Hark! The Village Wait was the 1970 debut album by the electric folk band Steeleye Span. The album is the only one to feature the original lineup of the band, as they broke up and reformed with a slightly altered membership immediately after its release, without having ever performed live. Hence it is one of only two Steeleye Span studio albums to feature two female vocalists (Maddy Prior and Gay Woods), the other being Time (1996). A similar sound was exhibited years later when Prior teamed up with June Tabor to form Silly Sisters. Overall, the album's sound is essentially folk music with rock drumming and bass guitar added to some of the songs. The banjo features prominently on several tracks, including "The Blackleg Miner", "Lowlands of Holland" and "One Night as I Lay on My Bed".
The album's title refers to not the act of waiting, but to a "Wait". Waits were a small body of wind instrumentalists employed by a town at public charge from Tudor times until the early 19th century. A village, however, would likely be too small to employ such a troupe, so the Wait referred to here was more probably the later Christmas Waits, as mentioned in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Over the years, the band has returned to the material on this album a number of times. On its second album, Please to See the King, they offered a new version of "The Blacksmith". On Back in Line they offered a new live version of "Blackleg Miner", and they offered a third variation on Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span. On Time they reprised "Twa Corbies". "Copshawholme Fair" was previously recorded by Hart and Prior on their album "Folk Songs of Olde England Vol. 2" two years earlier. Copshaw Holm, otherwise known as Newcastleton, has been the site of a folk festival since 1970. Maddy Prior has lived nearby, just over the border in Cumbria, at "Stones Barn" for several years.
Among the songs on the album include the a capella "A Calling-On Song" (the first of many a capella pieces the band recorded), "Blackleg Miner", "Dark-Eyed Sailor", and "The Lowlands of Holland", which used variant lyrics from the most common version of the song.
The album was originally issued in the UK on RCA with the cover shown (above right). It was a one-off, and the cover for the reissue showed a silhouette of a town. It was issued on UK and US Chrysalis in 1975.
Read more about Hark! The Village Wait: Personnel, Track Listing
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or wait:
“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)