Hardcastle & Scott

“Just a great voice, great guitar.  But when it’s done right, my, doesn’t it just work?” – Gary Hazlehurst – Stafford FM

Folk Song A Week is the new musical project of Rebecca Hardcastle and Rob Scott.  As the name suggests we will be learning a new song each week and publishing it on YouTube.  The songs can be from any sub-genre of folk music although we will mostly be looking at “Traditional” music from the British Isles and America and hopefully adding some collaborations along the way.

The purpose of this blog is to help document our journey and to give more information about the music we choose to perform and to discuss it’s history.

We hope you enjoy the music and the blog, please feel free to share it around and add any suggestions for music and any interesting stories behind the music!

Rebecca Hardcastle

Rebecca fell in love with music from the moment she watched Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty at about two years old (or so she’s been told by her parents.)  That started an obsession with dance and consequently a serious addiction to musical theatre.  After studying French at university, but spending more time in the Theatre Company, she decided to train as an actress at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and got herself a Masters in Musical Theatre.  Rebecca realised she was a fan of folk music when she was sat listening to the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show one evening and couldn’t believe how many stories she was listening to. Coming from a theatre background, she loves stories and that’s where the love affair started. Singing and stories! What could be better?  Also, Rob won’t play Andrew Lloyd Webber on the guitar!

 

Rob Scott

Rob started out at the age of seven longing to play the cello.  His parents, however, already played the tuba and euphonium so there was no room in the car for another big instrument.  So he was given a trumpet!  He was classically trained in this for years, performing in various brass bands and orchestras.  He had started fiddling with a guitar at the age of sixteen and spent his adolescent years in indie and blues-rock outfits.  He first got into folk music when a brass band he was in played English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams, at which point he was hooked.    He is entirely self-taught, learning everything from the internet and from other guitarists he met.  He tends to play in standard tuning, unlike other folk guitarists, mainly as he says he can’t understand what the hell is going on in Open D!  Rob uses Elixir Nanoweb 0.13-0.56 Phosphore Bronze Strings and currently has two guitars: a solid mahogany Fender CD60CE named Josephine and a sitka spruce Tanglewood TPE SFCE DS called Michelle and he loves them both very much. Very much.