Stone
Angel

Future Dates......

Watch this space for details of forthcoming gigs and concerts 

Recent news......

November 2021:-

After so many delays, we have now been informed that our new album Wake should be ready at the end of this month. 

Spring 2021:-

Ken has recently given an online interview about Stone Angel for Psychedelic Baby magazine. Here is the link if you want to look at it - https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2021/02/stone-angel-interview.html 

 Due to the current covid restrictions, we still have work to do to finish the new Stone Angel album, Wake, but one track is now complete. You might like to hear it as a trailer ahead of the album. Go to:-  STONE ANGEL Jack valentine - YouTube

December 2020:-

Midwinter and Stone Angel both feature on a new three-CD boxed set released by Cherry Red Records. Sumer is icumen in explores “the pagan sound of British & Irish Folk 1966-1975”

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/.../sumer-is-icumen-in-the.../

An important new book has just been launched, charting the lives and times of two of Norfolk's, indeed England's, finest and most influential traditional source folk singers, Harry Cox and Sam Larner. "Two Bold Singermen and the English Folk Revival", by music journalist and social history researcher Bruce Lindsay, is published by Equinox. Stone Angel get an honourable mention in the book - and Ken has the last word with a quote from one of his songs.

From 3 July 2020, Ken's solo album Seashells will be available for download and streaming via Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, etc. See - https://orcd.co/ob5nmmq

The new album is nearing completion, and we hope to release it this year to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the release of the original Stone Angel album.

Sad News - Mick Burroughes died on 25 January 2020. He was Stone Angel's first bass player, 1974-75, playing on the original Stone Angel LP. He joined us again 2002-2004 for the Lonely Waters Album. A quirky and creative artist, musician, and wordsmith, with songs like "Michael's Brain" and "The Party" and one which was often in the Stone Angel set, "If I were a swan...…. I'd float on and on.....on and on......floating on the tide....." . Mick will always be "floating" somewhere in the Stone Angel collective conscious!

Ken's first solo album, Songs for a Rainy Day, has been released recently as a limited edition vinyl LP by Record Collector magazine. See www.recordcollectormag.com  This follows the similar reissue of his Seashells album a few years back.

Past news....

This year, 2019, sees the band celebrate its 45th Anniversary. We are also currently working on recording a new album, which we hope will be released later in the year.

Stone Angel's 45th Anniversary will be featured in a floral display as part of the Flower Festival at Catfield Church on the weekend 22/23 June 2019. Do pop in and take a look.

We have now booked the studio for later in the summer to commence recording a new album. Watch this space!

Stone Angel get an honorary mention in "21st Century Yokel" - the latest book from leading author Tom Cox. Do give it a read.

We are currently uploading some tracks from the most recent album onto YouTube. Please have a listen and like us!

The whole band are currently researching, writing and rehearsing new material.

Joan, Ken and Geoff, together with Stephanie Anderson (Broads Vocal Harmony), have also been involved again with Broadlands Theatre Group and their new production of "The Mysteries". This was performed at All Saints Parish Church, Filby on Friday 8 April and Saturday 9 April 2016.

Ken's 1971 solo album "Seashells" has recently been reissued as a limited edition vinyl LP by Record Collector magazine. See www.recordcollectormag.com  There is also a link on our Facebook page.  

Midwinter's album - The Waters of Sweet Sorrow - has been released, under licence from Kissing Spell, as a vinyl LP by Mayfair Music in Germany. The CD has been unavailable for a while now, so it's good that the album is back in circulation. For more details go to http://www.mayfair-music.com  or see the link on our Facebook page.

The early days of Midwinter and Stone Angel are featured in the book, Seasons They Change – the story of acid and psychedelic folk by Jeanette Leech. The publisher is Jawbone Press, ISBN 978-1-906002-32-9. Click here to buy it from Amazon.

Please note that the CD from Midwinter - Waters of Sweet Sorrow, is currently unavailable.  The CD "The Holy Rood of Bromholm" is also now temporarily out of stock too.

We were interviewed by Tom Cox. Read his article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/may/17/stone-angel-norfolk-acid-folk-classic 

There is a good review of the new album at http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=6

 

Unearthing treasures: Stone Angel celebrate forty years of music 

40^th Anniversary Concert, Assembly House Norwich, 18^th October 2014 

‘National Treasure’ is a somewhat overused term that seems to be applied these days to just about any celebrity who’s been around for longer than fifteen minutes. So if we have National Treasures, then why not county ones too?  If there is such a thing as a ‘CountyTreasure’ then surely Norfolk has one in Stone Angel, a band whose music so evokes this unique part of England in all its beauty and bleakness, its mysteries, character and history. 

Norfolk, with its expanse of fields and woodlands, reedbeds and coastline, is a place that can truly be said to exist ‘Between The Water And The Sky’ – the title of Stone Angel’s latest CD.  Its title track was also very appropriately the opening number of the band’s 40^th anniversary concert held at Norwich’s Assembly House on 18^th October 2014 – pretty much forty years ago to the day that they had made their first live appearance. 

Perhaps as a nod to that long ago debut, the second song of the evening, ‘The Bells of Dunwich’, was one that they played at that very first gig.  It was a key set piece of Stone Angel’s concerts in the ‘70s and was one of the compositions that helped to earn the band’s reputation as pioneers of ‘acid folk’. The song has now made a welcome return to their live repertoire after performing it for the first time since then at their 35^th Anniversary concert also held at the Assembly House. 

One is tempted to say that not much had changed over the intervening five years, other than a few extra grey hairs both on stage and in the audience, and certainly there was a distinct feeling of déjà vu as the band arrived to rapturous applause.  In reality though it had been as eventful a time as any in the band’s long history, and it has seen the departure of percussionist Jane Denny (don’t worry, they’re all still talking to each other), regular gigging and also the writing, recording and release of Between The Water And The Sky.  The new CD is a quality product brimming with new material, and its production is lucid and sparkling. Stone Angel have never ‘sounded’ so good on record, and they’ve never sounded any better in live performance than at the Assembly House. 

Geoff Hurrell, Andy Smith, Dave Felmingham and Ken and Joan Saul played with the verve and confidence you’d expect of musicians with real chops and a long history as a going concern.  The two set concert drew on material from across the band’s forty year history and, indeed, pre-history.  Two songs, ‘1901’ and ‘Two Sisters’, pre-date Stone Angel by some years.  The former, which the band re-recorded on the Lonely Waters album in 2004 , originally appeared on Ken Saul’s 1971 solo album Seashells which has just been re-released on vinyl as a special issue by Record Collector magazine.  ‘Two Sisters’ was written by Ken for his first band, Midwinter, in 1973 although it has occasionally appeared in Stone Angel live sets over the years.  ‘Two Sisters’ has now been given a rock’n’roll makeover that might have quite startled the younger Ken Saul – and his audiences too for that matter. 

‘Two Sisters’ was one of the highlights of a remarkable first set that delivered one gem after another.  Old favourites such as ‘Meeting Hill’ and ‘The Cuckoo’ rubbed shoulders with impressive new songs such as ‘Saucy Ward’ and ‘Ordinary Man’.  They also chose to revive ‘St. Benet’s’ from the Lonely Waters album, one of their loveliest and most contemplative songs, before launching into a powerful rendition of ‘Maiden in the Moor’, vocal harmonies weaving a tapestry over an electronic wash of keyboards and guitars and pounding percussion. 

The second set served up more of the same with some fans’ favourites like ‘1901’ and ‘To You My Love’ alongside more new material such as their “Norfolk tri-ology” of songs reflecting the romance, realities and sad demise of the local fishing industry. The fact that nine of the twenty three numbers they performed at their 40^th Anniversary concert were new, including one, ‘Jack Valentine’, brand new and as yet unrecorded, illustrates just why Stone Angel are still around in 2014. Their approach to music and music-making has always been adventurous and forward looking. Traditional material is given new life through the band’s own imaginative arrangements, and these can range from a brass band or a consort of viols to C&W slide guitar or early period Genesis! The band also search out previously overlooked source material and have even unearthed an important ‘new’ old source of songs in their very own village of Filby. 

However, writing their own songs within the spirit of the tradition has always been a critical and key strength of Stone Angel, and it is these songs that set them apart as something special, as a ‘CountyTreasure’.  For these songs capture the spirit of place as much as the spirit of tradition, from ‘The Bells of Dunwich’ forty years ago to the newly recorded ‘Ordinary Man’. This was one of the stand-out performances of the concert and is a song that arose from research into local history. It depicts the plight of labourers and their families down the years and the contempt in which their lives were held by their employers. 

While Stone Angel continue to come up with material as strong as this, songs that can strike a chord with modern listeners, the band’s history is far from over.  The final encore of the night was ‘What Will Become of England’, Ken Saul’s impassioned plea not to forget the lives and music of those old source singers who through their songs had kept people’s lives, memories and stories alive through the generations.  Now it’s down to us to ensure the continuation of those memories and stories and join them with our own for the benefit of generations yet to come. 

Let’s be confident that we’re just five years away from another anniversary concert when Stone Angel will have still more new and old songs to sing for us.  Perhaps for that occasion they should consider reviving another of their back-catalogue classics ‘The Black Dog’, as forty years on there’s clearly still life in the old dog yet…  

 

Richard Sturman

 

 

Links.....

Email: stoneangel@hotmail.co.uk
 
www.themillstudio.co.uk

 

Our new Stone Angel album WAKE is now available.