The Hermit - Performance as part of Bradford City of Culture 2025

An exclusive live performance of the classic folk album: THE HERMIT

It’s 1975 and the world is changing. The events of Altamont had soured the Woodstock dream, prog rock was getting ever more pretentious and in less than two years punk would come spitting and swearing through the door. But folk was, arguably, at it’s peak with folk clubs in every town and village. Fairport had re-recruited Sandy Denny and Steeleye Span were going from strength to strength.

It was into this world that The Hermit was born. One Colin Cripps was researching the remarkable story of Jobe Senior, a character from Ilkley, whose ups and downs in the 19th century made a fascinating story. Illegitimate, by turns a farm labourer, dry stone waller, ostler, drunkard, happily married man and, in the end, a singer of great merit. Here was a tale worth retelling. With the help of Ray King to put the story into lyrics Colin constructed an album of mighty songs, interspersed with traditional tunes from amazing fiddler Geoff Bowen. The rest of what was to be known as The Mountain Ash Band consisted of Lynda Hardcastle (vocals and recorders), Alan Rose (vocals, whistle), Colin Cripps (guitars), Geoff Bowen (fiddle and recorder), Graham Jones (bass guitar, vocals and recorder), Kevin Slingsby (drums) and Martin Carter (vocals and guitar). Narration was by the late Sean Mansley.

The album produced was excellent and produced some good reactions, but in due course became a curious piece of the folk rock jigsaw and copies changed hands for considerable sums. CD releases came in 2000 and 2007, but then after fifty years….

Baildon Civic and Historical Society contacted Tim Moon about the piece. Tim had interviewed Colin Cripps for his radio programmes and he seemed a starting point to see if he knew a band who would like to perform The Hermit as part of Bradford's year as City of Culture. Tim knew of no band off hand, but offered to take up the project and set about finding musicians to add to his prodigious multi-instrumental skills finding a young rhythm section with Joe Logue on drums and Charlie Flintoff on bass. Actor Phil Knight will take on the task of narrating the spoken word sections in this exclusive performance evening.

The first was project was to record a new version of The Hermit under the name of The New Rowan Band (Rowan being another name of the Mountain Ash) and the challenge was to keep the form and spirit of the original while providing a whole new version.

The live show will take place at Baildon Methodist on 5th July and will prove to be a momentous event to mark fifty years of this incredible piece of music