Sidmouth Festival Diary [Wednesday]

 I carelessly left my keyboard in the café. They kept it for me, of course, and the coffee-making lady said she had been asking if anyone knew the name of The Journalist so she could return it. 

“The Journalist”. 

I’d be happy with Blogger or Influencer or Local Character, but I’ll take The Journalist.

[I put a bluetooth keyboard in my Everything Bag, and typed directly into my phone: Apple Notes, since you ask. The proof reading feature is actually quite helpful. Clearly, if I am going to leave things in cafes, not taking the laptop or the tablet was the correct decision.]

I SANG "THE GORILLA" AT THE CAMPFIRE. Probably my smuttiest song. The Bristol Shanty crew have yet to be subjected to it. It is not at all about a horny gorilla who sodomises a judge. It is in fact a very subtle satire against capital punishment. 

I heard Joshua Arnold and Therine again, partly because I was interested and partly because they were opening for Seb Stone. (Seb Stone is a young man who sings folk songs and plays the bagpipes. He specialises in clever tongue-twisting songs, like the one about the philosophical argument in Ireland which ends in a fight, and the Kipling one about the gamekeeper and the river.) Arnold plays the hurdy-gurdy. His partner sings and plays what might be a shruti box. She wears a headpiece covering her face, with a kind of antler arrangement. Their songs are dark, not always lyrically audible, dominated by a single drumbeat, but consistently compelling. They incorporate charms and curses into the material, as well as Playford tunes. They reference Shirley Collins more than once and finish with I Love My Lord Jesus Above Everything. (And Oak and Ash and Thorn). A reimagining of the merry England of the folk revival, which was itself a reimagining, perhaps?

Joshua played his hurdy-gurdy in the campfire session. He thanked me afterwards for my “eccentric” songs. 

I should make a list of my reviews: "authentic",  "unusual",  "eccentric" ‘it’s great that you’re enjoying yourself."

["You sing with energy, enthusiasm and humour" "in your own inimitable way"]

Gigspanner is a kind of more serious Bellowhead, a supergroup consisting of Peter Knight, Nancy Kerr, John Spires, Phillip Henry, old Uncle Tom Cobley, and all. There is a lot of "arrangement": the Young Farmer Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn went on for several weeks. 

Forgive me, folk gods, for I hit the Wall. I am fairly certain that Honey and the Bear are excellent, and I am fairly certain that they sang Who Knows Where The Time Goes, and I am absolutely certain that I fell asleep in my seat.

A large amount of coffee was consumed in the interval, so I was able to give the Young Uns my full attention. David Eagle, I think, is much funnier when he is sparking against an audience and against the other band members, as today, than when he is doing pure stand-up. The gig was sponsored by the local Nissan dealerships, and he wouldn’t let it go: at one point he suggested they shift to opera and singer Nissan Donor. We had three songs from the Johnny Longstaff cycle, including the fine one about Cable Street, a medley of sea shanties, and a bunch of their contemporary stories, including the unbearable one about the gay Muslim who took his own life. 

No ballad session, but I went to the meeting/concert of the "traditional song society", which involved people singing ballads. Middle Bar seemed to tolerate my Little Boy Billee admirably. Wind dislodged some guy ropes, but the tent stood up very well.