Joe Boyd: evaluation

Transcript context

…Eva Cassidy. Yes, who had a very famous version of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” which is classic Sandy Denny’s song. I think that she made that song very popular. Sam Amidon goes back and forth between collaborating with American traditional artists and collaborating with British traditional artists. There’s a wonderful guy called Tim Eriksen. He lives in Massachusetts, and he’s one of the leaders of The Sacred Harp shape note revival of that singing tradition. He sings American folk music, but mostly from New England, mostly Northeastern American folk music. He comes to England and tours with Eliza Carthy and explores those connections between ancient British ballads and the way that they arrive in North America. There are so many connections back and forth. Of course, in the modern day, Richard Thompson — he and Simon Nicol and the other guys in Fairport grew up listening to American music. They grew up listening to jug band music. They grew up listening to singer-songwriters. When I first met them, they were singing all kinds of Phil Ochs songs and Eric Andersen songs and Bob Dylan songs. Then, when the tragedy happened, and they wanted to change their repertoire, Music from Big Pink came out, and that blew their mind. They thought, “We better not do any more American music because these guys just nailed it. You can’t do anything better than this.” But they took the spirit of music from Big Pink and applied it to British traditional music, and the result of that was Liege & Lief. So, I think that could qualify as a bridge of some kind between the two traditions. They end up not putting the song “Ballad of Easy Rider” on Liege & Lief album. You must have been involved with that? There’s a demo cut of them doing the Byrds song, “Ballad of Easy Rider,” and it’s later on the Richard Thompson Guitar album.…

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