trailer star

Various Artists Moon Over the Downs: the Trailer Star Tribute (Maverick Magazine) * * * (out of 4) This is a highly original, musically diverse and very listenable charity album with partial proceeds to go to Cancer Research UK. Conceived by freelance journalist Shaun Belcher (whose father is being treated for cancer), and put together by Kris Wilkinson (of Cicero Buck), there are fifteen artists from both the US and UK who have written songs especially for the album. The fictional Trailer Star was an underground folk hero who never made it to the mainstream, dying under mysterious circumstance and leaving behind a legacy for modern day artists to carry forward. The finest moments captured here come courtesy of Cicero Buck and the wondrous November Morning Sun, Diana Darby's Desert Dust and Bob Cheevers' These Wishing Fields. Terry Clarke's Donati's Comet has some great lyrics, but the strident musical presentation fails to capture the song's lyrical heart. Ronny Elliott's Dusty Trees is straight out of the Johnny Cash/Kris Kristofferson songbook, memorable, but hardly earth-shattering. Overall a neat little album that is highly recommended.- AC

TRAILER STAR R.I.P.

It is with deep regret that the Super Tiny Records has to announce the death of the legendary Trailer Star.

This from the Writers News Agency: ‘…details are sketchy, but it appears that Trailer Star’s pick-up left the road on a deserted downland bend high above Newbury. Police attending could not revive the dying folk country star. The circumstances curiously echo those of his favourite painter Jackson Pollock who died in a similar way 47 years before: suicide or coincidence?’ Tributes from Trailer Star’s chequered past trickled in, signaling his pivotal position in the development of English Country Blues. The artist Shaun Belcher, a close friend, said “It’s how he would have wanted it.” Mr. Belcher inherits a vast archive and the crumbling caravan where Trailer spent his final years. “There’s a hell of a lot in there” said an emotional Mr. Belcher. “Letters. Old reel-to-reel tapes, songs, even an autobiography he was working on. It’ll take years to archive it all, but I’ll try.” Not all the tributes were so fulsome. A colleague at the pig farm from which Trailer Star was recently fired, said: ”Well ’e wun’t quite the full ticket in my opinion – an’ he drank too much. Never did quite fit in round here, if you take my meaning: we is god-fearing people here.” Only the mysterious “Floodplain Demos” circulated among collectors during Trailer Star’s life. Now, with unprecedented access to his unpublished work, some of his finest colleagues have put together this tribute collection to remember a star who burnt fitfully, then went out. (Video bio-pic, CD box-set and ceramic Trailer Star memorial china caravan available soon.)