Gallery

Music News

BUY UNIQUE BACKING TRACKS (BACKTRAX)
Recently been busily writing arrangements for short films, amateur musicals and semi-professional performers and I've now recorded & produced them for sale as multi-instrument mp3 downloads. They are studio quality, mostly acoustic instruments, and you can use them to jam along with, practice with and even for performance purposes as I do.
Check out my unique BackTrax under the Music tab above or by clicking << Here >>

LATEST ALBUM
To sample and/ or buy my current Digital Album 'Don't Blame Me'  <<Click Here>>.

'Don't Blame Me' features The English Roots Band and is syndicated on CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and the usual streaming music websites.
All album artwork (sleeve notes, lyrics and thumbnails) is available for download on request in PDF format from phil@phildrane.com

CDs
I no longer sell CDs from this website since NZ Post has removed their sea-freight service and the air-freight cost is almost the same as the CD price.

My CDs (Don't Blame Me, The English Lament, The Best English Sing-along Folksongs) are listed and for sale on CD Baby (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/phildrane) and I will be uploading my other albums Walking With Wainwright, Full Circle and Two Ravens in the near future.

If you are in NZ and prefer the album on a hardcopy CD you could email me (see Contact above).

All my albums are available digitally as mp3s and can be sampled/ bought  and downloaded    <Here>

Music Player

Mailing List

Join Phil's Mailing List

Thanks for signing up to my Mailing List. An email will be sent inviting you to click "Download" to download your free track. Cheers, Phil
Note: You will receive limited emails, only from me, and you can de-register at any time.

You are visitor number: 21067

Biography

I would like to thank the 140 or so folk club and festival organizers who graciously booked an unknown Anglo/ Kiwi folk musician from 2007-2012 and continue to enquire whether I will be touring again.
Also my sincere thanks to the hundreds of folk who came to hear me perform and perhaps bought my CDs - some of whom still write to ask me if I will be back performing in the UK. To all those lovely people the simple answer is no,  I did my dash and what a wonderful experience it was.

I thoroughly enjoyed  performing again in England, my birthplace and homeland.
For those six years, I was once again the English folk-heritage musician that I always wanted to be. I met dozens of English folk musicians and hundreds of English people keen to hear my version of grass-roots English folk music. I re-met folkie musicians whom I had known 40 years before and somehow we just picked up where we left off, and I spent time with talented people I had never seen perform (having left England for New Zealand in 1988) such as Nic Jones, John Wright, Dave Goulder and Vin Garbutt.
Keeping English culture alive and well, and passing my own Mancunian, Lancastrian, English folk heritage on to as many indigenous and immigrant Ethnic English folk and Anglophiles as possible was what I chose to devote my time to in retirement. Particularly since the advent of multiculturalism and mass immigration it seems to me that English folk are losing out culturally in England and rapidly being disconnected from their ethnic identity.
So, having experienced the joy of performing the length and breadth of England it was a thrill later on to be invited to take my Lancashire/ English folk heritage on a 12-gig tour of Scotland.
Amazing reception and superb hospitality. Believe me, a Scottish ‘supper’ at 3am, table laden with food and a few drams of single malt is the perfect way to resolve post-gig adrenalin.
Being culturally connected themselves not one Scottish person asked me the self-explanatory, inane question that I sometimes met in England “Why do you only sing English stuff?”

I still write, record and perform occasionally in New Zealand, and I collaborate more with other musicians now, especially younger folk who have no idea what English and New Zealand folk-heritage is about. Sadly, like modern kids almost everywhere they have little knowledge of their ancestors’ lives and the folk-culture of common-folk.

Perhaps when I’m back visiting family in the British Isles you’ll see me in your local folk or acoustic club on a singers night – still my favourite way of encountering real music.
 

Thanks to all for the memories,

Phil Drane,
English Folk-Heritage musician

© PhilDrane Music 2016