'Trades Roots Live' showcases some of the best folk and blues acts that have played at the renowned Trades Club in Hebden Bridge. It features performers at Steve Tilston's monthly nights over the last eighteen months, with contributions from roots legends including Robin Williamson, Chris Smither, Wizz Jones, Stephen Fearing and Clive Gregson.

All 18 tracks are live versions exclusive to this CD including Chris Smither's 6/8 version of Dylan's 'Visions of Johanna', Robin Williamson's wry 'For the Loan of a Glass of Beer', and his version of 'Going Down Slow', a much-recorded blues standard (Howlin' Wolf, Davy Graham, Free, Eric Clapton, Elmore James and many others), but never before played on Celtic harp.

There are some fine examples of the singer-songwriter's craft: Jez Lowe's poignant 'Yellow Hair', in which a man rues his partner stepping out from his shadow and into the spotlight herself, Pete Morton's 'Shepherd's Song' about peasant poet John Clare, wooed and used by London society, Steve Ashley's 'This Old English Town', celebrating the cultural and ethnic diversity of modern England and Steve Tilston's prescient 'Pretty Penny', a song that oozes disgust with bankers' bonus culture.

Clive Gregson's 'Northern Soul' revisits a song first recorded in 1983 by his band Any Trouble, while Stephen Fearing's 'The Big East West' is a song from his 2009 album The Man Who Married Music.

There are some fine tracks for fans of the blues. Wizz Jones conveys all of the heartbreak of Blind Boy Fuller's 'Corrine, Corrine', written more than 70 years ago, and Duck Baker provides a fingerpicking masterclass in his instrumental 'Blood of the Lamb'. In 'Leave the Light On', Chris Smither's muses on the passing of time and the need to live each day to its fullest. The 'old white blues guy from Yorkshire', Michael Chapman, shows his country side on 'Cowboy Phase'.

The new guard is represented by Kirsty McGee and Mat Martin's vaudeville 'Sandman', Martha Tilston's 'Artificial', her take on temping, and Flossie Malavialle's version of Jacques Brel's 'Amsterdam'.

Hebden Bridge is a former mill town in the Pennine hills of West Yorkshire. The Trades Club, built by local unions as an HQ for their branches, fell into disuse as textile manufacturing declined in the 60s and 70s. During this period the town saw an influx of 'offcumden' - a rural Yorkshire word for incomers, people 'not from these part', attracted by cheap housing in a beautiful setting. Many were artists, writers, musicians, greens and New Age activists, who helped to transform a dying town. In 1983 a group took out a lease on 'the Trade', and the 140-seater club was reborn as a centre for music, culture and political engagement. 25 years on, the Trades is still going, and as ever committed to bringing musical cultures from around the world to Hebden Bridge.

'The Trades has a reputation among folk artists of not only supporting the scene through thick and thin but also being home to one of the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic audiences anywhere in the UK.' says Steve Tilston.

'After moving to Hebden Bridge I was more than happy to put on a monthly night featuring not only established performers but the cream of the best young artists. 'Trades Roots Live' is a fundraiser for the club which like all other live venues is faced with a constant battle to survive, so everyone buying is not only getting some rare tracks but playing their part in helping the best little club in the North of England'