Guardian music journalist Will Hodgkinson has just published a new book, The Ballad Of Britain, which sees him travel round the UK in a beat-up car meeting some of the country’s most eccentric folk musicians. From morris dancing freaks in Oxford to reclusive songwriters in Cornwall and the ashes of the Beta Band in Scotland he finds some unusual – and unusually talented - people and it’s well worth a read. He made field recordings as he went and Heron Recordings are putting out the CD.

One of his best gems, though, was Cate Le Bon, a vaguely psychedelic folk singer so good she inspired Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys to form his own label and put her music out. “The only problem being” Gruff tells me, “that the highly original, strong songwriting coupled with the spartan production has set a really high bar for any future release on [his label] Irony Bored”.

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