The Owl Service - Collected Compilation Tracks (2013)

The Owl Service launched in 2006, although Collins say he had been wanting to form a folk band since 1990, “ever since I discovered the first Fotheringay album. I didn’t know anyone who liked folk music then, and I didn’t even know much about folk music myself (still don’t really, if I’m being honest) – it all seemed quite alien to me.

“I went to a few folk clubs, and really felt like an outsider – it seemed like some kind of secret society that only accepted you if you came from the right lineage and I found it all rather hostile. Although I loved the music (or some of it anyway), I didn’t feel the folk club scene was for me, so I began learning folk songs by listening to the key records from the 1960s and ’70s revival.”

Neither did he confine his attentions purely to the British end of things. “A Christmas Fantasie,” from the Owl Service’s Collected Compilation Tracks download anthology, channels Richard & Mimi Farina with eclectic glee, while we might also remember that many traditional English songs are only known today from their survival on this side of the Atlantic. “Katie Cruel” might well be of Scottish origin. But the best known version (at least until the Owl Service snatched it up) is American through and through, a Revolutionary War era anthem that Karen Dalton took for her own on In My Own Time.

Track List:
01. Katie Cruel (live) (03:54)
02. A Child's Calendar (04:12)
03. Night Falls on Summer's End (04:02)
04. Saturnalia Song (version 1) (03:16)
05. A Christmas Fantasie (06:06)
06. RIP Van Winkle's Pipe Dream (03:41)
07. Standing on the Shore (full version) (07:08)
08. Phantasm (main title) (01:08)
09. Spring Strathspey (04:11)
10. Maverick You Are (03:21)
11. San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) (03:06)
12. The Time is Ripe (06:08)
13. To Walk the Night (02:37)
14. King Henry VII & the Shipwrights (08:11)
15. White Winter Hymnal (01:51)