#Ian Matthews #country rock #folk rock #British folk rock #Americana #singer-songwriter #1970s
A vital figure in the history of British folk, Ian Matthews was a founding member of the pioneering U.K. folk-rock band Fairport Convention before he went on to found his own group, Matthews' Southern Comfort, and later moved on to a solo career. Matthews possesses a warm and expressive tenor voice and a talent for songwriting. While he drew from British folk traditions in his work, his greatest inspiration came from American country, folk, and roots music, and he blended their timeless themes with a hippie-fied pastoral feel that was warm and sweet or sorrowful, depending on the song. Though he would dabble in soft rock, power pop, and synth pop in the late '70s and early '80s, he always returned to the sun-dappled sound of the country-folk hybrid that was his trademark. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ian-matthews-mn0000768231/biography
“Old Man At the Mill“ is a traditional folk tune with many variations and slightly different titles and you can search for its history on google. Some of them delve into all these meanings of the circle of life and death as the turning of the mill and it’s certainly a good discussion among folk scholars of the 1960s when this song seems to have been recorded the most. But I’m a clawhammer banjoist who has played and danced at many old time dances. When I learned the words last year so I could record it on my baritone banjo, it became apparent to me that many of the lyrics were old square dance calls. “First to the left and then to the right” “Ladies Step Forward and the gents fall back” Also I’m going to guess that “one hand in the hopper and the other in the sack” is some dance direction lost to the last century or longer. Also “Mill turns around of its own free will“ sounds much like some sort of circling movement. Although much of this tune seems to be dance calls embedded in an earlier folk song, the last verse seems the most curious to me and I guess it may have been added at a later date? “My old man’s from Kalamazoo” which is a Michigan city famous for making Gibson banjos. No wonder banjoists love to play and sing this tune. And I’m no exception — I looked inside my old Gibson RB250 mastertone and sure enough it says “made in Kalamazoo, MI”. From: https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/351543
