From working in audio to new roots showing
Many of the sound engineers I have worked with who specialise in mixing traditional music, often come from a background of playing music in a tradition local to themselves, or with connections from their diaspora present in a similar context. My own career path as a sound engineer has been in some ways the opposite of this experience: Before I understood the difference between a jig and a reel or knew how to play any folk tunes, I was mixing headline bands on the international folk scene.
My own journey into this work started relatively early in my career, having personal access to a portable PA system and my own transport helped open that world to me. Shortly after moving closer to the Newcastle city centre, I started picking up work in nearby village halls with independent bands who hailed from that locality and had moved to the city. These bands had connections within their local music scene and would book more traditional support acts, partly to draw in a local audience.
The closest I’d come to engaging with traditional music personally was growing up playing generally more contemporary styles of acoustic guitar as my first instrument, briefly dabbling in fingerstyle guitar, jazz and the blues. This was largely self-taught for the first five years, drawing influences from whoever I was listening to at the time, without much awareness or interest at the time in the history or where the music came from in terms of influence and heritage, partly because I was isolated from collaborating with anyone involved with a local community in a similar context at the time.
I did have the opportunity to go to a tune session once as a teenager, my father was supportive at the time, suggesting I bring my acoustic guitar. At this point, I was capable on the instrument; enough that I had played in some rock bands with my brother, friends and regularly accompanied myself singing original compositions. However, the idiomatic style of accompanying tunes in real time completely baffled me, the other guitarist at the session was playing in an alternative tuning and my ear wasn’t developed enough to follow what was happening musically. This was my first and last attempt at participating in a tune session, for over fifteen years following this experience.
I was however influenced more by traditional music of black origin, particularly by American guitarists. At a similar time, a childhood friend with more academic inclinations and an obsession with Sonic Youth gifted me a CD by one of Thurston Moore’s “spiritual models,” (O’Rourke 2000), John Fahey’s “Legend of Blind Joe Death,” album, here I collected an old tune that I learnt by ear aged seventeen without understanding the liner notes “(Trad) … As stated elsewhere, this one is not to be confused with versions of "Poor Boy" (e.g. by Banjo Joe) which use this title just because everyone else does.” (Fahey no date, para 3.)
This liner note seems misleading in hindsight, apart from the note on it being traditional, listening to the recording in question of Banjo Joe the name is identical, and the tune sounds incredibly similar, just a different arrangement with different variations. On surface value, this could be seen as explicitly ignoring the history of this music. After doing some more digging through the notes from different editions, it seems like this is vaguely referencing that he learnt from a version released the same year by Barbecue Bob.
It’s understandable that I didn’t become more interested in where the music had come from aged 15, as this well-produced white guitarist I was inspired to learn to play from a recording by ear wasn’t consistently describing it. In fairness to Fahey, liner notes for a personal album are perhaps not intended as an in-depth musicological text. Soon after I found a box set of Charlie Patton recordings, including a book Fahey wrote on the subject. A predecessor of Robert Johnson, Patton was a key influence on many artists for years to come “his bottleneck slide style and dark growl almost a template for what became known as the Delta blues.” (Reid 2024) He also drew influence from and performed new arrangements of music from a variety of traditions.
A record store local to me in Newcastle, Alt. Vinyl had a phenomenal guitarist and singer working there who I was particularly influenced by as a teenager, Richard Dawson, now a successful touring artist with a cult following. As well as attending many of Dawson’s early shows, even opening as support for him once at a local pub, I used to frequently buy whatever he was listening to in the store at the time. It was here that I came across an album by Mississippi singer Junior Kimbrough. Kimbrough learnt to sing by oral tradition from his father and has been described as a neo-traditional blues artist “Neo-traditional artists drew upon traditional styles and repertoire but had shaped individual styles and added modern elements, often performing with electric instruments…” (Evans, Fahey 2015). His work was popularised during the 60’s folk revival, a notable part was played in this by Lomax: “Junior Kimbrough and others…came to the attention of the world at large through the work of folklorists like Alan Lomax.” (Keith 2020)
One of the critiques of Lomax’s work in this context is that it was part of developing or encouraging potentially questionable theories on the origin and evolution of the blues. “Like many popular myths and stereotypes, these blues myths are based on some degree of fact, truth, or observable reality. Under close scrutiny, however, they fall short as general explanations or interpretations of the blues.” (Evans 1999) Whilst Kimbrough’s work is undoubtedly part of an oral tradition and music of black origin, in Evans’ view this is believed to have its roots in the early 20th century.
Jake Blount, a roots music academic, singer and musician, argues that by necessity oral tradition has changed in the last century to include archival recordings. “This scarcity of living elders and intact musical lineages… has made today's Black string band musicians (myself included) heavily reliant on twentieth-century archival sound recordings of our forebears.” (Blount 2024)
Pictured (top): Sound check for Scottish indie-folk band Elephant Sessions in North Carolina, USA 2019.
Reference list:
Fahey, J. (2000). Introduction by Jim O’Rourke. How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life: Stories. United States: Drag City Incorporated.
Available at: https://www.johnfahey.com/hbmdml.htm (Accessed 22/1/26)
John Fahey (no date) The Notes on the Songs: The Legend of Blind Joe Death Available at: https://www.johnfahey.com/pages/blind-joe-death-notes.php (Accessed: 22/1/2026).
Reid, Graham (April 28, 2024) WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT … CHARLEY PATTON: A riddle wrapped in an enigma Available at:
Fahey, J. Evans, D. (2015) Mississippi Blues Today and It’s Future: New Preface, from Charlie Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta. University Press of Mississippi. Originally published with a different foreword in 1970. Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Charley_Patton/WJdWDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 (Accessed on 6/3/2026)
Evans, David (1999) Demythologizing the Blues. Newsletter – Institute for Studies in American Music; Brooklyn Vol. XXIX, Issue 1. Available at:
https://www.proquest.com/openview/edd32a582776e63fdc570f9f63d5b583/1?cbl=2043350&pq-origsite=gscholar (Accessed 26/2/26)
Blount, J. (2024) ‘Jail the Zombie: Black Banjoists, Biopolitics, and Archives’, Modern American History, 7(2), pp. 301–306. doi:10.1017/mah.2024.30. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2024.30 (Accessed 21st January, 2026)