Talking Elephant 2025
Million Dollar Ash
A studio-sourced souvenir of festivities honoring one of the most venerable movers in the realm of roots music.
How else would you celebrate the occasion of English folk-rock’s father figure becoming octogenarian if not with a public performance which features stellar guests? And what memento would you whip up to commemorate it, to bring home on the night of the event, if not with a compendium of the jubilarian’s achievements, especially when this person’s work has already seen a couple of massive box sets as overviews of his numerous successes? A comp including many deleted tracks, “Million Dollar Ash” may seem to focus on the Guv’nor’s later decades, from the ’90s to "Ninety-Nine Impressions" from 2021, but in fact, the gems corralled on a single disc reach much further than that. So yes, how else would you outline Mr. Hutchings’ creative longevity if not with such a collection?
Starting, rather significantly, with a rambunctious take on “Million Dollar Bash” – recorded at Cropredy in the vocal company of Marc Ellington – which marries Ashley’s love for village fairs to affinity for Dylan’s tunes and demonstrates the well-grounded maturity Hutchings embraced long after his spell in FAIRPORTS, the songs gathered here reflect various aspects of the veteran’s talents. There are memories brought alive in front of the audience, as the time-tested “Crazy Man Michael” – taken off "More Songs From The Shows" and voiced by Becky Mills – suggests, as does the elegiac mini-epic “Brief Encounters” where Polly Bolton and Chris While duet at the Guv’nor’s Birthday Bash back when he turned a mere fifty years of age, and also fresher cuts like the acoustic "Fortune Never Sleeps" from RAINBOW CHASERS. Yet while the equally uplifting “Field And Farm” finds the elder statesman carry, serenely so, the “Morris On” tradition into the future, the unhurried “Devil-May-Care In Our Dancing Shoes” projects resonant, philosophic playfulness via deep links between the tones of Ashley’s singing and his placing bass notes to stitch the melody and lyrics.
However, whereas THE ALBION BAND’s vibrant concert delivery of “Woodlands Of England” stages a quiet tragedy and THE CECIL SHARP CENTENARY COLLECTIVE’s handling of “Rosebud In June” brings drama to the rural idyll, “The Greatest Show On Earth” goes for histrionic, spoken-word-laced frivolity. That’s the scope of Ashley Hutchings’ well-inspired spectrum of sentiments – that’s the gamut to have many happy returns to.
*****
