Who was it who said that travel infantilises you? Like a toddler, you suddenly find that you have to specifically plan and take account of your bodily functions.
The same is true of festivals.
That is obviously just a general comment. Definitely nothing awkward or embarrassing happened last night.
Yesterday I had to play the fine old game of Festival Tetris. Studying the programme, there logically must be a way of fitting in all the things you want to do. [But everything turns out to be the wrong shape.]
Rowan Gatherer, the front man for the Goblin Band, was doing a solo set in the Kellaway Cellar, which was more or less obligatory [for me to attend]. He is great. It is hard to put your finger on what he does — he sings songs and lets them speak for themselves, but with a definite preference for the silly and absurd. He sang The Muckspreader, the Mallard, I Am a Mortal Unhappy Old Chap and If I Were a Pretty Young Girl, which is practically a rugby song: "I would marry a milkman, and we’d milk each other all night long, I would marry a boxer and we’d beat each other all night long, etc etc". People who go to Bristol sessions are warned my repertoire may be expanding.
I have discovered that some older folkies don’t like the Goblins. Too silly and too shouty? I still think they are the best thing out there.
"So, if I go straight to the Methodist hall, I can hear Jennifer Reid and Macdara Yeats doing their talk / performance on Dublin / Manchester street songs, finishing at 3.15 and still get to hear Daoiri Farrell doing Irish songs in the Ham at 15:30." Except…disaster….Daoiri on first at Ham, so his set nearly finished by the time I get there: oh woe! 90 minutes between now and ballad session unaccounted for!
I sensibly did a thing which needed to be done to my tent to ease Saturday’s departure.
Best set of the day, and possibly of the festival, was Sam Carter’s tribute to Nic Jones. Sam is a fine performer, and while I do not play guitar, it seemed to me that he was accurately reflecting Nic’s playing style without (of course) attempting to be The Bootleg Nic. He did all the songs you would expect him to do: pot stoves and gold that he hasn’t found and lovers drowning and ruins on shores and people who are under the impression that Canada is a seaport town. Will Pound, (harmonica and squeeze box) and Jennifer Butterworth (banjo and vocals) opened for him. They can only be described as virtuosos, and were clearly having a great time. “I love music,” exclaimed Will after one exuberant tune.
[They were the people who would have come on after Daoiri Farrell, so everything fitted together quite well in the end.]
And while it was perhaps not a complete surprise, NIC JONES HIMSELF WAS IN THE AUDIENCE. He cut short the multi-minute standing ovation with “play some more songs”.
I HAVE SHAKEN HANDS WITH NIC JONES
[Background: Nic Jones was the pre-eminent trad folk singer of the 1970s, and Penguin Eggs is frequently voted the second best folk album of all time, after Liege and Lief. He suffered a catastrophic car crash in 1982 which ended his career, although he had a brief comeback in 2010.]
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