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Armed only with a small digital recorder, and a minimal amount of knowledge, Will set off to travel round Britain doing 'field recordings' in a foul smelling, worse looking Vauxhall Astra.

What he comes up with is not farm labourers singing songs of love, death and the maiden, but a jumbled mix of the old and new; from traditional Cotswold Morris to rainy nights in Chorlton, Manchester listening to bands like the .

Hodgkinson ignores folk clubs and festivals and instead finds his music wherever he can; recording in his front room in Robin Hood's Bay, in a garret in Islington, and 'The Lakes of Shallin' sung by a lad from North London called .

Some of the stuff he recorded is folk as we might know it, some of it is "new folk" from people like and , but all in all it's a raggle taggle tale.

Old folkies might find themselves getting a little hot under the collar at the seeming lack of knowledge of this innocent abroad. However, it's important to remember that, after the boom years of the Sixties and Seventies, a whole generation have grown up not going to folk clubs or festivals, that don't know , Tony Rose, ,
and and that don't know how that second wave of the folk revival kept the flame burning and the music alive.

Ask me why the flame later faltered and burned low, and I will tell you that it is due to many things, but the greatest culprit is the mainstream media which has always sidelined acoustic, roots and traditional music in favour of the anodyne and the mainstream.

They simply don't like people doing it for themselves.

I like this book so far because it seems to be a celebration of that very thing - people doing it for themselves. There's a CD with tracks culled by Will Hodgkinson on his field trip and I'll get hold of a copy for the programme.

Meanwhile, back to the book.