Sinfield’s, um, Sing Yonder CD didn’t you?

[Debbie] I sure did, and I couldn’t have been more pleased to do it. It’s such a cool project and it’s such a fun thing, and he sent a list to people that he wanted to participate in the first of our Sing Yonder audio volumes, and I was very happy to be on that list, and I said oh I’ll do this one because I already know this, and then he was like, well you can but the purpose of this is to um, to provide a sort of version of the setting that’s in the book, the melody that’s in the book basically, so that people can kind of learn and play along and stuff and follow the sheet music, and I was like, oh! So the first time I recorded this was for Karl but i used a completely different tune to the one that I usually use. I used Jean Ritchie’s tune and which is the one that’s in his book but I kept the original Scots words. I feel like I should say that my version’s a Scottish version in Broad Scots.

[Matt] Sure, yeah

[Debbie] Um, and it’s not called Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, it’s called The Dun Broon Bride, so I kept Jean’s tune but I kept my words ’cause there’s a couple of features of that particular text that are so perfect, that I love so much, I was just like, I’m not going to find another version that’s as good as this, and might you.

[Matt] Fair, but yeah, the Sing Yonder projects are really fantastic, the book series, uh, Karl is currently in the middle of sorting out Volume 8 which I think is, uh, Rouds 71 to 80, so he’s a little bit ahead of this podcast.

[Debbie] I mean he’s rattling through them, I think it’s an enormous amount of work. They’re so, like, they’re so well considered and I feel, um, see when you do this for a job, right, when it’s your job to record versions of things that umpteen people have done umpteen times before, uh you know, often perfectly, and you’re like, ocht, I’ll do this anyway.

There’s a few kind of, like, professional benchmarks for me, and one of them is, uh, when your version is listed in Mainly Norfolk, the website.

[Matt] Oh, it’s a badge of honour.

[Debbie] I was, honestly, besides myself, absolutely. My last album went into the UK album charts, like the official not the folk albums, but the actual album charts, at number 40 and that was not as good as finding my name on the Mainly Norfolk website. But, I’m also cited, not once but twice but thrice in the Sing Yonder CDs and that is up there, let me tell you, for my version to be cited.

[Matt] I’m mentioned once in Sing Yonder, I think Volume 2 maybe, yeah a badge of honour, it’s a badge of honour as is Mainly Norfolk. And it’s not just your name in Mainly Norfolk, like, it’s when your own sleeve notes that you wrote turn up…

[Debbie] Right!

[Matt] …there, like, I wrote that and someone I’ve never heard of put it up there.

[Debbie] I know, it’s so wonderful, it’s so wonderful to see your sleeve notes up there, and I also like, um, I have only really provided sleeve notes for our first Burd Ellen album, I don’t really do like comprehensive sleeve notes for lots of reasons. Um, if people want to know about the work they can ask me. Sometimes I include the Roud number and stuff in the sleeve but, um, I don’t do sleeve notes because I don’t want you to imagine it out of the context that I’m putting it in (laughs)

[Matt] That’s fair enough

[Debbie] …the tightly controlled environment, but, um yeah, my sleeve notes, my Sing Yonder sleeve notes for this song are, um, on Mainly Norfolk, so a double whammy.

[Matt] There you go, you’ve made it!

Wikipedia

A Wikipedia search for "Mainly Norfolk" OR mainlynorfolk.info in June 2024 showed 305 entries referring to Mainly Norfolk.

A Google search for “mainlynorfolk.info site:en.wikipedia.org” in June 2024 showed 399 matches for Wikipedia entries referring to Mainly Norfolk.