As I get older, my appreciation for folk music has increased .

It was a genre of music I was vaguely acquainted with in my youth by way of bands like Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull and their  respective connections with the folk genre through the likes of  Sandy Denny, Roy Harper, and Fairport Convention, and of course, the knowledge that Led Zeppelin were not averse to including  the odd folk ballad in their repertoire (e.g Blackwaterside / Gallows Pole).

However my interest in folk music  burgeoned once I had discovered John Martyn, Richard Thompson and especially Bob Dylan.

Taking Dylan as a starting point, American folk music was what first hooked me in , Woody Guthrie, and Leadbelly (k/as Huddie Leadbetter), being those the novice collector I was saw as the founding fathers of the genre, and folk based bands and singer /songwriters of the 80s, notably The Pogues, The Waterboys , We Free Kings , The Men They Couldn’t Hang and Billy Bragg , people who took the genre by the scruff of the neck and revitalised it, further fuelled my interest in the genre, while raising my awareness of the tradition from which they were drawing.

I delved into this tradition , buying albums , cds and cassettes over the years from various record stores and fairs throughout Scotland, and one in England,  and latterly online.

In my mind, my musical tastes travelled to the USA (culminating in my purchase of the ‘Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music’  from  Bruce Miller’s  in Aberdeen- for a whopping £75.00- a lot of money to part with back  in 1997, and even more so now!), and then returned to Scotland , with its diversity of indigenous music from people like Dick Gaughan, Richard Thompson, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, and the Incredible String Band, and more recently  bands and singers  like Trembling Bells, Lankum, Galley Beggar, James Yorkston , and Alasdair Roberts.

Alasdair Roberts is from the next generation to Gaughan , Bain and the Incredible String Band, his father Alan Roberts was also a folk singer in the 1960s.

Alasdair’s voice always reminds me of that of Robin Williamson of the ISB, but I stand to be corrected .

His cd ‘Too Long in this Condition’ , is a delightful collection of traditional folk songs which he clearly has done his homework on, the sleevenotes give the source of every song , and which singers have recorded them over the years. Roberts’ own compositions also sound like traditional ballads, so he has clearly drunk deeply from this well of influence.

I discovered this cd at the time of its release in 2010 in the depths of the long cold winter of that year, at weekends I would walk home from my parents’ house , with this cd on my Sony Discman, taking in each song as I trudged through  the snow and ice , homeward bound.

On returning home, I would sit back in my old basket chair, savouring the warmth of a judicious  nip of Laphroaig , the stereo playing  ‘Barbara Allen’, ‘Long Lankin’ and especially ‘The Daemon Lover’, which I knew to be based on a song that came originally from Scotland.

Evidently a  version of this song originated in Glenbuchat , by Strathdon, Aberdeenshire,  was passed by word of mouth over the Atlantic, where it somehow mutated into the ballad ‘The House Carpenter ‘,  as sung by Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez , Bob Dylan and Natalie Merchant, among others.

Clinton Heylin, the renowned music critic has written a whole book on this song’s convoluted history , ‘Dylan’s Daemon Lover’ which is well worth reading.

This song has been a favourite of mine for some years now, since around 1988. I heard it first from Dave Van Ronk , on the compilation ‘Hesitation Blues’  on the Big Beat label, and the first thing I heard from this great singer,  a really excellent album of acoustic based folk/blues, which includes the jazzy ‘Hesitation Blues’ complete with a New Orleans-style horn section.

Since then, as a true musical anorak, I have collected 13 versions of this song , whether it be the ‘House Carpenter’ or ‘Daemon Lover ‘, it is essentially  the same song with differing  words, and sometimes differing tunes, presumably a song that was passed on by word of mouth , like many, ballads, blues and folk songs were in olden times, before the age of the Internet.

Maybe I am the modern equivalent of a folk song collector, like Alan Lomax, Harry Smith or someone of that ilk, more likely just the inveterate  ‘crate digging’ fan of record fairs, jumble sales, and charity shops.

Playlist:- Alasdair Roberts and Friends ‘ Too Long In This Condition’.

Jerry Garcia and Dave Grisman, ‘Shady Grove’.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,’ Murder Ballads’.

Dick Gaughan, ‘Handful of Earth’

Dave Van Ronk , ‘The Folkways Years’.