Offa Rex, Folk-Rock For the Ages

Offa Rex is a collaboration between the English singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/arranger Olivia Chaney, and the band The Decemberists. Olivia and Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy are in our studio to talk us through this love letter to folk music, that looks as far back as early music involving harpsichords, through the British folk revival of the 1960's and 1970's and as recent as psychedelic-folk, with a tasty stopover in the land of Black Sabbath. Hear these fresh and fuzzed-out interpretations, which explore the push, pull, and theft back and forth between English-Irish-Scottish repertoire and American folk traditions. Hear a Scottish ballad, a song written by British political singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, later done by Roberta Flack, and a song whose best-known version was by Steeleye Span, until Offa Rex gave it the Sabbath treatment.