SAM CARTER
Sam Carter Sings Nic Jones: Live at Celtic Connections
There are tributes that merely preserve, and tributes that celebrate and reanimate. Sam Carter Sings Nic Jones: Live at Celtic Connections belongs firmly in the latter camp: a warm, intelligent and deeply musical celebration of a performer whose influence on English folk remains difficult to overstate.
For anyone arriving new to this lineage, Nic Jones stands as one of the great figures of the folk revival: a singer, guitarist and songwriter whose treatment of traditional song has influenced the way generations of artists of varying stature have since approached the material. His 1980 album Penguin Eggs is widely regarded as a classic, while the 1982 road accident that left him unable to continue performing has given his recorded legacy an added, painful poignancy, as evidenced by the few emotional outings of more recent years.
Carter proves himself an ideal custodian for this repertoire. One of Britain’s finest contemporary folk singers and guitarists with a host of admirers within the artistic community as well as the viewing and listening public, he brings the necessary musicianship without ever allowing his virtuosity to detract from the material itself. His intricate, driving fingerpicking carries the pulse and architecture of the songs, while his voice gives the necessary character.
Crucially, this is not an act of imitation. Carter understands Jones’s individualism, but he does not attempt duplication. Instead, he lets the songs breathe through his own warmth and clarity. Recorded live at Celtic Connections, the album gains from the setting giving the recording the atmosphere of a shared inheritance rather than a museum piece, a feeing replicated at a recent festival appearance where the audience demonstrated their love of the original material and an appreciation of the current interpretations.
That matters, because these songs still have work to do. In Carter’s hands, the traditional material Jones made so powerfully his own have something of the now about them rather than a well preserved relic of a golden past. Long-time admirers of Jones will hear the respect in every turn, while newcomers may well find this album an inviting doorway into a remarkable body of work.
What emerges is both celebration and continuation. Sam Carter Sings Nic Jones: Live at Celtic Connections honours a giant of English folk without embalming him, reminding us that great songs are not fixed monuments but living things, renewed each time they meet a musician capable of understanding their weight and releasing their energy and Sam is to be applauded for giving us a generous, beautifully judged celebration of one of English folk music’s most singular voices.
Sam Carter Sings Nic Jones: Live at Celtic Connections