VIDEO
'Roy Rogers'was designed as a 'one off' fun recording and performance video to accompany the forthcoming debut solo folk and roots song album 'LATE BLOOMER' by veteran singer, songwriter and music producer Charley Foskett - FOSKETT created this performance video to accompany his new arrangement of the Elton John / Bernie Taupin composition - which you could say, he is quite chuffed with!
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FOSKETT has returned to the living, the loving and also his music, his story-line, folk and roots driven music - After decades of recording and producing hundreds of big name artists with a CV the length of the M1 motorway, or indeed Highway 1, he has now redesigned himself as artist in his own right - writing and recording a whole new batch of folk and roots songs with one of the hottest new bands that could only be described as a formidable force within the genre.
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'Having also been a vocal producer for many top international singers I have now applied my knowledge of the art to my own style of grunting in my own genuine Geordie accent - people seem to like it for some strange reason'
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With all best wishes and good health !
'FOSKETT'
'From a Lullaby Kiss'- Julie Felix -
Created, recorded, directed, filmed and produced by Charley Foskett for 'Foskett's Folk Factory'- We are privileged to welcome the iconic veteran folk singer, Julie Felix to 'Foskett's Folk Factory' - This beautiful Peter Knight song instantly struck a special chord with us and as we are lined up to record and produce Julie's new album, we couldn't think of a better song to launch both this renowned artist and 'Foskett's Folk Factory' simultaneously.
Julie hit the British music and television scene in 1964 with one huge bang! Named by The London Times as 'Britain's First Lady of Folk', she was not only the resident singer on Sir David Frost's show 'The Frost Report' but was also given her own five year BBC television series called 'Once More with Felix' - Apart from her own much loved national profile, Julie brought in duet guests like Dusty Springfield, Jimmy Page, Donovan and not forgetting Leonard Cohen with whom she remained close friends with to the end.
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We like to think that Julie has now gone to meetup once again with Leonard, where they can sing again somewhere else!
I was so proud and honoured to work with her and call her a close friend and music partner.
This video was just the beginning - a taster of what was to follow over the next five years in the lives of Felix and Foskett- enjoy CF
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Yet again I had the pleasure of not only hanging out and filming in my friend Julie's home, but interviewing her and documenting a little of her extraordinary music history.
(background music by Peter Knight)
enjoy CF
'Winter Solstice' - Created, recorded, filmed and produced by Foskett's Folk Factory - Originally an acoustic folk type song, I just knew there was great potential here for a full rhythm section throughout and a breakdown sequence cutting the drums to bass riff in the middle. I filmed the introduction sequence in the snow with the late and very much missed Patrick Hayes - I wanted to create that Lawrence of Arabia effect where Peter O’Toole is nothing more than a fuzzy dot on the horizon through the heat wave of the desert and slowly comes into focus riding a camel - Later, after locating the magical old barn, I directed the whole video for ‘Winter Solstice’ using a Steam Punk styling - There wasn’t much of a treatment written for this but I had the overall picture in my mind’s eye throughout and just followed my intuition. CF
'Pull on the Rope' - Created, recorded, filmed and produced by 'Foskett's Folk Factory'- Because of the storyline in the lyric, I needed to find a mineshaft to film both the descent from the viewer's P.O.V. and ascent from the escaping miners P.O.V. I ended up spending three days hammering, sawing, and screwing together several eight foot lengths of one by one timber - with lots of crappy old roofing felt that was buried under the conifers in the bottom of my garden, I covered the skeletal frame - then with about one hundred screws, some paper mache, mud and a can of black paint spray - Bingo! - A mine shaft! After that I just got a few musicians together, covered them in old rubbish clothes and plastered their faces and arms with a bit of black acrylic paint and Vaseline - off we went into my blackened out garden shed with one 10 watt light bulb and some daftness. CF
'Folky Friends' - rehearsing 'The Witch of The Westmoreland' (by Archie Fisher) - Filmed in the garden of Foskett's Folk Factory - I cut to the actual master recording half way through this video in order to give the excerpt a vibe of having background music to the visual - A lovely afternoon! CF
'Clear White Light' - Alan Hull - the late songwriter and front man of British legendary folk rock band Lindisfarne was a dear friend of mine from the early 1960s. We hung out together, gigged together and on the odd occasion got ourselves into trouble together. I remember him coming home from his then day job as an orderly in the nearby St Nicholas mental asylum and singing to me a new song idea he'd just conjured up on the way back to his flat in Gosforth in Newcastle upon Tyne - 'Hey Foskett, listen to this' - he proceeded to sing to me what I thought was a nonsense lyric - 'Seeing the sun as it wants to be seen by everyone - Melting the sky through a hole in your eye where the magic comes' - it was the summer of 1966, we were all folky hippies and his song in the making was 'Clear White Light' - Lindisfarne's piece de resistance!
When I got to produce the Dons album for Platforma Records in Latvia, I had been taken out to some weird folklore weekend concert in the Latvian forest - There were thousands of people dressed up in long floral robes and wearing flowers in their hair - for some reason I started singing to myself Hully's 'Clear White Light' and imagined in this unreal situation, all these Latvian punters singing along.
I just had to cut the track with Dons and produce it the way I've always heard it - Heavier, more punchy, distorted bass riff and African highlife guitar licks coupled with regular rock guitar and of course an outstanding sing along backing vocal in three part harmony. It was also an excuse to play bass with Lindisfarne's original drummer, Mr. Ray Laidlaw. CF
'Sand and Water' - Lauren Field - Created, Recorded, Filmed and produced by 'Foskett's Folk Factory' - The Sand and Water video was quickly filmed and recorded using two cameras - Lauren’s vocal was a first take and everything, both visuals and audio went down in one! I used three microphones in all, one on the acoustic guitar, one on the upright bass and Lauren’s condenser vocal mic - She sang in the booth for separation and with the addition of a small light in the vocal booth and a camera guy in her face we had it nailed. I used the little close up clips of the acoustic guitar and upright bass as cross fades so not to distract from those emotive feelings facially portrayed here. At this point it was all down to Lauren delivering that meaningful and heartfelt performance of this Beth Nielsen Chapman classic - Lauren succeeded in doing so by the truck load!