Floating Verses

MARY HUMPHREYS AND ANAHATA sing and play their music at home in East Anglia and perform in clubs, concerts and festivals all over the UK. They specialise in finding unusual variants of songs and tunes from the English tradition and take great delight in putting them back into circulation.

Mary Humphreys: vocals, English concertinas ( treble and baritone-treble by Wheatstone & Co), Griffin banjo by James Bowen

Anahata: cello by Fent, melodeons: 1 row Hohner, 2 row Oakwood, 2 row Salterelle; Jeffreys Anglo concertina Joined by:

Dave Holland on fiddle,

Gina Holland on recorder,

Chris Amos on guitar

We perform a range of mainly English traditional songs and tunes in variants that have been languishing in printed collections and rarely performed. During the recording we were struck by the number of textual similarities in several of the songs, such as Darling Boy and If I was a Blackbird. Most interesting was the Waly Waly version that is all recycled verses (floating verses) from other songs. So in a fit of inspiration we have called the album after this coincidence.