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Right, thinking caps on, we've got a little teaser for you...

Andrew Batt is a mine of information when it comes to the tragically short career of the great , but he's been stumped recently by a recording of Sandy singing an unknown song.

Andrew found the track while searching through archives, and despite having sought the advice of various other experts, the title and origin of the track remain a mystery.

You may have heard Stuart Maconie playing the full version of this last week, but we thought we'd put a clip on here, too, in case anyone can help identify the song.

The mythological-sounding lyrics in this clip involve someone finding "a dark star hanging low in the sky", gathering it "up in her arms", riding to a shrine and placing the star "to her heart".

Any ideas will be gratefully received!

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On tonight's show, Mike has the exclusive first play of Cold Blows The Wind, from the forthcoming album Hedonism. Percussionist Pete Flood has written to explain how they arranged it:

I think it's a nerdy drummer thing, but I love jazz waltzes. For me they're evidence that our appetite for musical complexity is much more sophisticated then we think. One way of looking at the jazz waltz is that it is dance music in 9, a meter so odd that it probably lives in a tumbledown house on the edge of music town, and gets pelted with rotten fruit by the rude little marches and polkas. I'd been thinking for a while that I'd love to arrange a brash, jazzy, waltz version of a traditional song, using some influences from my favourites: 's The Way Young Lovers Do, 's Better Git It in Your Soul and 's Over Your Shoulder (strictly speaking neither jazz nor a waltz, but a relative of sorts). The problem was, which traditional song to choose?

For some people, Cold Blows the Wind - aka - is one of the bleakest moments in a tradition which almost takes pride in bleak moments. But coincidentally, I was reading 's The Lost Steps, a great book in which there is an account of ritual mourning as an ecstatic experience - a wild ecstasy which is neither happy nor sad, but contains elements of both emotions. In my mind's eye, the protagonist of Cold Blows... was instantly changed from a boring, drippy waif, to the kind of girl talks about (in Long Necked Bottles). I introduced a new melody, by cannibalising the Canadian version of and a new instrumental tag came to me while I was washing up.


By the time we got to to record Hedonism with the mighty producer at the controls, we'd been playing Cold Blows... for over a year in our live sets. We'd been working harder than we ever had previously in the rehearsal process - picking the tune apart, asking questions, then reassembling it. I think we all thought that if Matachin was the album where we let it all hang out, we wanted Hedonism to be more focused and streamlined. And it was all working so well until someone let bring his musical saw into the studio...

Two CDs dropped on the mat this morning that lifted my spirits more than somewhat: An Evening With and 's new album Backbone.

A.L. Lloyd ­ - Bert as he was most usually known - ­ was one of the movers and shakers of the postwar folk revival. As mentioned earlier in these blogs, Bert worked as a , as a on Australian sheep stations, as a journalist (with the great photographer ) and as a producer for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio for Schools. He was an interesting man in every way, an autodidact, a communist, and a musicologist who played a major part in the early years of Topic Records and a great carrier of songs. He helped the greatly in their early years and produced two seminal works on English folk song: The Singing Englishman and Folk Song in England. He sang in folk clubs and at festivals here and abroad and probably brought more songs into the revival than any other single person. Bert sent me many songs, the words written in his clear slanting style, the music noted on hand-drawn staves.

The new album, An Evening With... was recorded at the Top Lock Folk Club in Runcorn in 1972, probably a few days after I saw him at Bury Folk Club. It is Bert at his best, wry and whimsical, arch and passionate. The songs range from big ballads like to sexy romps like Nine Times a Night. There are seventeen tracks, most of them introduced by Bert in his own wonderful way. The quality of the live recording is very good and the re-mastering by Fellside has brought out the best in a terrific album.

Those of us more used to heavily accompanied singing might find the sparseness of the CD a little difficult, but words and music alone - uncluttered by accompaniment - can sometimes get right to the heart of things. For me Bert always did this. He was one of the best. More power to Paul and Linda Adams at Fellside for producing such a classic.

is a great singer, banjo player and melodeon player who has been on the scene for decades and has ploughed his own furrow through countless live appearances and a whole clutch of albums. Like Bert he is an unflinching devotee of the tradition and a passionate and unbending performer. He is never preachy or self-righteous though, and to my way of thinking has always produced great versions of songs and tunes whether modern or from the tradition.

Pete's new album, Backbone, is absolutely superb; great songs and tunes performed with the kind of hard-earned familiarity that only years of singing and playing can bring. He is in better voice than ever and every track on this CD rang out like a bell as I listened to it for the first time. Favourites? Byker Hill, Poor Old Horse and The Blind Man He Can See spring first to mind but really there isn't a duff track on the CD. It hangs together as a whole and is - ­ dans mon humble opinion - one of the best albums of the year so far. Self-produced on the Backshift label, it is well worth checking out.

Has anyone else heard these albums? What else are you enjoying these days?

Former guitarist writes about The Life of Birds, his new album which features a flock of top folk talents:

Woke up this morning with a (self-inflicted) sore head. Last night turned into something of an impromptu celebration. I was sitting with and Bella Hardy - new pals and musical collaborators - in the St. John's Hotel, , carefully nursing an ageing pint, when Jim's phone beeped. "Hey, I just heard your 'Sparrow' song on the radio", read the incoming text. Ha ha. This felt like the last leg of a journey that had begun three years before, when I called Jim up and said "Hi, you don't know me, but my name's Dave, I'm writing an album about birds, will you come and sing a song?" He said yes, and Jim became my first recruit. And that's how we ended up sitting in The John's on Snuff Night (every Wednesday, bring your own snuff, sample and swap snuff and snuff-related objects). Later, we will head off to , the living heartbeat of the Hull music scene, and officially The Best Place In The World.

The lyrics for what became The Life of Birds were written in the summer of 2006, when I was suffering from . This is a condition that affects the inner ear and thus the sense of balance; it's like being drunk all the time, but with none of the good bits. So I had two weeks confined to a chair, looking out over the garden. One of the ways I passed the time - apart from writing song lyrics - was by spotting garden birds, using a wall-chart that came free with the morning paper. That's how so many bird names worked their way into the songs - it wasn't really a deliberate plan. Even the songs that don't mention birds seem to have a pastoral feel: gardens, flowers, animals etc.

When the two weeks passed, and the antibiotics had done their stuff, I set about making a list of potential singers. With a recent visit to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 2 Folk Awards in my mind, Jim Causley and Bella Hardy were the firstÌý names on my list. A brief flick through the CDs in the car yielded the names of , and . I ended up with a list of twenty names - some I never managed to get hold of, some were busy, some even said no (yarg!). But over the next two years, I got the ten people I needed for an album. Some of them even did two songs, so I ended up with fourteen tracks.

The majority of these people are drawn from the folk scene - this wasn't a matter of policy, it just so happens that this was the music I had been listening to over the previous year or two. I felt that the style of interpretation employed by these singers - a very transparent, non-egotistical style - would be right for these songs, with their strong story-telling thread. I was very concerned that the rather dramatic nature of some of the lyrics - especially the two songs about senile dementia - meant that they needed to be under-played and not over-acted.

The next step was fitting the singers to the songs. Some were easy enough: The Road To The South, a song about being homesick for Yorkshire, was a perfect fit for Eliza Carthy. Draughty Old Fortress, a slightly Gothic lyric about an eccentric recluse, seemed just right for Alasdair Roberts. In most cases though, I sent each person three or four lyric ideas and asked them to choose one. They would then write a tune for it or wait until the recording session and improvise a tune on the spot.

Ten separate recording sessions with ten different singers is a challenging way to make an album. To avoid a jumble of styles and create a consistency of mood, I tried to use the same musicians on all the tracks - including Murray Briggs of Aberfeldy on drums and Rod Clements of on slide guitar - and Alan Jones and I produced and mixed everything.

I've enjoyed showing my new folkie pals around Hull. Today we saw the and (where the Civil War began). Yesterday we did Snuff Night. Tomorrow I plan to drive them over the . It's very refreshing to work with people from a different musical perspective, and a different age-group - from oneself. I hope it's been a two-way benefit. Although I'm still amazed that anybody could be in the music business, play three instruments, know hundreds of songs off by heart, and yet NEVER HAVE HEARD OF ...

, one of Manchester's, or Britain's, heck, the world's finest folk musicians has signed up to continue his stint playing in 's band on the tour.

Mike joined Knopfler for the US leg of the tour after being introduced to the Dire Straits legend by - another multi-instrumentalist folk genius - who has been performing with Knopfler for a few years and couldn't do the US dates. Bluegrass whizz also joined the band while in the States.

As the tour continues into Europe, Knopfler has invited both McGoldrick and McCusker to stay with him and perform to vast non-folky audiences in Italy, France, Monaco, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal.

Unfortunately for us in the UK, that means Mike's own band will have to pull out of some festivals, notably (where he'll be replaced by ) and (where he'll be replaced by the ).

Obviously it's a fantastic opportunity for the musicians, and arguably an even better one for the UK folk scene as a whole. The Knopfler set now features some extended spotlights on Mike and John, duelling with citterns in front of audiences who couldn't previously tell you what a was. Now they can, and perhaps they'll seek out folk gigs and albums on the strength of these two great ambassadors for the genre.

Have any of you seen these Mark Knopfler concerts? What did you think of Mike and John's contributions?

If you haven't already, don't forget to pop along to the Folk Vault page and listen to the latest clips!

We've got the doing 'From Where I Lie' in Nottingham in 2000, with Saul Rose and Martin Green doing 'Lemady' at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Theatre in 1999, the mighty doing 'Knacker's Yard Blues' at Newcastle Arts Centre in 1998, singing the 'Cowsong' at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Theatre in 1999, and good old 's 'After Rain' from Sidmouth in 2000.

Listen to the clips and let us know which you'd like to hear in full on Mike's programme... and why! You can email mike.harding@bbc.co.uk or leave us a comment below.

Our next trip into the Folk Vault will be a Cambridge Folk Festival special. We've got tons of great live recordings from the event, mostly from the last ten years or so.

Whose Cambridge performance would you like us to dust off and include in the Folk Vault?

Did your curry go cold while entranced you in 2006? Did you fall out of your deck chair laughing at the in 2007? Did the have you swinging all over the shop in 2000?

Let us know!