BBC 6 Music — Fairport Convention hero Richard Thompson takes on the role of artistic director more info

Guardian Music — The folk-rock veteran and musical maverick will act as artistic director for this year's Meltdown festivalFolk guitarist Richard Thompson is to curate this year's Meltdown festival. Following in the footsteps of David Bowie, Patti Smith and Massive A... more info

Guardian Music — These madrigal maidens have charmed the likes of Jack White with their spartan and spectral songcraftHometown: Chichester.The lineup: Jessica Davies (vocals, guitar) and Katherine Blamire (vocals, guitar).The background: Far be it from us to get invo... more info

Live Daily — Singer/songwriter Richard Thompson [ tickets ] has lined up a run of West Coast dates to record live performances for the folk-rock veteran's next album of original material. The six-city outing kicks off Feb. 11 in Los Angeles, and sports a two-n... more info

Guardian Music — Founding member of Steeleye Span who took traditional songs to a global audience Tim Hart, who has died aged 61, was one of the original members of the highly successful folk-rock band Steeleye Span. When Ashley Hutchings left Fairport Convention to ... more info

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Fairport Conventions Liege and Lief. And while it is enough to pay tribute to a great and lasting album, this record thankfully gives us a little more to chew on. Liege and Lief isand will conti... more info

Guardian Music — Who are they?A Glasgow-based trio who have already been compared to Fleet Foxes, Fairport Convention, Jefferson Airplane, Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and, er, both Detroit and Seattle rock. We say: a band who make timeless, slightly otherworldly... more info

Here Comes The Flood — Kris Kelly, a singer-songwriter and composer based in Brooklyn, aims high. He studied opera performance and music composition and tries to mix classical instruments with traditional folk and pop. My Visitors is his debut full length and it is an al... more info

Guardian Music — (Salvo)It must be getting harder to find new Slade material to trudge out every Christmas but this is a treat, tracing the Black Country rockers' fascinating 1969-72 progress from a band Tony Blackburn introduces as "the skinhead set" to the biggest ... more info

Guardian Music — Today's stars now rock right past the retirement age. How do they do it? And shouldn't some of them stop?Dave Swarbrick, one-time fiddler with Fairport Convention, can laugh about his "death" now. It was 1999 and he'd been taken ill in Austria. The D... more info