Folk on Foot podcast wins more awards – and announces a special episode with Richard Thompson

The Folk on Foot podcast has won the Gold Award for Best Arts and Entertainment podcast at the LOVIE AWARDS – which celebrate the best of the European internet. It also won the People’s Vote in that category and the Silver Award for Best Individual Episode for “Karine Polwart on Fala Moor”. The awards come after the podcast’s summer Festivals raised nearly a quarter of a million pounds to support musicians unable to work during the pandemic.

Folk on Foot host Matthew Bannister said: “It is wonderful to be recognised alongside the best in Europe – and it’s a great tribute to our brilliant production team and the amazing artists who have walked with us. A big thank you to all the listeners who voted for us in the People’s Award.”

Folk on Foot has announced that season 6 will launch on December 18th with an extended episode featuring the legendary guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson re-visiting his youth in North London. Richard will perform six songs in the episode, which takes him back to his old school for the first time since he left more than fifty years ago. On the steps of the school he sings an Everly Brothers cover that he first performed when he was in a band with fellow student Hugh Cornwell (later of the Stranglers).

In Highgate Woods, Richard sings his classic song “Beeswing” and in the front garden of the house in Muswell Hill that gave Fairport Convention its name, he performs “Meet on the Ledge” – “a very emotional experience”, he says. Then it’s off to Wardour Street in Soho, the site of the Marquee Club where Richard watched bands like the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience in the 1960s, often missing the last bus home and having to walk ten miles back to his parents’ house. He sings the song he wrote about this experience: “Walking the Long Miles Home”.

Finally, in the Lamb and Flag pub in Covent Garden, Richard recalls dropping in for a drink after a gig and bumping into a drunken man who said he was the popular Irish tenor Josef Locke, inspiring Richard’s song of that name which he performs in the pub’s upstairs room. Along the way Richard discusses the art of song writing, recalls his father – a tough Scotland Yard detective who was in the secret service during the war - his mother who “sang round the house with a voice like Vera Lynn” and looks back on his life now he has turned 70. The episode will be available at www.folkonfoot.com or on most podcast apps.