Wow , what an honour to be selected for the spotlight out of so many talented artists and beautiful entries.120 entries for the Broken Heart week...that's astonishing! This community really does seem to be growing fast and becoming something quite special.

I love old folk songs that tell story's. Its these kind of songs that stick in my heart and mind the most. The Scottish and Irish traditional songs are full of great examples of this song and story tradition so my choice for the upcoming weeks theme would be Storyteller.

I would suggest people have a look at bands like The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem , The Dubliners , The Corries and Planxty for some inspiration.

Here is a couple of fine examples...

Paul Brady from the Irish band Planxty plays his version of "Arthur McBride" an anti-enlistment song from the mid 1800's

I found a documentary about the band Planxty a while back and in it there was a section where Paul explains where he found this song. I cut this section out of the documentary and uploaded it to my old youtube channel to use the clip as part of a power point presentation on Irish Folk music for a college course in 2019.

This video now has over 14000 views! I guess people are real curious about the origins of these things...

Among my main musical influences are The Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem, here they are singing a song called The Whistling Gypsy Rover. Liam Clancy's whistling in this is truly beautiful

This next song is by the Scottish folk duo The Corries , the song is called "Johnny Cope"

"The song commemorates the Battle of Prestonpans, fought on 21 September during the Jacobite rising of 1745. Forces led by the Stuart exile Charles Edward Stuart defeated a government army under Sir John Cope, whose troops broke in the face of a highland charge. The battle lasted less than fifteen minutes and was a huge boost to Jacobite morale, while a heavily mythologised version of the story entered art and legend."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hey,_Johnnie_Cope,_Are_Ye_Waking_Yet%3F

These are the kind of songs and artist's that have inspired me over the years and its this inspiration which has made me choose the theme of Storyteller for our next Hive open mic event.

Thanks again for making me the spotlight artist I look forward to hearing your songs and stories.