Eliza Carthy MBE Drops New Music Video To Herald The Release Of Her Album 'Queen Of The Whirl'

Multi-award-winning Eliza Carthy MBE celebrates 30 years as a professional musician with the release of Queen Of The Whirl, an album of newly recorded and spectacularly reimagined versions of beloved songs from throughout her career.

The release is accompanied by a video to the track Good Morning Mr Walker (Slinger and Norma Go To The Dancehall Mix). The song was written by Slinger Francisco (aka The Mighty Sparrow), a calypso vocalist introduced to Eliza by her mam, Norma Waterson back in the 60’s’, with the video featuring some of Eliza’s dearest musical friends including Jon Boden, John Spiers and Angeline Morrison as well as four lucky fans (the result of a twitter competition) who appear performing along to the band. The song’s fun, uplifting, party-vibe provides the perfect celebratory climax to the album’s closing track.

Selecting tracks for ‘Queen Of The Whirl’ was a challenging prospect, so Eliza put it to her army of fans on Twitter who came up with some surprises as well as obvious crowd pleasers. Recorded with her trusty band, The Restitution, new versions include favourites from her 1998 break-through Mercury Music Prize nominated album Red Rice: ‘The Snow it Melts the Soonest,’ ‘Stumbling On’ and ‘Accordion Song.’ From Anglicana, winner of the 2003 Best Album at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards (and also Mercury nominated) is ‘Pretty Ploughboy’ and ‘In London So Fair’. The earliest songs included come from Eliza Carthy & The Kings of Calicutt – ‘Whirly Whorl’ and ‘Good Morning, Mr Walker’, the only track in the collection to feature guests, known collectively as The Sweet Rosemarys, who include Jon Boden and John Spiers, Sheema Mukherjee, Rory MacLeod and the Mighty Sparrow's bandleader himself, Lane Steinberg.

For the past thirty years, Eliza’s music has effortlessly crossed boundaries of genre and style. She has toured the world playing the fiddle and spreading the word of English traditional music. She has worked as a composer with Shakespearian director Barry Rutter and can count Kae Tempest, Paul Weller, Nancy Kerr and Billy Bragg in her diverse roster of collaborations. More recently, Eliza produced (and performed on) the highly acclaimed new release from Angeline Morrison, ‘The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience’. Amongst her many accolades are two Mercury Music Prize nominations, several BBC Folk Awards and an MBE.

Listening to these new recordings, no matter how familiar the tracks, is to hear the music afresh. Eliza has never been an artist to stand still always pushing her way forward often in the most unconventional way. Queen of The Whirl shows us that her love of traditional music and new ideas is as strong as ever and as she puts it, the whirl keeps going.

Eliza Carthy & The Restitution on tour 2022:

NOV 23 MASHAM Town Hall NOV 24 DISS Corn Hall NOV 25 LEEDS Howard Assembly Rooms NOV 26 LUDLOW Assembly Rooms NOV 27 SHEFFIELD Greystones NOV 28 BIRMINGHAM Glee Club NOV 29 BRIGHTON Komedia NOV 30 CARDIFF Glee Club DEC 01 SOUTHAMPTON Turner Sims DEC 02 CHIPPING NORTON Town Hall DEC 03 GATESHEAD Sage DEC 04 MANCHESTER Band On The Wall DEC 05 CAMBRIDGE Junction

FEB 04 2023 BARBICAN, LONDON (with Martin Carthy & special guests)

Website: eliza-carthy.com

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