Sidmouth Festival Diary [Saturday]

 I got a review!

Obviously I didn’t get straight off the train from Exeter and hop on a bus from Temple Meads to Wells to join some shanty-adjacent friends who were having a camping weekend / mini festival / birthday party in a field near Priddy. Because that would have been mad.

And equally obviously there was no difficulty in getting an Uber or a Taxi to come to a field in Priddy in Sunday morning to pick me up.

I definitely decided that I was NOT going to walk into my flat on Sunday afternoon and take a nap. So I sat down in my book nook chair to catch up on emails and the Guardian. And instantly fell asleep for three hours. 

[And equally obviously, I am not going to canteen shanties on Monday evening, and definitely not going to hear Pressgang Mutiny in the Folk House on Tuesday. Because that would be silly.]

I suppose the festival beard will have to be shaved off. The lockdown beard was not a good look. The hair on my head has kindly gone from brown to light brown, receded slightly, and regained some curls since the trendy and expensive barber started to sell me expensive moroccan hair oils. But the hair on my chinny chin chin has absurd streaks of white in it.

I have a holiday diary I kept just after I had started school. The last page says “after excitement of these, we are glad to be back at Number 3.” (Number 3 being the house number I grew up in.)

I am certainly looking forward to sleeping in an actual bed, using an actual toilet, showering alone, etc etc.

I wonder what would happen if I carried on writing and publishing diaries in weeks when I am not festivalling?

Got up, drank coffee, wrote, listened to Radio 4.
Got up, drank coffee, wrote, listened to Radio 4.
Got up, drank coffee, wrote, listened to Radio 4.
Got up, drank coffee, wrote, listened to Radio 4.

Sidmouth Festival Diary [Friday]

Final day. 

I am dictating this into my Iphone on a train. Apple notes has a built in speech-text feature, so what could possibly go wrong? The next station is Taunton. I heard Prescot Mutant give a talk about sea shanties. They think they derive from cotton-screwing songs. There is a popular Jamaican tune which goes almost exactly to Sam’s Gone Away. Why are there no English cathedral-building songs? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They are not comfortable with the “she says she won’t but I think she will” line in Chicken on a Raft. I wish I had been taking notes. See it, say it, sort it.  Against my better judgement, I sang McDermot’s War Song (By Jingo) to the Middle Bar group at the Anchor , but they seemed to think it was funny. Th he shanty people thought that “silver spades” and “golden chains” might be references to sea burials, the “silver spades” actually being an anchor. I don’t approve of automatic standing ovations, but I definitely stood up and clapped at the end of Peters Field, a cycle of songs by Sean Coolney, (Young Uns), Sam Carter (riding high still from last night), and Eliza Carthy (whose dad was in the front row).  The folk opera format meant we got a very detailed account of the event with voices and names given to individual victims (and some of the soldiers) . Several songs are destined to become standards. The word “Peterloo” wasn’t mentioned until the last line of the final song. Spiers and Boden did what was very much a Spiers and Boden set, which is pretty much exactly what you want on the last night. There is still a wild boar in the woods, the bush still pricks their heart full sore, and the identity of the baby in The Birth of Robin Hodd is still a surprise if you haven’t heard it before.

[The shanty crew were actually called Pressgang Mutiny.]

Sidmouth Festival Diary [Thursday]

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.]

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.

Sidmouth Festival Diary [Tuesday]

 — Panel about Widicombe Fair. There are lots of versions.

— Anchor/Middle Bar Singaround. Lots of singing. 

— Concert: Joshua Arnold (strange), Sally in the Woods (Liverpudlian) 

— Ballad session: Lots of ladies buried in the churchyard. Lots of gentlemen buried in the choir. Many roses and briars ensue

— Concert: Goblin Band (sing what is now known officially as Widicombe Fair II) Winterborn (sing What Side Are You on and All You Fascists Bound to Lose in complicated harmony and American accents).

— Campfire Session: Man plays Hurdy Gurdy. No-one knows Tipperary. 

I can’t believe I have three more days of this / I can’t believe there are only three days left. 

Sidmouth Festival Diary [Monday]

No, I am sorry. A blossom is at best a potential cherry. An egg yolk is the possibility of a chicken. You might as well say that a book that hasn’t been published is already a book. Which I think some versions of the song do actually say. 

Yes, I did get to the ballad session, and I actually made a note of what was sung: as well as the riddle song we had Brown Adam, Long Lankin, something which might have been called the Widow Woman’s Daughter From Westmoreland, Jim Jones, Pretty Betsy the Milkmaid From Blackberry Ford, (which I made a note to try and learn), Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor (which doesn’t narrow it down), Bruton Town, and Dives and Lazarus. 

I irrevocably associate Dives and Lazarus with the Mary Wallopers version, but this had less swearing. (“Thou art none of mine brother Lazarus” as opposed to “I’m going to call the police-i-um”). Both versions arguably leave out the main point of the Bible story. 

I think the Ballad Session provides a necessary balance to the Big Stars on the main stages. 

It is very hot. I might even say too hot. I have a very sensible messenger bag with pockets that I call my Everything Bag, so in theory, I always have a programme, a comb, some tissues, and a kazoo with me. After four days, all the pockets are mixed up, and I can never find the one thing which is needful. Did I mention that it was very, very hot? 

There was a moment when Joshua Burnside came onto the stage where I randomly thought of the famous photo of John Lennon with the Quarrymen. It was probably the rolled-up shirt sleeves and the fact that I’d seen Bootleg John a few days ago. Why does no one warn you when this kind of thing is about to happen? He starts singing vernacular poetry to folkie tunes, and my brain suddenly switches from "hot" (did I mention that it was hot) to "fully engaged". Diving into my Everything Bag for my notebook to jot down lyrics: 

“The last armchair you ever sat in before your overdose / Is the one I sit in every day to eat my egg on toast” 

“I can’t imagine why anyone would do that / tell me brother why did you do that?” 

Really, it’s these moments I go to festivals for. 

Miranda Sykes and Jim Causley did their "songs we like that aren't necessarily folk-songs" set, which is lovely. The EFDSS “new comers” slot in the cellar included a very young and very charming group of young people called Woodkern, who I am 80 per cent sure I heard in another configuration at the Falmouth shanty festival and a young singer-songwriter called Ezmy Grace, who sang a self-written song about a supposed witch whose body was exhibited as an attraction for two centuries after her death. "Joan’s bones, no longer abused."

[Olly the Shanty Boy confirms that three of the people in Woodkern are also in Kessenyan.] 

Ended the day in Bulverton, the standing-up tent, where Steve Knightley did a full band gig. So that’s twice I’ve heard Cousin Jack! Phil came on to sing Crow on the Cradle, and played the fiddle interlude in Galway Farmer. Steve was slightly less demonstrative in that song than he sometimes is, and I thought all the better for it. 

I don’t know the reason behind the Show of Hands split, but it was clearly amicable. It has to be said that the big-band format with guests and cameos has given Steve’s act a huge shot in the musical arm. I sang a song about a farmer buying a male hen in the campfire tent, which doesn’t have any innuendo in it at all. I sang a sad song in the Middle Bar to prove that I can.

Sidmouth Festival Diary [Sunday]

Today I have been mostly listening to legends.

Lunchtime — Martin Simpson! Played his twiddly bluesy slide guitar and sang a song about a tree and a song about a Chilean singer who was killed by the junta. (“His hands were kind hands”: he sang it in tribute to Dick Gaughan.)

Early afternoon — Steve Knightley doing what Steve Knightley does best, which is basically stealing the show, if not the festival. This was Steve Knightley “and friends”, friends including the aforementioned Martin Simpson (accompanying him on a Dylan cover), traditional singer Paul Dowes, the guy with the Cajun from Track Dogs, and the young man who plays the new age kettle drums. This is probably not the technical term. The story is that Steve heard him busking in Sidmouth last year and more or less said ‘join the band’. 

Steve sang an obscure Martin Carthy number called His Name is Andrew, and everyone finished with the obligatory song about tin miners. 

Oh, and someone called Phil Beer joined him on the stage. Definitely not a Show of Hands reunion, though: they did the Blind Fiddler which is very much a Phil song. 

Am I the only one who thinks that one particular stanza of one of his newer songs is distinctly troubling? 

A traditional African band from Zimbabwe opened up for him. They were very good. They sang some catchy songs we didn’t know, danced a lot, and finished up with the possibly familiar Wim-a-Way. And encored with a kind of body percussion number, which originated with miners who weren’t allowed to chat and communicated by stomping their feet. 

Evening: Maddy Prior and Peter Knight!!! A late addition because the headliner was indisposed: they described it as a work in progress, which actually generated a real warmth and intimacy on the stage. Peter Knight is, of course, the fiddler all the other folk fiddlers want to be — his style is more classical than ‘diddly-dee’. Distinctly not a Steeleye Span tribute act. Maddy’s actually mad-sounding reading of Bedlam Boys was a tour de force, but the highlight was the incest-and-fratricide ballad The Sheath and the Knife.

Subjected Middle Bar to Pie in the Sky, it being Sunday. They shouted out That’s a Lie in the appropriate places. Tried the late night song session at the Bedford, which is very full and has excellent singing (the Goblin Band were sitting right in front of me) but struggles to compete with the rest of the pub and the tunes session in the other room. 

I played safe and sang It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, which went down about as well as you'd expect.

Sidmouth Festival Diary (Saturday)

First full day of festival….. 

Coffee and bacon roll in cafe. Bumped into my Recently Ennobled Folk Friend. (Lady in cafe greets him as ‘Sir’!)

I am not going to get into the infinite regress thing I used to do at Junior School Camp, of recording in my diary when I wrote my diary. 

Today is technically the first full day off the festival! So, of course, I have been a bit ‘full on’.

11.30 — Concert: Holly Clarke sings fairly traditional folk repertoire with quite bouncy modern arrangements. Ben Moss, who I have seen accompanying Grace Petrie, sings clever modern songs in a trad-adjacent style. E.G His song about urban foxes, in which King Renardine has been reduced to a beggar.

1pm — Second half of Middle Bar sing around. I sing The F-Word Song which goes down surprisingly well. Make a note of several shanties I ought to learn, including Yaa Yaa Skipper Jan Rebek.

3pm — Concert: Patakas are Joe and Will Sartin, which produces a certain amount of built-in goodwill. (They are now talking about their dad, and even joking about making the audience cry.) But they are clearly a tremendous trad duo in their own right, alternating tunes and traditional numbers. And an easy, laid-back, stage presence. 

The Copper Family could almost be said to have invented folk music: the current incarnation are the grandchildren of Bob Copper. I heard them once when they were trading as the Young Coppers, which I was alarmed to find was eighteen years ago. They are confident that their songs (including things like Spencer the Rover and Thousands or More) have been in their family for seven generations, on the grounds they have a written document written by Bob’s grandfather, which says “I learned these songs from my grandfather.” They are avowedly an amateur outfit, but still wonderful. I was going to say that their singing is “harmony style” or even “church style” but obviously the word is Copper Family Style. 

5pm — Across town to, er, the Conservative Club for the second half of a legendary ballad session. Only traditional ballads from memory are permitted…. Didn’t make notes of what was sung, although there was definitely a fine Alan Tyne of Harrow. 

7pm — I have nothing against  Lindisfarne, but have probably heard Fog on the Tyne as many times as I need to, so opted for the Traditional Night Out in the arts centre. A kind of rolling folk club in which an invited gaggle of singers and musicians do a couple of songs each. I concede that my concentration may have wandered a couple of times. In a way quite odd to hear Phil Ochs’ There But For Fortune in that context. 

11pm — Up hill for a campfire session. A group of Morris Dancers incorporate a slang term for the male organ into Sidney Carter’s fine song about the Peasants’ Revolt, so I retaliated with the Two Ronnies Morris song ("the bum, the bum, the bum, the bum")  which was declared “brilliant”. Later essayed Workers of the World Awaken. 

A man who can actually play and sing sang No Women No Cry.

I will not keep this up for seven days, though. 

Sidmouth Festival Diary (Friday)

Overheard outside Sidmouth YMCA: “Daddy, do you suppose they named it after the song?”

Quite a long way into conversation with a man in the café that sells enormous breakfasts before we realise that he thought my “Priddy Festival” T-shirt was a “Prodigy” festival T-shirt.

I didn’t think it quite polite to take a photograph, but the person playing the piano accordion in the trade stand that sells piano accordions was John Jones. As in “Turn out the lights” and “Here Comes the Flood" and "Jesus Walks In Idaho." .

Middle-Bar Singers are kind of a festival unto themselves. They have sessions every lunchtime and evening at a pub which is not called the Middle Bar. (It is the Anchor. The Anchor also has ceilidhs in the back courtyard, so the singing in the upper room is in conflict with the tunes in the car park. This weirdly adds to the fun.) Like all groups that have been running for a long time, it has a certain Masonic quality with traditions and jokes that the newcomer has to pick up. (Everyone stands up in certain choruses as if they were singing a hymn.) The longest-standing members, or possibly the committee, sit on a special bench and always start and finish the session. Otherwise, a physical stick is passed round [to indicate who's turn it is.] There is some serious singing (we had Rose of Allan Dale and Sea Cole today), but it skews to comical and music hall songs which obviously suits me.

This afternoon, a big guy with a hat and something which was not a Prodigy T-shirt sang Don’t Go In Them Lions Cage and the German Musicianer. No one actually threw anything at him, so I suppose that is a win….He already has a notebook full of songs he ought to learn.

Shower gel leaked over carefully chosen wet/dry bag and micro towel in my Everything Bag. 

Evening concert was the John Jones trio, which I liked very much. It felt like a scaled-down version of the Oysterband, because it was. Jones has the same stage presence in the cut-down format that he did when he was fronting a big band. [The same rather 1980s body language, as well.] 

After the concert, we went up the hill to the Bulverton —the loud dancing tent with the club vibe—to join the campfire session. The current weather situation meant that actual campfires are banned, of course. There was a man singing Streets of London, so I knew I was in the right place. I sang Passing Through, Little Boy Billy, and Casey Jones. 

At the rate of five a day, I will have sung through the Rilstone Songbook by the end of the week. 

A man in the bar said, “Aren’t you the fellow who sings Old Uncle Tom Cobley?”, which was nice because I am.

Tomorrow is the first full day of the festival!

Sidmouth Festival Diary (Thursday)

 It turns out that there is Another Shop, which sell Everything Except Tent Pegs.

I do, however, refuse to spend £10 on a water bottle, particularly considering what I propose to use it for.

Also need a Travel pillow. I yield to no one in my admiration of Ewan McColl, but last night my ruck sack was literally my pillow and in the morning I had a stiff neck.

Whoah! There is a Festival App. [You can filter "all concerts" or "all events featuring men named Martin" and click "favourite" by the ones you want to go to.] That makes much more sense than scribbling in the programme book and circling things and crossing things out. 

(“Oh you remember the good old days when we scribbled in the programme book")

Boo! Young’Uns and Granny’s Attic clash!

Sitting by the beach, counting humans and seagulls. The humans are winning. 

I know I am at a festival because people whose names I can’t remember have already started saying "hello Andrew". We haven’t reached the stage of people who I have never consciously met before saying "hello Andrew". 

Louise told me that there is an old proverb that goes “more people know Tomfool and Tomfool knows”

The first official gig is the Bootleg Beatles. This is a presumably so people can argue in the pub about what folk music is. 

If anyone says that they ain’t never heard no horse sing no song I shall be forced to call the folk police.

The Bootleg Beatles are, obviously, great fun: the sold out Ham Tent all singing along to She Loves You and Here Comes the Sun. Someone like Andrew Hickey can probably tell us how accurate their performance is, but to my Beatle -loving ear it was about as a close to the recording as you could get (which is to say, rather closer than an actual Beatles concert would have been ).

I first started listening to Dylan because he was friends with the Beatles and first started listen to Woody Guthrie because he was Dylan’s last idol and first started listening to Martin Carthy because darnn it there must be some English folk music as well, so definitely the Beatles are okay to start a folk festival with. 

I did find the act odd, though, The first half they are in high collar suits and mop top wigs, giving me the sense that I was watching someone cos-playing the Beatles cartoon. In the second half, George was in his denims and John was in his white suit and Jesus beard: but he was still making acerbic “rattle your jewellery” type gags. Obviously, none of the later material was ever played live in front of an audience. “This is one we once played on roof” explain "John".  "Paul" does his “just the boys …. Now just the girls” thing in Hey Jude. The singer [possibly Miles Frizzell] has McCartney's mannerisms and stage-presence down pat. I was particularly impressed at the way he channelled Younger Paul in the first half and Slightly Older Paul in the second. 

I suppose we were watching a recreation of a reunion that never happened. There is almost nothing better than the ‘aaahh….aaaahh….aaah” in Twist and Shout. 

Caught the end of the Middle Bar Singer having a sing-around at the Anchor. I sang a song about a dead horse. Several people sang silly songs I ought to learn for myself; particularly the one about the cucumber and the one about the ice cream van. 

Sidmouth Festival Diary (Wed)

I am in the Rincon cafe . 

The shop which sells absolutely everything, opposite, has closed. How will I pick up the things i din’t pack or don’t have the space for? 

I went for packing light this year Twelve tee shirts, four pairs of jeans, two turtle doves old uncle tom cobley and all. 

I am officially old so I came up on Wednesday rather than Thursday. Folk week really starts on Friday evening. 

By which I mean I am mostly retired so I don’t have to book days off two years in advance. I am not saying that the main reason I retired was that they wouldn’t have let me take the 2026 folk week off, but….

Putting up my tent was the usual Struggle. It still bends alarmingly in the wind, but it has never collapsed yet. I realise this is like saying that you found the thing you lost in the last place you looked. I assume one day it will explode and I will have to buy a temporary one from the Shop Which Sells Everything, which has, I have said, closed. 

I had somehow formed the impression that it was easier to go to Sidmouth on the Coach than on the Train, since the Coach goes to the Bus Station and the Bus to Sidmouth goes from the Coach Station. This year National Express seems. To be running Fewer Coaches. So I went to Exeter on the train, which is quicker. And there is Bus to the Bus station. So I went on a bus and a train and a bus and a bus and a bus. 

Nothing happened on Sidmouth on Wednesday night, so I had fish and chips and looked at the seagulls. 

I had an early night but the people in the next tent talked all night but i have earplugs. I have a whole quiver of earplugs in fact. I am not going to be like one o those people who quit smoking and goes on and on about it, but everyone should wear earplugs at concerts. 

I arrived in the coffee shop (there are lots of coffee shops) and the coffee shop lady said ‘Hello! Now folk week has really started!’ I am sure she says that to all the regulars, but it is still kind. They do bacon sandwiches and spicy buns. (Neither me or my spell check can spell "cinnamon") 

I will see if I can buy Everything in any other shop. 

If I can’t find any Unofficial Siniging I will go for a walk along the esplanade. 

folkbuddies.co.uk

It Takes All Sorts

Bristol Folk Festival
5- 7 May
Colston Hall

Bath Ales have ludicrously re-branded “Barnstormer” as “Barnsy”. I would no more order a pint of Barnsy than I would eat a Snickers bar. The organizers of the second Bristol Folk Festival had evidently taken to heart some of the complaints about last year's refreshments: the addition of a “beer tent” on the ground floor and some festival friendly snacks at the caff were a great help, although the Mexican frajita place over the road did very good business.

On Monday evening the compère does the Folks Men joke again. Everything is folk music, he says, because everything is written by and performed by folk, not by, say, plants or animals. So the Anglo Celt Sound System is totally folk.

They play a sort of young people's night club dance music; with that drum rhythm dominating everything, while a front man in a turban does his thang on one of those huge drums and another one plays Irish whistle or Northumbrian Pipes. I could recognise it has as having some connection to instrumental folk – several musicians all doing their own thing on their own instruments in such a way that it all comes together into a single thing that you dance to. In that sense it was quite similar to what the people in the bar were doing with fiddles and squeeze boxes. (Folk-buddy #1 claims that they even went into Cuckoo's Nest -- a Morris tune with filthy words that no-one ever sings -- but I had evidently stopped paying attention by that point.) The band definitely had a following: people were forming a queue an hour before they were due to come on stage. But I couldn't help noticing that other people were also leaving before the end.

Doubtless if you liked this kind of thing this would be the kind of thing that you liked. But it was a bit niche to finish the festival on. Last year we had Bellowhead and glitter coming from the ceiling. Everyone likes Bellowhead. This year we had a very good night club band; and a sense that the actual folk festival finished with Sam Sweeney and Hannah James doing their delicate traditional tunes and clog dancing (how can a form of dance based on having blocks of wood on your feet be so damn graceful?) before we let the Young People do their thing for a couple of hours before bed time.

Did I not once tell you to avoid anything with the words "Celtic" or "Fusion" in the main job description?

There was a big stand on the bridge outside the main hall selling "old fashioned" sweets – white chocolate things with hundreds and thousands on them, rice paper sherbet flying saucers, Hershey bars, multi flavoured pretzels. I liked the Finnish liquorice best; soft like a truffle, sugary on the outside, salted on the inside, a very strong liquorice taste without the chewiness I like the taste of salty licquice, by usually find that much salt is a little nauseous. I think that liquorice like porridge, should taste of itself rather than being used as a sugar delivery mechanism. I think the same thing about Krispy Kreme Donuts, but wouldn't go as far as putting salt on a donut.

When I said that I didn't like “Celtic” music, some people affected to believe that that meant that I didn't like Celtic music. Which would obviously be ridiculous. Sunday's headliner, for example, was the slightly too ethereal for my taste Cara Dillon, backed up with what (I am assured) was a who's who of famous Irish instrumentalists. I am no expert in what is technically known as the diddly-diddly-dee sub-genre (sub-sub-genre “look how fast I can play this damn whistle”) but that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy it. Ms Dillon, of course, didn't use the c-word. She called it “Irish music” or more specifically “this is a tune from County Tyrone.”

Ewan McLennan was by some distance the best thing I heard over the entire weekend. He came on to the stage and practically whispered "A Mans and Man For A'That". And then, in case we'd missed the point, played "Auld Land Syne" on his guitar. You forget that these tunes, belted out at so many drunken parties, have a real proper melodic beauty if you trust them. But the soft, feathery delivery could wrong-foot you: before long he's bringing the same style to protest songs; turning "Banks of Marble" from a rabble rousing soap box thumper into a meditation on injustice and then topping it with an almost too painful to listen to version of Old Man’s Song.

We're living on the Pension now and it doesn't go too far 

 Not much to show for a life that seems like one long bloody war

When you think of all the wasted lives it makes you want to cry 

 I don't know how to change things but by Christ we'll have tae try

Oh, and an audacious reworking of Bob Dylan’s Blues from the Radio 2 Freewheelin' project. Take a silly, filler song. Slow it down. Deliver the lines as if they mean something even if you don't have the faintest idea what. Someone said that he sang it better than Bob Dylan's version. I don't think that's true. I think that this sort of cover is always sort of kind of engaging in an inter-textual debate with the original. If we didn’t know how Almighty Bob sung it, we wouldn’t we gasping with amazement at Ewan’s reworking.

Celtic indeed.

I think that I shall become the kind of person who likes liquorice I shall make a big thing of it. It's the sort of thing you might right on a character sheet in an RPG to show that you have an interesting personality.

Luke Jackson was by some distance the best thing I heard over the entire weekend. I wish I hadn't raved about him quite so much after Frome, because the set he did in the more intimate Colston Hall 2 was on a whole different level. Five years from now, he will be the biggest thing in folk, unless they steal him from us an make him into a pop star. The photos on his Facebook page show signs that someone is trying to brand him, which would be a shame. There's an honesty, even a naivety to his performance; telling us that a particular song is the one that been in his act for the longest (he's not yet 18) or introducing a traditional number with “I'm not quite sure who wrote this.” He has a deep, mellow voice which lets him pull off an old spiritual like Poor Wayfarin' Stranger with an intensity that I can hardly believe. There's absolutely no sense that he's mimicking a more experienced singer: you feel he's felt it himself. But its the self-written songs which crystallize his own experience: climbing trees, riding his bike in the park, realising he's going to lose track of his three best friends, hearing people on the bus running down teenagers. They are so perfectly done that listening to them almost seems voyeuristic. He encores with Oakham Poachers ("Steve Knightley asked me to do something traditional”) and while its clearly a cover of the Show of Hands arrangement, it suddenly, startling goes into his own bluesy riff on the final line. Astonishing.

"You may now cross off "dead children" on your O'Hooley and Tidow bingo card" tweeted Folk-buddy #1. This was immediately retweeted by O'Hooley and Tidow. Twitter is a powerful friend and a dangerous enemy. At one level, live tweeting events like this is great fun; and occasionally helpful, when other twits tell you what is going on somewhere else. At another, it tempts you to spend the event in the twittersphere, not in the moment (which is always a problem for a writer, even without the 140 character limit). And the acts themselves are reading your tweets. Since Folk Buddies #1 - #4 refused to eat the Hershey bars I purchased from the liquorice shop I idly tweeted "I wonder if the band like American chocolate" "Yes please" tweeted back Mawkin "Enjoy the set..."Which is sweet: but it makes one immediately reluctant to tweet “this band sucked”. Actually, my general rule, being one who does not know anything about music but knows what he likes is to only review acts I've enjoyed. When I hear someone I don't think much of, I generally leave well alone.

(Which is not, by the way to be construed as meaning that if I don't review something I thought it was awful. I had a great time listening to Andy Irving at the the Folk House in May. He's one of my favourite singers. Specially liked his straight down the middle version of the It Was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the wassisname, and his very traditional Stewball. I just didn't get around to putting pen to paper. I also failed to say anything about the very wonderful Monty Award Winning Chris Rickets at the same venue. His version of Leaving of Liverpool reduced the entire audience to tears, and I was impressed as hell that he finished up with What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor. Not ironically or post- modernly; he just seemed to trust the song. Neither Andy Irvine nor Chris Rickets were at the folk festival. Now I've confused everybody.)

Instrumental folk is not always my most favourite thing, but Mawkin do it better than anyone I've ever heard. That was precisely 140 characters, that was.

O'Hooley and Tidow were by some distance the best thing I heard over the weekend. The last time I reviewed them, I described them as "depressing" (a fact they apparently remember). Actually, this isn't entirely fair. I would now be more inclined to say "haunting". Some of their songs pass almost unnoticed at the gig and then come back and kick you in the teeth three days later. The musical setting of a sentimental Victorian poem called Little Boy Blue, for example. They hold it, as so many of their lyrics, at arms length; there is something detached, and therefore chilling, about their performance. The verse is pure sentiment; it could almost be an Edwardian parlour ballad. But in the middle of the song, something altogether more contemporary cuts in; with percussive piano and declarative singing, it's an unsettling ultimately very moving shift in direction. (Clever, too: the line "but as he was sleeping an angel song awakened our little boy blue" would have been cloying.) But the tune is deceptive; I suddenly found the melody (“what has become of our little boy blue”) drifting to the top of my consciousness a week later and making me feel sad for no reason at all. There own lyrics love to hold up the ordinary for observation: the astonishing song about the old couple's coach trip to Blackpool piles trivial detail on trivial detail ("and the handbag with the fiddly catch that sometimes nipped her finger / but it matched her coat and sunday shoes so it really didn't matter") with an urgent, driving rhythm. It ends "'Have you enjoyed your day trip?' Vera says 'It were real'." Lancashire people do use "It were real" to mean "I had a good time"; but the line is taken up and repeated over and over until it becomes a sort of Samuel Beckett existential yell at the universe. Or something.

I have also previously raved about Solarferance. Folkbuddies #1, #2 and #3 all bought their album, which proves that I was right. They are the ones who stand on the stage with Macbooks, making strange noises with mortars and pestles and musical saws and live looping them, while singing very detailed close harmony versions of traditional songs. I think Folk-buddy #1 is probably correct that they need to work on their stage personae; Nick in particular has a slight tendency to look like someone doing a send up of disc jockey; but it's early days and what they are doing is fantastically difficult. "I never had but one true love" is awfully clever, The multi lingual Cutty Wren is still the best thing they do; the point, at which, I think, they passed beyond being awfully clever to actually making music. 

Every folk festival, I assume, involves a young woman singing "I'm Being Followed by a Moon Shadow", "Streets of London" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane." I have no problem with this. I would be sorry if it didn't happen. The sense of being at folk festival is an important part of being at folk festival. I have more than once been in a not very pleasant venue drinking not very nice beer when a not very talented young man with a hat, beard and guitar sits on a chair and sings a not very good song about the banking collapse and how it relates to the young lady who is no longer dating him and thought "this is exactly what I signed on for". I described her on twitter as "charming". Folk-buddy #1 wanted to know if my liquorice had been drugged.

Show of Hands did a fairly restrained set. By their standards. Regular readers will be aware that last year's performances was the best set ever done by anyone anywhere and they made no particular attempt to top it. They are never less than very good. We had a Cousin Jack and an AIG, Phil got to do Jamestown and Innocents Song, Steve Got to Home of a Million Dreams (which I don't think is as good as he obviously does) everyone did Keys of Canterbury, and we wound up with Now You Know Will You Come Back To Me. There was a hen night. A group of young ladies with a big banner that read "Getting married but still in love with Steve and Phil". (There are some folk performers, such as Seth Lakeman for example, who you can easily imagine young ladies adoring for their boyish good looks. Phil Beer and Steve Knightley, not so much.) This rather boosted the party atmosphere. I don't think Steve did as much banter as he usually does, since he spent most of the period between the songs engaging in call and response with the girls. Which was fine. In fact it rather underlines what a showman he is; quite able to fool around with the hen party, and then dedicate his last song to them, and say "good luck for the big day" in a stage whisper before quitting the stage. Wanting to postpone the debate about whether objecting to the common fisheries policy -- or indeed listen to a song about a character who objects to the common fisheries policy -- makes one a Nazi, I hung around in the hall and had a chat with the ladies. They'd were serious Show of Hands fans. They'd been calling out for him to sing Poppy Day, which is an incredibly depressing song about a drug dealer and had been at the Albert Hall concert the previous month. They said Now You Know was their favourite song; I said that Cousin Jack always makes me cry because my Daddy was Cornish. We left feeling that we were the best of friends.

That's the kind of band they are: not necessarily my favourite song writers (1) or my favourite live act (2), but never failing to catch the mood of the hall (angry last year, festive this year) and create a corporate experience. Godlike, in other words.

Lucy Ward is beautiful and lovely and funny and clever and I think I am probably in love. She drew a little heart on my CD and was just as lovely meeting the fans off stage as talking to them on stage. The picture of her on her album makes her look like a fey Monroe-ish starlet In real life she has bright blue hair and says that the best thing about Shrewsbury is that every third shop sells cakes. (She lived on macaroni pie during the folk week, apparently.) She has a sense of humour and comic timing which makes you think that she could probably hack it as a stand up comedienne if she wanted to; but in between the bubbling are some very dark songs. Alice in the Bacon Box is about a lady who ends up in the workhouse because someone takes her cardboard box away. Its based on a true story. She's good at making unexpected turns, as with her “traditional English song by Jarvis Cocker” which she does so well and, er, audibly that it made me go back and listen to the original. The recording which catches her stage act the best is Maids When Your Young, which is sung with an absolutely conspiratorial level of filth which is a joy to behold. She was by some distance the best thing I heard over the weekend.

Many people thought that Lady Maisery was the best thing over the whole weekend. There was a squeeze box, clog dancing and a strange Norwegian thing which may really be called "diddling" in which you sort of sing instrumental numbers. And there was a song about a fairy.

Dan Walsh plays the banjo and Will Pound plays the harmonica. Half way through, Dan did his banjo solo. You know that thing where the music gets so quick that's its obviously the climax, and everyone claps, and then he gets even faster? He did that three or four times. Brilliant (and he was properly playing a tune as well, not just showing off.) It was obviously the best bit of musicianship anyone did over the whole weekend the whole weekend (seriously).

"Hmm...8 out of ten" said Will when he returned to the stage.

Some years ago I was involved in the design of a computer game about pirates. There were different kinds of pirate ships, each with different attributes. (It was, as I may have mentioned before, described by the Daily Telegraph as "adequate".) In several years of writing documents and setting up auto-correct functions, I still discovered new ways of miss-spelling "manoeuvrability".

I feel very much the same way about liquorice

I didn't get very near the free stage this year because there was so much going on in other place, but would award several points to an Irish student Celidah band, quite possibly called Really Potcheen, who did things like Galway Girl very nicely and honestly. They described New York Girls as a Bellowhead cover, which says something about the nature of the Tradition.

And the Appliejacks who did appallachian clog dancing. At one point, the nature of the venue meant that the music from upstairs and the music from downstairs was in competition. English Morris dancing and American clog dancing. On Sunday, the man with the big Indian drum taught some of the morris dancers how to dance. 


Now, that's what I call fusion.

(1) Chris Wood
 (2) Chumbawamaba

Bristol Folk Festival (5)

Sunday

I have done a bad thing.

Last night I drunked beer, and this morning I woke up feeling distinctly woozy, and found that I had nothing in the fridge for breakfast. What a shame there isn't some kind of, I don't know, supermarket at the bottom of my road. (OH! YOU CAD! YOU BOUNDER!) So I walked in via Cabots Circus and taken breakfast in, er, McDonalds. Not a very traditional way to greet the first day of May.

Apparently some of the Morris sides really did get up before the break of day-oh to great the May-oh at 4AM on the patch of grass behind the shopping mall-oh. (Fay Hield tells us later that the Newcastle's version involves washing you face in the May-dew, or, since the park in question is much frequented by pet-owners, the May-poo.) My enthusiasm doesn't extend quite that far, but when I get to Colston Hall, the seating has been removed from the main auditorium, and various groups are hey-nonny-no-ing away.

Some ladies are doing rapper dancing in doc martin boots, with a caller in a top hat. Another all-female group are doing something possibly connected to a May Pole dance, holding long flowery sticks in the air and making arches; followed by one of those ones where they bash sticks together. There is tiny girl of about eight, who seems to be as good a stick-basher as any of the others. A male group leaps around and waves hankies in the air.  "Before we go, can I draw your attention to this spot" says the old-timer who leads the group, pointing to one of the places from which seating has been removed. "That's where I was sitting when Bob Dylan played the Colston Hall in 1966."

Yeah. There can be nu-folk and folk-rock and punk-folk and people I wouldn't swear were folksingers at all but I deeply respect and approve the way the festival has tried to establish links with the old, the traditional, and, indeed, the silly.

Dyer Cummings, who I have never heard of, were a nice bouncy dancy band, who played a lot of infectious tunes with the usual fiddle-accordion-guitar combo, but topped out the set by leading the audience with an akapella John Ball (the aforementioned Sydney Carter carol about the preacher who was killed for supporting the Peasants Revolt). "Are all Protestant hymns like that?" asked Clarrie.

Only caught a little bit of today's Open Mic but I was glad I did. Tony O'Hare is a guitarist who haunts local folk clubs. He sang a silly ballad about the brouhaha that blew up a year or so back when a wartime bomb was discovered in the river (it turned out to be a supermarket trolley, of course). And a song about busking all day and earning "six quid and a banana". And splendid piece about MPs expenses, with increasingly preposterous Dylanesque rhymes for "sleaze". (The joke was compounded because the song used the harmonica riff from Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, and I would totally have noticed that if Clarrie hadn't pointed it out.) He wasn't the best writer, singer or guitarist of the weekend. But he came the closest to embodying my idea of what a "folk-singer" ought to be like: a guy ploughing his furrow in the bar, playing to anyone who'll listen and trying to make them laugh. (He was also clearly a believer in Tom Lehrer's maxim that singing 50 verses is twice as enjoyable as singing 25). And he was the person during the weekend who most strongly made me think: "I want to learn to do that."

And thence to the main hall for the sellider (pronounced "barn dance) led by, get this Spiers and Boden. (That's like saying that you've waltzed to Yehudi Menuhin, isn't it?) There is in existence photographic evidence of me on my feet, wondering what a willow is and why one might want to split one, whether I am couple one or couple two, and precisely which is my left and which is my right. I may have initiated a couple of collisions. Tim, I hear, caused a major pile up. Clarrie claims to have taken a superb picture of Tim and I, but found no evidence of it on her camera when she got home, and has therefore supplied the above line drawing. Jon Boden sang the one about the spotty pig, but mostly, the two Jo(h)ns just played perfectly bounced tunes, with ebbing and flowing rhythms that you can't help dancing to. Well, or badly, as the case may be.

The Fay Hield Trio I almost overlooked, owing the fact that the programme decided helpfully to tell me which other artists her record label published, rather than the salient fact the other two members of the trio were Robert Harbron (as in "Kerr, Fagan and") and Sam Sweeny. That is to say: one of the best squeeze box men in the business and one of the best fiddlers in business. "Sam is in another group called...." explained Fay. "Bellowhead!" shouted the audience. "Kerfuffle!" I suggested. Actually, the trio could usefully have been billed as "a bit like Kerfuffle", in that you had virtuoso fiddling and melodian-ary behind exquisite female vocals, doing traddy material like King Henry and nearly traddy stuff like Oak, Ash and Thorn. (Mr Kiplings Poem, set to music by Peter Bellamy, who may have been mentioned before and may indeed be mentioned again.) Fay Hield is Jon Boden's partner. The last day of the festival was, as you might expect, Bellowhead-centric.

The small hall was a very nice space when it was half empty: you could sit on the floor or lean against walls -- but when there was nothing going on in the main hall, it got awfully crowded and became "standing room only". Balshazzar's Feast perform seated, so I only got a glimpse of the tops of their heads. This was a little frustrating, as it meant that one could hear frequent ripples of laughter from the front three rows who were (I assume) the only people who could see what were (I assume) hilarious on-stage antics. So I can 't say whether I would have found them terribly funny or (as I suspect) terribly irritating. I will certainly try to hear them again and see them for the first time at some point.

This was really the only logistical issue over the whole weekend. People formed neat, British queues without any rioting at all outside the main hall before the headline acts, but actually I think this was hardly necessary. For Bellowhead on Sunday night, frixample, everyone in the standing area mosh pit could see perfectly, and anyone who wanted to be there could be.

(Question: Why does Belshazzar's Feast use an image of two heads on platters on their album cover? Surely that was Herod? Belshazzar's was the fellow with the writing on the wall?)

Sheelanagig, preceded Bellowhead on the main stage. I could take them or leave them. They were clearly very good. I think it was slightly ill-judge to precede Bellowhead with a rhythmn based klezmer (didn't look it up, taking a shot in the dark) party band. However good they were (and Clarrie observed a small child, just in front of our party, who seemed likely to explode with excitement) they weren't going to be as good as Bellowhead. I suppose having gone to the trouble of clearing out all the chairs, it made sense to have another band people could dance to to. I'd maybe have preferred a total contrast. This was the only point where I felt I was watching a support act and waiting for the main group to come on.

Bellowhead are fantastic. Bellowhead are always fantastic. It is their job to be fantastic. There is plenty of space in the main hall, so people can stand if they want to. They can jump in the air to Frogs Legs and Dragons Teeth. They can indicate with their fingers whether Jack is up to the rigs or down to the jigs of London town. They can shake their heads in time with the Slo Gin set. There are rumours, in fact, that Bristol's Only Celebrity Folk Blogger (TM) may have attempted to few faltering polka steps with Bristol Leading Citizen Folk Journalist (TM) during Oh You New York Girls, Can You Dance The? Jon Boden eschews witty banter, and simply sings. When I first heard it in the Old Vic last year, I had my doubts about Port of Amsterdam, but I now think it's the best thing he does. A signature song. He seems to be in melancholic agony every time he sings it. He sings about the girl who will only marry the lord if he can answer six questions ("and that is three times two") as if no such song as ever been sung before, seeming to scratch his head and think for a moment before realizing that the cock was the first bird that did crow and the dew did first downfall. There is just the faintest trace of surprise in his face when he tells us that the finest month in all the year is the merry, merry month of May, as if he has only just noticed that he's singing the song on May Day. I still think that there are moments when the performance blots out the song: The Two Magicians ("wizard copulation") is too good a story to get lost amongst the ska style brass (I looked it up) -- and we only get to sing bide lady bide (there's nowhere you can hide a couple of times. But the Broomfield Wood utterly remains a folk song. You can hear the pique in the horse's voice when he's blamed for not waking up the sleeping lord. And Jon chews up the furniture for Cholera Camp, as always. ("Theeee chaplain's got a banjo....!") (Cholera Camp, Pilgrim's Way, Oak, Ash and Thorn: we have rather been followed around by Mr Bellamy's interpretations of Mr Kipling this weekend. You can't listen to Folk Song a Day and not realise what high regard Boden holds Peter Bellamy in.) The stage sprays the audience with confetti during the final number. With their songs about lusty blacksmiths seducing shape shifting wizards, and knights falling into magical sleeps in broomfield woods, and jolly sailors being ripped off by jolly prostitutes, and jolly prostitutes being ripped off by jolly sailors, and happy beggars, Bellowhead are, in their highly idiosyncratic way, painting a picture of yet another England. It is not clear with their piratical stylings are intended to impart a john barleycornish new life to Merrie Englande, or if they are actually taking the piss out of the whole thing. Probably both at once.

The bar stays open after the show finishes. It hasn't run out of beer. (When I first saw the revamped Colston Hall, I thought "Why have they attached an airport lounge to the theater." It has grown on me. How many theaters are there where you can get a drink after the show?) Someone starts playing the fiddle. Half-a-dozen ladies in civvies get out their rappas and start dancing; another lady, starts calling out the moves, just like she was doing, in her top hat, on the floor of Colston Hall this morning. The bar-staff turn off the lights as if they want us to leave, and then possibly think better of it and turn them on again. The rappa-ing finished, a guy and a girl start unselfconsciously doing leap-in-the-air scottish country dance steps. Someone produces an accordion to accompany them: it turns out to be Jim Moray. (Twenty minutes earlier, he'd been up on the main stage, giving Bellowhead the Froots prize for Best Album of 2010 in his capacity as winner of the best album of 2009. Hedonism was, incidentally, no way the best album of 2010. I think he regularly plays the squeeze box for Nonesuch Morris.)

In the end, Bellowhead is a party: a party going on on stage, to which the audience is invited. They aren't what this music is about. It's about ballads that make you think and make you cry and make you cross. It's about someone being up on stage one minute, and playing in the bar to an audience of none the next, presumably because he likes it. It's about amateurs who care about which work-song was sung on which ship when and strumming away to silly ballads about something they read in the newspapers.