Grace Petrie

Grace Petrie is no stranger to this festival, having made her debut here in 2015. By then she was already a beloved presence on the British folk scene. 

A decade or so back – in 2012 to be exact, Britain’s Fuse Records released an anthology of political songs called the Anti-Capitalist Road Show. Mainly it was veterans of the British left-wing folk scene, a number of them – Leon Rosselson, Peggy Seeger, Roy Bailey – going back to the fifties, many of them familiar to Folk Music Festival veterans. 

The only young artist on the recording was a voice not widely heard at that point – a young woman named Grace Petrie whose “Maggie Thatcher’s Dream” – “When greed and ambition went and formed a coalition…” stood out and up. It was obvious there was talent and politics and poetry and passion…and so it has come to be. 

In fact, Grace Petrie – proudly socialist, feminist and lesbian – started  out back before the Anti-Capitalist Road Show. She began her career in 2006 at 19 and became a regular at the Glastonbury Festival’s Left Field Stage in 2010. Now, with almost a dozen albums under her belt, Petrie has become an organic part of the British Left, using her art to support a myriad of causes and campaigns and touring widely at home and abroad. 

– GC