FPG Sounds: The Owl Service, ’A Sailor’s Wife’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the seventh commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, Essex-based alternative folk music collective The Owl Service have composed and recorded five new tracks, which present a contemporary exploration of traditional Essex folk songs. To mark the launch of the commission, The Owl Service will be performing 'English Country Music' at the 30^th annual Leigh Folk Festival, taking place at the Fisherman's Chapel in Leigh-on-Sea at 2.30pm on Sunday 26th June.

Since its inception in 2006, The Owl Service has worked consistently within the realm of traditional British folk song, but with varying degrees of faithfulness. In their own words, the band are 'perennial folk outsiders', always striving and struggling to find their own place and their own voice in a musical landscape that they're forever at odds with.

After reviving the collective in March 2021 after a five year hiatus, The Owl Service founder Steven Collins decided it was time to fully embrace their outsider stance with new projects that unapologetically marry traditional folk song to a decidedly non-traditional musical backing. With 'English Country Music', Collins fuses traditional folk songs collected in his native Essex with the music that has shaped him the most over the previous three decades. With the desire to explore this musical heritage, lyrics are taken from the book 'Bushes & Briars: An Anthology of Essex Folk Songs' (1979). With musical cues inextricably linked to urban life, Collins' also draws upon inspiration from his upbringing in a concrete modernist new town with no sense of tradition.

'English Country Music' includes an assemble of musicians from or based in Essex. Performed, recorded, mixed & mastered at home in Leigh-on-sea by Steven Collins with Diana Collier, Kate Waterfield, Daniel Forbes and Bryan Styles. 

English Country Music | Focal Point Gallery (fpg.org.uk)