Jan 29, 2019
Pete Castle is a folk singer and storyteller nowadays based in Belper, Derbyshire. He works all over the country in folk clubs, on the storytelling circuit, in schools and libraries and with the wider public. He first came to the attention of Invisible Folk when we were researching Bedfordshire folk songs. Pete is a former resident of the county (1976-87) and collected around 70 songs of local origin and deposited them at Luton Wardown Museum. 20 of these songs were released by Pete on cassette in 1981 and the first song in this podcast comes from that collection.
We met Pete at the Strutts Community Centre in Belper and talked about his life as a professional musician. His repertoire is mainly traditional English songs and ballads but he has branched out into world music working with a Bengali musician in the late 1980s and Romanian folk musicians in the mid 1990s. He was main organiser of the Luton Folk Festival from 1976-82, and from 1981-87 he ran the folk show on Chiltern Radio (UK independent local radio).
Pete is a veteran performer and over the years has met and become friends with many well known musicians, most notably Peter Bellamy about whom he talks in the podcast.
For more information visit the comprehensive Website at https://petecastle.co.uk/