Kevin Carr
Kevin was born in Los Angeles in 1950, and started playing guitar at 12, which, he says, saved him from the trauma of having artistic parents. He played in rock bands, then heard acoustic guitarists like Bert Jansch and Martin Carthy, later Dick Gaughan and fell hard for the contemporary traditional-informed sound. Later he leapt into fiddle, bagpipes of various kinds and deep traditional music. And in the last few years he is coming back to guitar, so this opportunity feels to him like a homecoming of sorts.
Madam I’m a Darlin’
A trad piece chosen by Kevin Carr for Bert Jansch
I’ve known ‘Madam I’m a Darlin’’, sometimes called ‘Chester City’, for ages, and I think I first heard Frank Harte sing it. Thinking about the kind of song Bert would have done a great job with, this came to mind. My first fingerpicked piece was ‘Angie’. I spent all of my 20th year busking in Europe, and I often tried to channel the kind of sounds I had heard Bert make. That time is still a formative part of who I am musically, and it was wonderful.
I loved Pentangle – the drive, majesty and mystery in Bert’s music always took me to somewhere deep and revivifying. I connected emotionally (not as intellectually as I now wish – since my guitar playing was always intuitive, and often improvised).
