Rupert Wates - Father to the Man (2025)

“Father to the Man” is Wates’ 14th solo album, and as with previous recent outings, Wates’ mellifluous guitar style is front and centre across the album, showcasing next-level acoustic folk finger-picking, well-crafted songs and a warm vocal delivery. This new collection is a two-part album built around the theme of parenthood with the songs written by Wates for his son, “to the child he is now, and to the man he’ll become”.

Common folk themes abound in the first six songs, which make up Part One of the album (‘The Child’). Wates uses pastoral scenes, spring mornings, fairs, and even an “a-journeying” minstrel or two to create a playful, peaceful world where everyone can “find the song that you were born to play” (‘Songbird in the Spring’). Part Two (‘The Man’) develops a more personal tone as Wates puts life lessons into song. ‘Courage’ is a wish for strength and resilience under adversity, especially poignant given the following track ‘Deep Water’ that recalls Wates’ son’s near-drowning. Album centre-piece and title track ‘Father to the Man’ brings Wates’ by now familiar cascading fluid guitar to deliver the message that he has been teasing all along – that it is the child that parents the elder – so succinctly summed up in the lines “And your eyes so very young/Show me the man I may yet become”.

Wates is an acclaimed guitarist and has been compared to acoustic folk heavyweights such as Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and John Martyn with justification. On “Father to the Man”, he does not veer too far from the format of his other recent solo outings, offering the listener enviable folk-guitar skills and well-constructed poetic lyrics to reflect on how a child forces a parent to grow up and also at the same time re-awakens a sense of wonder with the world.