Ansty Cowfold
June 10th, 2008 by sparky
Ansty Cowfold will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
Ansty Cowfold – Biography
The World Of Ansty Cowfold:
Ansty Cowfold is a place where all the characters from the album’s lyrics live. It is illustrated in an accompanying book in which each song is represented visually. The central character, Little Wing, can be seen hiding in the pages.
The Music:
Initially we just wanted to make a record of songs for babies and small children to listen to that doesn’t drive the parents crazy. That they could enjoy too. Music that would have a soothing, calming effect on children – the sort of thing you can play on a long car journey after a day out. Music that all the family could enjoy. A sort of folk music if you like. Simple, direct, beautiful and magical (we hope!). Our second aim was to find songs that contained strong visual images in the lyrics, to engage the children’s imaginations as they start to recognise the words. Some key words and phrases will start to become recognisable, until the children are old enough to learn and sing whole lines and even whole songs.
The songs were chosen to engage and stimulate the children in the same way that the best children’s stories do. Whilst we avoided songs with overtly adult themes (boring!), we didn’t shy away from songs about the people who live underground (‘Underground’), or the birds who tap on your window (‘Don’t Be Scared’). Even bootlegging and tax evasion (‘Copper Kettle’), not to mention spanking and whipping (‘Grandma’s Hands’) make an appearance. Children’s stories do after all have a tradition of darkness and mystery that stretches from Roald Dahl all the way back to The Brothers Grimm, via nursery rhymes about old men who bumped their heads and couldn’t get up in the morning.
It’s not all dark of course: there’s Fifties fun in the hide and seek of ‘Baby What You Want Me To Do’; optimistic Sixties cosmicicity in ‘Little Wing’; there’s educational flora and fauna in ‘Ansty Cowfold’ (Let It All Grow); and an appeal to all children everywhere to "Eat a lot/sleep a lot/brush ‘em like crazy" in The Beach Boys’ ‘Vegetables’. Not forgetting the obligatory train song, here represented by the greatest of all time, Elvis’s ‘Mystery Train’.
The process of choosing songs with such a strong remit was not easy, and by the time a very long list had been thoroughly prodded and picked at, leaving just the 11 songs on this album, we found that many of the twentieth centuries greatest songwriters were represented. As were 6 decades of popular music! This is testament, we think, to the enduring appeal of the songs chosen and we hope that the versions on this collection help them to continue finding still new audiences, as well as of course re-finding the old ones! Having calmed the babies and got the children singing along (with their parents and grandparents!), we then realised that we could engage them all further by bringing some of these images to life in a book.
Ansty Cowfold will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
