June Tabor - Collaborations and Recent Developments

Collaborations and Recent Developments

On 24 October 2003 Tabor appeared on Later With Jools Holland (BBC TV), singing "Hughie Graeme". This was later issued as part of a compilation DVD from the series. Folk Britannia was the name of a concert at the Barbican centre, and a TV mini-series (February 2006, repeated in October). She sang "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" at the Barbican, under the heading "Daughters of Albion". Tabor contributed one song to Ashley Hutchings' project Street Cries (2001) and one to a collection of folk musicians singing songs by the Beatles - Rubber Folk (2006). She chose to sing Lennon's "In My Life" a cappella. Tabor is frequently experimental but avoids modernism. For example, she frequently sings traditional songs with a piano accompaniment. On the album Singing The Storm (1996) she sings to the accompaniment of Savourna Stevenson's harp, and Danny Thompson's bass. In May 2004 she performed as part of "The Big Session" and sang an adaptation of Love Will Tear Us Apart as a duet with John Jones of Oysterband. In 1992, The Wire voted "Queen Among the Heather" one of the "Top 50 Rhythms of all Time".

The lighter side of her character can be seen in her work with Les Barker's The Mrs Ackroyd Band which performs his comic work. So far Tabor has performed on three of their albums, the 1990 Oranges and Lemmings (singing "The Trains of Waterloo", a parody of the folk song "The Plains of Waterloo" in a duet with Martin Carthy), the 1994 Gnus and Roses (singing "The January June", a send up of her perceived sombre character) and the 2003 Yelp! (singing "There's a Hole in my Bodhran", to the tune of "There's a Hole in my Bucket"). She sang two songs on Beat The Retreat, a tribute to Richard Thompson.