The eight songs on Andrew Rumsey’s Evensongs were recorded live on a single summer day in All Saints, Ham, a remote 12th century church in Wiltshire. Accompanied by guitarist David Perry and RealWorld Studios ’Bob Mackenzie, armed with a collection of vintage microphones, Rumsey set out to capture something of the magic of a country church in August – complete with bees, birdsong, and a whisper of wheezy organ. Andrew Rumsey, who has written and performed with artists such as Martin Carthy, Emily Barker, Robyn Hitchcock, Louis Eliot, and Graham Gouldman, penned these songs to accompany his acclaimed book English Grounds: A Pastoral Journal – described as “a total delight” by Simon Jenkins of The Guardian and “Finely written, with echoes of Ronald Blythe and RS Thomas” by the Times Literary Supplement. This book and Evensongs are parts of a single creative project that former Booker Prize judge and Times Literary Editor Erica Wagner describes as “gorgeous… a celebration of the landscape this writer so fully inhabits”. Alongside musical life, Rumsey is also Bishop of Ramsbury: an ancient role charged with the spiritual care of a mystical county covering Stonehenge, Avebury, and Salisbury Cathedral. Evensongs is an imaginary congregation - singing of lost places, and their hope of return. The album hums with all the magic of a summer day, and the moment and place it was made - folk hymns to landscape, life, death and spirit - poise and fragility recorded, self contained, in a beautiful setting. Vocals and guitars hover and weave together, sometimes catching the huge church reverb like a vintage Roy Harper record….
