"Song to Woody" features on Bob Dylan;s self-titled debut 1962 album. He wrote it after his first meeting with his idol Woody Guthrie on Sunday 29th January at the home of some friends of the Guthries in East Orange, New Jersey near the hospital where Woody had lived for a number of years due to the advanced stage of his Huntington’s disease. The melody is based on Woody’s song "1913 Massacre" and the lyrics convey Dylan's admiration and appreciation of his hero, the father of American folk music.
This is a home recording using just the basic computer recording mike and software

Song to Woody (Bob Dylan cover)

Home recording using just the basic computer recording mike and software

Home Recordings

Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell cover)

She Moved Through the Fair is a traditional Irish folk song, was first collected in Donegal by poet Padraic Colum and musicologist Herbert Hughes and published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1909. It exists in a number of versions and has been recorded many times.
This is a home recording using just the basic computer recording mike and software

She Moved Through the Fair

"Tears of Rage" was written by Bob Dylan and Richard Manuel and was first recorded in 1967 on The Basement Tapes by Dylan and the Band in rehearsal sessions at the Band's upstate New York residence, Big Pink. The first official release of the song was as the first track on the Band's debut, 1968 album "Music from Big Pink", without Dylan and featuring Manuel on lead vocal. Joan Baez also included the song on "Any Day Now, her 1968 double album of Bob Dylan songs. This is a home recording using just the basic computer recording mike and software

Tears of Rage (Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel cover)

"Diamonds and Rust" appears on Joan Beaz’s 1975 album of the same name and she wrote it about her relationship with Bob Dylan during the first half of the 1960s. Joan was the star, the darling of the folk scene when Dylan came on the scene, but he soon rose to great prominence. 
This is a home recording using just the basic computer recording mike and software

Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez cover)

"The Three Ravens" is an English folk ballad, printed in the song book Melismata published in 1611, but it is probably older than that, and a number of versions have been collected over the years under such titles as the Scottish Twa Corbies. This ballad takes the form of three scavenger birds conversing about what they should eat. One mentions a recently slain knight, but they find he is guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. A "fallow doe", a metaphor for the knight's lover, comes and kisses his wounds, bears him away, and buries him, leaving the ravens without their meal. The version I’m familiar with is that of Peter, Paul and Mary on their 1964 album "In Concert".

Three Ravens

"Sheep may safely graze" (Schafe können sicher weiden) is an aria composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1713 as a part of the cantata "Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd" BWV 208.[a] (The lively hunt is all my heart's desire,) The words translate as 'Sheep may safely graze where a caring shepherd guards them. Where a regent reigns well, we may have security and peace and things that let a country prosper'

Spheres

Bach: Sheep May Safely Graze

Robert Schumann composed “Widmung” (Dedication) in 1840 as part of the song cycle “Myrthen” which he presented as the perfect gift to his wife-to-be, Clara Wieck, on their wedding day .

Schumann: Widmung

In the languid lullaby Summertime, written by George Gershwin for his 1935 self-described folk opera Porgy and Bess, you can feel the searing humidity of the American South in summer. The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard with more than 25,000 recorded covers.

Love And Other Stories

08 Summertime (Gershwin Cover)

Leaving London was written by Tom Paxton during the period he was performing at the Troubadour folk club in London. It’s a song of love, loneliness and a longing find a way back home to be with his love.  It appears on his 1966 album Outward Bound and his 1971 live album, The Compleat Tom Paxton.

07 Leaving London (Tom Paxton Cover)

Bob Dylan wrote Don't Think Twice, It's All Right in 1962 after his girlfriend Suze Rotolo extended her stay in Italy indefinitely. He released it on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan but it has been covered extensively.

05 Don't Think Twice (Bob Dylan Cover)

I first heard Declan O’Rourke’s Time Machine on the Transatlantic Sessions, Series 5 album. His beautiful melody and thought-provoking lyrics touched me deeply and the song immediately became one of my favourites.

Love and Other Stories

01 Time Machine (Declan O'Rourke Cover)

Hetty Binns was a part of very beginning of the Launceston folk scene in the mid-1960s, and performed at Tasmanian folk clubs and festivals as a solo artist, or as half of a duo, or a member of Shoestring Ban through until 1989. Initially self-taught, Hetty started classical vocal training in 1994, attaining her AMEB Associate in 2002. In 2000 she joined the Launceston chamber music group, Kepler Ensemble with whom she continues to perform songs and arias from the late Renaissance through to the 20th century in English, Italian, German and French.

In recent years Hetty rekindled her love of folk singing, performing in workshops at the Tamar Valley Folk Festival since 2013. At the 2019 TVFF, Hetty presented a themed concert “Songbirds of the 60s and 70s”, celebrating songs written by and/or performed by a number of female folk artists of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Buffy St Marie. Hetty’s themed concert at the 2020 TVFF was a presentation of songs telling of different aspects of love – including romantic love, lost love, parental love, love of the bottle etc.

The CD"Love and Other Stories" is the fulfilment of a long-held desire to record some of my favourite songs, several of which I have been performing for over 50 years. They are a mix of traditional and more recent songs written and/or recorded by artists I admire and who have had an influence on me over the years.

The Kepler Ensemble album "Spheres" was recorded in 2008, and only the tracks on which I sang are included here.

Hetty Binns

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