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PHIL BEER, ASHLEY HUTCHINGS, CHRIS WHILE - The Very Best Of Ridgeriders

PHIL BEER, ASHLEY HUTCHINGS, CHRIS WHILE - The Very Best Of Ridgeriders
Talking Elephant TECD333

This album, on the excellent Talking Elephant label, clocks in at a typically generous 74 minutes. Ridgeriders was a little band put together to provide folk songs for a long-running

TV series from the 90s which featured motorcycling and local history along the ridgeways of southern England. The series didn’t air nationwide, so the band may have passed you by. But you all know Phil Beer, Ashley Hutchings and Chris While, and the quality is what you would expect. Bags of good taste, beautiful melodies and relaxed musicianship.

There’s a mix of studio tracks from 1999 and concert tracks from 2001, but originally it was a case of Ashley writing lyrics to suit each programme, then getting either Phil or Chris (both Albion Band colleagues) to arrange them. We are left with a concept album developed over several years. There are songs, like the outstanding Dorset Cursus, about the ancient monuments which enrich the landscape. Other songs cover those making a living from the ridgeways: moss gatherers, drovers, miners and highwaymen. There’s a nice pairing of Bunyan’s To Be A Pilgrim with Along The Pilgrim’s Way, featuring a female motorcyclist. Ashley throws in references to the writer and traveller Celia Fiennes, the pioneering archaeologist William Stukeley, and the Canterbury Tales’ Tabard Inn. The closing High And Wild Places is sung unaccompanied by the trio, with the feel of a traditional song.

Chris has many of the more memorable vocals, singing as well then as she does now. It was good to get this album to review soon after seeing her and Julie Matthews, who plays keyboards here. Other guests are Joe Broughton on fiddle and mandolin, Neil Marshall on drums and percussion, and Ken Nicol on electric guitar.

www.talkingelephant.co.uk

Tony Hendry

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This album was reviewed in Issue 117 of The Living Tradition magazine.