The Transports

The Transports is a words-and-music show I co-adapted from Peter Bellamy’s famous set of folk ballads. It was a delight to appear alongside folk luminaries such as The Young’uns, Faustus, Nancy Kerr, Rachael McShane and Greg Russell.

The Guardian gave us Five Stars and you can hear me talking about the show on BBC R4 Front Row. We recorded the show for broadcast as a Radio 3 Evening Concert on 10 January. And we turned the show into an album, which features my narration as well as all the songs.

Buy the album

I wrote narration to tell the tale that links Bellamy’s songs, which were arranged by the late, great Paul Sartin. This true story is set in the 1780s, when a poor couple from Norfolk were exiled to Australia for crimes so petty the motive was clearly to provide cheap labour for the empire. I added local stories wherever we performed, contrasting locals exiled in past centuries with people arriving from abroad in recent years. These formed part of the Parallel Lives project, by which we arranged for local refugee or migrant support groups to attend each performance.

The show was a joy to perform. We toured Britain twice and played to 4,000 people at Shrewsbury Folk Festival – watch them rise instantly here in ovation.

Read more about the show and Parallel Lives at The Transports website. Below are some video highlights of the show and photos from our 2017 tour (Mike Ainscoe) and recording the album in Sheffield (Elly Lucas)