Dick Gaughan Gaughan Live! At the Trades Club

Dick Gaughan remains one of the most highly respected folk singers in the United Kingdom. He is also one of the most sought-after artists, and commits himself to regular tours both in the UK and abroad, particularly North America and Australia.

Dick's gig at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, North Yorkshire, in December 2007 was recorded by Ian McHarg, and this Live album is the result - something his many followers have been requesting for some time.

Dick Gaughan has never been easy. The songs he delivers ask questions that some listeners may have thought never existed - so they may not, instantly at least, know the answers. When the answers duly come, delivered in a voice that throbs with a unique kind of controlled, vibrating passion, he can shake the most complacent mindset out of its skull.

You go home from a Dick Gaughan session feeling exhilarated, not just at the wonderful skills of the most potent singer ever to emerge from the Scottish folk-music revival, not just at the astonishingly fluent and explosively eloquent guitar playing, but by the sense of the stark exposition of wrong and the tremendously argued legitimacy of right. Even those who disagree profoundly with his view of life recognize the conviction and the supreme artistry. This Live album brings that performance into your own home.

The Trades Club is one of Dick's favorite places to play. In November and December every year he does a tour through England and Wales, and the final night of the tour is always the Trades Club. It's not a folk club - in fact they put on rock gigs and stand-up comedy - but it's one of the few venues of that kind where someone like Dick can get the House Full notices up on a Saturday night!

One of the many reasons Dick has so much affection for the place is that it is a solidly working class venue and is one of the few venues where the idea of a performer having to explain why their work contains commentary on political and social issues would be absurd - it is not only taken for granted, but expected, that working class art and politics are inseparable.

This is just Dick and his guitar in front of a capacity audience doing what he does so well on so many nights of the year, performing songs he loves and playing guitar tunes in his own inimitable style.

Song lyrics are also included in the booklet.