Having gone through their skiffle phase (under the moniker of DH Lawrence & The Vaudeville Skiffle Show, a nod to D. H. Lawrence whose shadow looms large in their home town), Al Rate and Bill Perry changed the band’s name to Lawrence County and released a first rate (sorry Al) album, The Frailty Of Humans, back in 2020, a disc which was rooted in traditional American roots music with a decidedly contemporary English bent.
On Nottamun Town they delve deeper into traditional American music albeit with a twist. The ten songs here are assuredly ones you might recall from folkie albums from the past but the band are keen to point out the migration of these songs. Many of them originated in merry old England (along with Scotland of course) and travelled the ocean to become staples of the American folk songbook. The primary example is the title song, Nottamun Town, with the band acknowledging that its earliest popular version was sung by Jean Ritchie and they point to a 1932 reference by folklorist Cecil Sharp who included it in his book Folksongs Of The Southern Appalachians. That said, the song was popular when folk went electric in the sixties. Fairport Convention recorded it on their What We Did On The Holidays album and Dylan appropriated its melody for his song Masters Of War several years earlier while Bert Jansch featured it on his 1966 album Jack Orion.
The band alight on the song due to its recognised connection with Nottingham and it leads off the album. Their take on it is dark and gritty, more redolent of grimy industrial times than medieval folklore. That impression of grime and dirt is reinforced by the closing song, their take on Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town which they take back to its Salford roots. In between these bookends they sound almost jolly on their version of Peggy Gordon which is a slight return to their skiffle roots (and sounding somewhat like The Felice Brothers) but for the most part they delve into darker themes, often involving murder. Thus we get the melodrama of Molly Bawn, here given a deliciously dark delivery, slow and spooky. Lucy Wan is another unfortunate killed in the service of a song and here Lawrence Country dress this incestuous ballad in an early Nick Cave like darkness. Bonny Light Horsemen, a Napoleonic weepie, meanwhile limps along quite wonderfully with its weeping fiddle carrying much of the emotion.
Elsewhere the band turn in a grand seafaring tale on the huff and puff of Little Pot Stove and they manage to breathe new life into Poor Wayfaring Stranger, a song which has been covered numerous times but is reclaimed here by Lawrence County and dedicated to the late Norma Waterson. It’s a fine example of their intention to wrangle these songs from the past and deliver them with a fine mix of earthy folk roots and Americana twang. Muddy waters for sure but ripe for a deep dive into the album.