Mercury music prize nominee Sam Lee is a folk singer, a countryman and an impresario. Through his Nest Collective he promotes scores of different folk gigs and events every year. In this episode of Folk on Foot he invites Matthew to join him in a Sussex wood in the middle of the night as he leads...

The multi talented musician, producer and lover of the natural world Cosmo Sheldrake takes Matthew Bannister for a walk in the wood near his home. As well as creating electronic music from the song of endangered bird species and the sounds of deep sea creatures, he demonstrates his skill as a bea...

Winners of the Best Album award at the 2018 Radio 2 Folk Awards, the Young’uns are three troubadours from Teeside. Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes take Matthew Bannister on a walk round the historic headland of Hartlepool where Sean used to live in a shed in his parents’ back garden. ...

Su-a Lee is a classically trained cellist and a member of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but she loves breaking down musical barriers. With the group Mr McFall’s Chamber she’s played contemporary classical music in night clubs and she regularly collaborates with Scotland’s leading folk players, ...

Stick in the Wheel’s music has been described as “precision folk with anger, lust and blood.” The band’s founders Nicola Kearey and Ian Carter take Matthew Bannister for a walk through their East London stomping grounds, starting in a Victorian weaver’s house in Spitalfields, taking in Walthamsto...

Steve Knightley is one half of the acclaimed folk duo Show of Hands. He and his musical partner Phil Beer are proud to come from Devon - once beating Sir Francis Drake in a public vote to name the greatest ever Devonians. Steve has been described as “a gravel voiced spokesman for the rural poor” ...

The beautiful Lost Words book by artist Jackie Morris and writer Robert Macfarlane has become a cultural phenomenon, raising awareness of the importance of nature words in our lives. It has also spawned the Spell Songs project featuring some of our top folk artists. In this special edition of Fol...

In search of the festive spirit of Christmas – and bearing gifts - we travel to the Peak District and Sheffield to hear the area’s unique local carols. Along the way we collect music from Jon Boden, Bella Hardy, The Melrose Quartet and the singers of the villages of Dungworth and Hathersage. We ...

Seth Lakeman is the Mercury Music Prize nominated singer, fiddle player and guitarist who will forever be associated with Dartmoor. He grew up in the village of Buckland Monachorum with his two brothers Sean and Sam who are also key players on the folk scene. In this episode Seth takes Matthew to...

Come with us to the back garden of a house in the Peak District village of Grindleford. There, in a magical atmospheric workshop with fiddles, banjos and drying gourds hanging from the ceiling, we find the Rheingans Sisters and their Dad Helmut, who makes all their instruments. Rowan and Anna Rhe...

The Edinburgh-born harpist, fiddle player and singer Rachel Newton was Radio 2’s Musician of the Year in 2017. She sings in both English and Gaelic and is a member of The Shee, The Furrow Collective and the Lost Words Spell Songs. We walked with her on the Isle of Skye in November 2019 where she ...

After a life on the road, folk legend Peggy Seeger has settled in the village of Iffley on the outskirts of Oxford. In this episode she talks poignantly about her mother, Ruth Crawford, a talented composer who died when she was fifty-three and Peggy was just eighteen. Peggy recites a poem calle...

For twelve years, the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nancy Kerr lived on a narrow boat, travelling the length and breadth of England’s inland waterways. “We felt like it was a secret part of England and a part that had a different flavour and a different pace”. As she walks on the t...

Regularly voted one of the world’s greatest guitarists, Martin Simpson has been nominated for an astonishing 23 Radio 2 Folk Awards – and won artist of the year twice. He was brought up in the North Lincolnshire steel town of Scunthorpe and takes Matthew on an emotional journey back to his childh...

The singer and fiddle player Lisa Knapp takes Matthew to the south London borough of Tooting where she was born and brought up. She performs songs with links to the area and tells how she stumbled across the Tooting Tragedy – a story of neglect and ill treatment at a local children’s home in Vict...

The guitarist, singer and songwriter Kris Drever – Radio 2 Folk Singer of the Year 2017 - was born and brought up on Orkney, the archipelago of about 70 islands off the Northern coast of Scotland which is steeped in history.

Kris takes Matthew Bannister for a walk, starting in the main town of K...

Kerry Andrew has been described by Robert Macfarlane as “a writer and musician of frankly alarming talent”. She is a composer, novelist and vocalist who performs alt folk under the name You Are Wolf. In this episode she takes Matthew for a walk from her flat in South London, through surprisingly ...

Karine was named Folk Singer of the Year at the 2018 Radio 2 Folk Awards. Her solo theatre piece “Wind Resistance” and album “A Pocket of Wind Resistance” were inspired by Fala Moor near her home in Midlothian just south of Edinburgh. She takes Matthew for a walk across the Moor which is a haven ...

The Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis takes Matthew Bannister for a snowy walk on the dramatic shores of Loch Ness near her home in the Scottish Highlands. Accompanied by her husband Eamon Doorley, we hear Julie’s beautiful clear voice singing a song linked to the area and a love song that brought the c...

The former Bellowhead lead singer and winner of eleven Radio 2 Folk Awards takes Matthew on a walk near his home in the Loxley Valley on the outskirts of Sheffield. This landscape inspired his 2009 album “Songs from the Floodplain”, which creates a vision of a post apocalyptic future when industr...