This Land

West Yorkshire Playhouse

July 16

The expression "not a dry eye in the house" gets massively overused, and Interplay's musical drama about the life of Woody Guthrie deserves better than to be summed up with a cliché. I, at any rate, did not cry all the way through this performance. I didn't so much as sniffle until Woody started singing about the big ol' sign sayin' "Private Property" at the beginning of Act Two. And I'd calmed down within an hour or two of leaving the theatre. You know how sometimes at the end of a gig or an opera everyone stands up and claps because, dammit, this is the kind of gig or opera where everyone stands up and claps at the end? This was the kind of gig where about a third of the audience stood up and clapped spontaneously because they couldn't help it.

So far as I can tell, the play is constructed entirely out of actual quotes from Woody Guthrie and all the good people who travelled with him. The programme implies that the writer had access to the (vast) archive of unpublished writings; but a lot of the vignettes were based around fairly familiar scenes and quotations. We get a convincing re-creation of Alan Lomax talking over Woody's guitar improvisation at the beginning of the Library of Congress tapes. The cast perfectly capture the contrast between Guthrie's oakie dialect and the cut-glass elucution of the BBC announcer when he appears on Children's Hour during the war ("Mr Guthrie is a very well known singer of folk songs in the United States of America" "Yes ma'am, but now I'm washin' dishes on the good ship Liberty..."). We see Woody learning harmonica from the black hobo by the railway ("just about the lonesomest music I ever did hear" ); and there's a big round of applause (from me at any rate) when he tells the audience that his songs are protected under U.S copyright and anyone caught singing them without permission "will be mighty good friends of ourn, cos we don't give a durn."

It's one of those non-naturalistic bits of total theatre, in which six actors play Guthrie at different times in his life, leaving the one woman in the cast to be all the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives who come into his story. The action starts with the dying Woody in Brooklyn State Hospital, and for the rest of the production the metal frame hospital bed is dragged around the stage to represent doors, tractors, automobiles (with en-gyne trouble) and trains (which are bound for glory). For the first half of the first act, I thought things were going to be maybe a little bit precious, like one of those over-earnest student drama groups. Maybe the show did linger too long over the shocking story of Guthrie's childhood -- his sister and father die in house fires, and his mother ends her life in an insane asylum. Things lift notably when the teenage Woody teaches himself to play guitar while selling bootleg whisky ("I thought it sounded awful purty") and really take off when Dan Wheeler takes over the role of the adult Woody during his career as performer, recording artists and left wing agitator. I didn't know the story about him tearing up a copy of a song called "Nigger Blues" on live radio and promising never to sing it again: the naiveté of not realising that the title would give offence, and the unselfconscious apology when this is pointed out to him speaks volumes about the man. The famous songs aren't milked: we only hear a couple of verses of "This Land" ; if anything the climax of the production is a set-piece "Union Maid" on a stage suddenly full of Stars and Stripes banners. I could probably have done without "Jesus Christ" being presented as a bit of a Gospel number, complete with a "hallelujahs" – it's clearly a Communist Jesus, not a Christian one, that Woody is celebrating. But I loved the moment when Woody, faced with the terrible possibility that he's inherited Huntington's Cholera from his mother, says that he is a religious man, but can't decide which one he likes the best. "Either Jesus Christ or Will Rogers" he suggests.)

Because the text is based on documentary sources, there is perhaps an absence of drama: we are shown what happened but there can't be any playwright's speculation about the man's off-stage or interior life. It stops short of being mawkish, but apart from a very brief reprise of "This Land" before the curtain call, there's no attempt to soften of create an upbeat ending for what's actually an appallingly sad story. The impact of the show depends heavily on the manner of the production: the choice of vignettes, the appropriate incorporation of songs into the action, the playful use of the hospital bed; the way in which all the famous and less famous people who cross Woody's path are briefly channelled by members of the cast. The production is going to go on tour (if it doesn't it will be a crime against theatre and music) so I don't want to reveal how too many of its theatrical conjuring tricks are done. Let's just say that in the final moments, Woody -- so crippled with Huntington's disease that he can only communicate by moving his eyes -- is visited in hospital by a certain young man with mussed up hair and a harmonica, who starts to sing "I'm out here, a thousand miles from my home..." It's one of the most affecting dramatic moments I've seen this year. Or, indeed, ever.

I didn't quite believe the review linked to from the WYP's website, which complained the production was little more than a tribute act for the benefit of fans. The clever construction of the show and its perpetual theatrical inventiveness makes it far more than that: it not only tells the life-story clearly and powerfully, but gives the audience the sense that they've spent the evening in the company of a living personality – about the best tribute you could pay to a musical biography.

Blackbeard's Tea Party

Heavens To Betsy
http://www.blackbeardsteaparty.com/

Blackbeard's Tea Party can, I'm told, often be seen busking the streets of York. Given the silly name, I was rather expecting them to be one of those Pirates of the Caribbean tribute bands who do barn dances in fancy dress. Nothing of the kind. Although there's a nautical theme running through the album, only one of the songs (a rousing version of High Barbary) is explicitly pirate themed. Lively, inventive, Mawkin-ish instrumentals, and a lead singer who acknowledges his debt to Nic Jones. (If you are going to swipe, swipe from the best: I almost preferred this version of "Barrack Street" to Jones' version.) I've been singing "Fathom the Bowl" to myself all day. "A Hundred Years Ago" is an uproariously rousing and silly shanty. I almost wondered if they'd swiped it from Bellowhead or someone of that kind, but it seems to be perfectly traditional. I haven't heard them live, but they are clearly going to be huge. (Mike Harding agrees with me.) This E.P was "recorded by Tim in Tim's bedroom". If you are at all interested in this kind of thing, it has to be worth £5 of your money to encourage them.

Lau

June 19th

Folk House, Bristol

Aidan starts making avant garde fiddle noises. Kris starts doing wierd slide guitar noises. "When this surreal soundscape returns to something like western music" explains Martin the squeeze box man "audiences sometimes applaud." Eventually it does, and we do. But I couldn't help thinking that this finale (deliberately, I shouldn't wonder) rather summed up the act. Taking sound along way away from traditional folk music, and even from music, but then bringing it back again.

I am possibly rather too inclined to say that anything which is quite clearly very good indeed, but which I'm clearly not quite "getting" is "a bit like jazz". Richard is more of a jazzman than a folkie, and particularly wanted to come to this gig. He pronounced the "brilliant" and brought the CD.

They start with traditional, or traditional sounding, melodies, and weave long, long riffs around them, at least partly improvised. (There's no sheet music in evidence.) The melody is passed from accordian to guitar to fiddle, getting faster and fast, interweaving more and more complex rhythms. In the end, there's only rhythm. At the end of one of the pieces, Aidan the fiddler said he was out of breath. One wonders what would happen at a venue where there was space to get up and dance. Energetic, physical music. Music as combat sport.

An honourable mention, while I am talking about things I don't understand, to Mamolshn, the support band, doing traditional Jewish folk music with great enthusiasm and clarity. A traditional Hebrew love song; a modern Yiddish piece about cooking; a liturgical song which makes me think that synagogues must be a lot more fun than churches. Never having knowingly heard a Jewish folk song before, I thought they were terrrific.

"You know the gig's going to be good when you'd have paid to hear the support act" quoth Richard.

Ron Kavana

18th June
Lansdown Pub

Towards the end of the evening, Ron Kavana asks how long he was supposed to play for. Until English pub closing time, replies Dan -- which is to say, about half an hour ago. Ron says he'll just do one more. A voice from the audience suggests a Republican song. Ron embarks on another illuminating, nuanced, meandering chat around modern Irish politics. "I'm not a pacifist. I wish I could be..." He finally comes to the end, and sings a long, relaxed "Irish Ways" which seems to sum up what he'd been saying pretty well. There's a feeling of change running through the land/ The church and the right wing / Finally losing their awesome control / We don´t give a damn for your border /And we are the future, so take heed or look to your prayers! It couldn't have been much before midnight when he leaves the stage; he'd been singing and chatting for close to three hours.

The gig was upstairs in a pub; I gather there was a football match of some kind going on down below. Ron says he never uses a set list: he lets one song suggest another, and he's guided by what goes down well with the crowd. "The...gathering" he corrects himself. There are about 20 people in the audience, five of whom are the support act.

He starts to tell the story of giving money to a drunk in Camden Town and finding that it's a person he used to go to school with. "When I first came to London..." he begins, and it turns into the first line of the "The Old Main Drag" and then the second, and then the whole song: unaccompanied, ancient, haunting; one of the most spine-tingling moments I've ever experienced at a live gig. He's been around for ever and seems to have known everyone. Michael Flatley comes to sessions at his local. A delicate, funny "Galway to Graceland" is attributed to "my friend, Richard Thompson". "Both Sides O'The Tweed" has become "Both Sides O'the Boyne", but Dick Gaughan said this was all right.

He used to open for the Pogues, and wrote "Young Ned of the Hill. "I understand that in England Cromwell is a hero because he challenged the monarchy. In Ireland we see him a bit differently...." He says he loved it when English punks in York or Cambridge happily sang along. A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell/ You who raped our Motherland / I hope you're rotting down in hell / For the horrors that you sent / To our misfortunate forefathers / Whom you robbed of their birthright.

He doesn't lecture; he doesn't even exactly tell stories. He talks: about history and politics and music. Like a lot of people on the underdog side, history seems real and living for him. He seems angry about what was done to his ancestors. He won't use the word "famine": there was no famine in Ireland in the 1840s. There was plenty of food, but it was sent to England. The number of Irish who went to America has been exaggerated: most of the boats were turned away, and the real diaspora communities were in Canada. Quite early in the evening he sings "Reconciliation", an allegorical love poem between the north and the south, almost his signature track. Our fight has run its course / Now is the time for healing / So let us all embrace / Sweet reconciliation. He says that in the 1970s and 80s, he could be booed at Irish traditional music festivals for singing it. He fears that the 2016 anniversary could set everything off again.

The support group are Roving Blades, a local choir, who do Copper-ish, churchy acapella, all rounds and sweetly sing cuckoo. Their agonisingly beautiful version of Tennyson's Crossing the Bar doesn't seem to be on the Myspace site: it really ought to be on a CD. When Ron sings Midnight on the Water, they join in the chorus, from the floor, quiet at first, but then almost another spontaneous performance.

He tactfully says that in the USA, most folk concerts happen in private houses. That's what this felt like. A bard stopping off in tavern to sing songs and tell us what he's seen. Magical. When I first started going to folk night, this is what I imagined they'd be like.

I have no idea who won the football.

Tura lura lay; tura lura lay.

Martin Carthy / Jim Causely / Emily Portman

Bath Fringe Festival (Tent)

4 June

Martin Carthy wasn't allowed to do an encore. He had already sung all twenty four stanzas of Prince Heathen, including the twiddly bits between the verses. So the show had gone on 15 minutes longer than planned: any later and the tent might have lost its licence...

He also did Lochmaben Harper, which I'm sure I've never heard before, about a harper who makes one of those unwise bets that he can steal the king's favourite horse. He (Martin) claims that it is the most satisfying song in the repertoire. When you know as many songs as Martin Carthy you must have a lot of favourites. (The harper's wife comes up with a ruse to win the bet. Martin says it's always the musician's wife who has to think up a "plan B".)

He also does a lot of the old staples, of course, including the most spine-tingling version of the The Trees They Grow So High I've ever heard.

Jim Causely is notably less silly without Mawkin to banter with, but these things are relative: the set includes a song about a ferret to the tune of My Grandfather's Clock! (And Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, of course.)

His accordian playing is pretty good. There's a poetic vibe to the set. He sings a version of a Dylan Thomas poem about looking for "long linbed summer girls" on the beach. (

"If I tell you who it's by, you'll say "meh, Streets of London"). He also does his own rendition of

"All Souls Day" by Charles Causely, of whom he turns out to be a distant relation.

Emily Portman, who I've never heard before or of, sang a lot of down tempo songs of her own, cleverly and obliquely inspired by fairy tales. They were very dense and I'd like to hear them again. I enjoyed the

jolly traditional number about wife beating ("He put the salt-hide on her back / Hide woman hide /He beat her blue, he beat her black / That'll lay down your pride"). I'm not sure we actually needed the additional verse in which the man gets his comeuppance: we could probably have taken it for granted that the singer didn't approve of domestic violence. She finishes with a Lal Waterson song in which Martin Carthy joins her. Isn't it lovely that such a senior performer will play guitar for the relative newcomers who are supporting him?

As a result of the lady spending quite such a long time refusing to cry when the heathen dog tells her to, I missed the last train back to Bristol and had to sit on Bath Station until 1.15 AM. Worth it, though, definitely worth it.

Nancy Kerr and James Fagan

Jazz@FutureInns Bristol
19 May

I suppose you are are expecting me to say something interesting or clever about this weeks performers.

Well, then.

Nancy comes from England and James comes from Australia.

She plays the fiddle and he plays the ouzouki. I know this because I overheard him telling somebody in the interval that that's what it was. Otherwise, I might have thought that it was a guitar.

They just had a little baby boy named Hamish, who will one day be able to tell his friends that his granny was Madeleine the Rag Doll.

They used to live on a boat on the river outside Bath, but have recently moved into a house because of the baby, which brings them out in a lovely song about sailors longing for the land.

They do a nice line in clever song medleys, so that Thaxted (I vow to thee, my country) turns into Sad To Be Leaving Old England, with just a level teaspoon of Hard Times Of Old England for seasoning.

Nancy has a delicate, little-girl-lost voice; James is more robust, less folk songery.

Nancy sings a lovely gypsy influenced version of Barbary Allen which she says is the first song she remembers her mother singing.

James opens the second half with some contemporary Australian tunes. Blood Stained The Soil of Australia was completely new to me: one of those leftie anthems which makes you want to go on strike regardless of your previous political affiliations. It was written by their late friend Alistair Hulett: I have to say I liked their version better. James also does a not at all folkie but very good song called The Long Run apparently written by a group of left-wing economics students.

The Australian side of the partnership definitely dominates tonight's set: the first half finished with the mighty Farewell to the Gold -- not quite as good as Nic Jones version, but then, what is? Nancy contributes her own ballad about Ned Kelly's final days in Jerilderee. Their next album will consist entirely of original Nancy songs.

Words like "sweet" come to mind when I try to describe the partnership; the music, even the angry political songs are light, melodious, catchy.

Hamish gurgles occasionally from the back row: we're assured he likes Mum and Dad's songs and will go to sleep if we join in the choruses. From time to time during a riff they catch each other's eyes and grin or laugh. The venue is ridiculously empty, but you can tell how much they enjoy being on the stage together.

So, I shall attempt to say something clever and insightful about the evening:

"Nancy Kerr and James Fagan play nice songs, beautifully."

And they seem to be nice people as well.

Songs About the Global Credit Crisis

Good Song About The Global Credit Crisis


Very Good Song About The Global Credit Crisis



Very, Very Good Song About The Global Credit Crisis

Folk Against Fascism Village Fete

Royal Festival Hall, London

May 2

"I've lost Saint George in the Union Jack / It's my flag, Nick, and I want it back..."

Steve Knightley's on-the-spot rewriting of his anthemic folk manifesto provided the high point in an afternoon that was entirely made up of high points.

The conceit behind the Folk Against Fascism Mayday event was that it should be an English village fete. So, sure enough, the sky clouded over, a persistent drivel drizzle descended, and the stalls and dancing were moved into the foyer of the Festival Hall. There was a cake stall and a stall selling Imagined Village bath-bombs and Jim Causley providing possibly a new definition of "good sport" by spending the afternoon in the persona of a gypsy fortune teller. When I arrived, the Oyster Band's celidah was coming to end with loud song about having been up since the break of day-o because it was May-o and winter had gone away-o. This led very naturally into an outbreak of morris dancing.

This was the only part of the afternoon that was really dampened by the English weather. It isn't really as festive to watch morris in the bar of a concert hall as it would have been on the banks of the Thames, and it was perhaps harder to hear the accordions and fiddles than it should have been. I don't know if the groups were chosen specifically to counteract the myth that morris dancing is only done by elderly, beery males: there were all female groups and plenty of young'uns and two ladies dressed up as a horse. The crowd was most pleased by the rappa dancing (that's a sort of sword dance where you get skilfully entangled in strips of leather) but regional pride requires that my favourites were the young men from Brizzle who waved their hankies and leapt in the air with what is technically known as "gusto".

I know not the first thing about morris, but like very much the fact that people take so much trouble to do something which is pretty obviously very difficult and very silly. Village green preservation society, and all that.

Pausing only for a slice of lemon cake, we got to the the meat of the afternoon: a mini-concert of traditional music played by people the Daily Express would consider to be insufficiently indigenous. First up was the remarkable Boka Halut, fronted by Roger Watson (traditional English songs on the accordion) and Musa Mboob (Ghanan-speaking and playing some kind of African drum arrangement.) As Roger Watson told the story, Mboob had remarked that English folk music made him want to dance; Roger replied that African drums made him want to dance. "So let's put them together and make the whole world dance." I don't always go for "fusion" stuff but this works, spot on, simply because both ends of the music were just so damn good. Watson sings a more or less straight John Barleycorn to which Mboob adds a refrain about the evils of beer; then there's a rewritten Haul Away Johnny-Oh which points up the connections between English sea shanties and African work songs. The sax player is German, and notes that he wanted to play the gig because he's only too aware of what happens when the far right appropriates traditional music. Apparently, it only now becoming possible to sing traditional German folk songs in Germany again.

This was followed by an all-to-brief set by Tom Paley and Thomas McCarthy. Tom Paley does bluegrass banjo stuff. He's eighty two, Jewish, lives in England, grew up in New York and once played in a duo with Woody Guthrie, I will say again, once played in a duo with Woody Guthrie. Thomas McCarthy is from an Irish traveller background: apparently he turned up at Cecil Sharp folk club one evening and asked if they'd like to hear his family songs. He sings genuine, uncollected, source-singery songs about getting drunk and waking up with a pig, witnessing the end of the old travelling days and accidentally marrying a lady of 90. It doesn't get more authentic than this.

I may be in a minority of one here, but I was less convinced by Dogan Mehmet. He's clearly a very accomplished violinist, and I have no objection at all to listening to that Turkish Cypriot starts-slow-and-gets-faster-and-faster fiddle music. But this kind of fusion didn't really say anything to me about folk music. It felt like Turkish music which just happened to have lyrics about raggle taggle gypsies. Everyone else in the room obviously thought he was sensational.

By which point, it was time for us lucky ticket holders to proceed into the main hall for the main event.

As everyone knows, I don't think that Chumbawamba can do a single thing wrong. They opened their set with the unaccompanied traditional "arise ye men of freedom the world seems upside down" and followed it with the modern anti-facebook anthem "Add Me". (Once again, I loved it that there were people in the audience who didn't know the song, and were hearing the silly pun in the refrain for the first time and laughing out loud.) It was an absolute revelation to hear them in a concert hall with a classical music acoustic: the detail and skill of their akapella close harmonies just shine through. There was no particular sense that this was a specifically anti-fascist concert – everyone was just doing a set of their songs – but, of course, Chumbawamba are always political and it was inevitable that there would be thunderous, thunderous applause for the mighty "Day The Nazis Died" (with all the verses, this time.) Heidi and Belinda provide the rattles for "Wagner at the Opera", and come on to the stage to help them "Torture James Hetfield." They wind up with "El Fusilado", the song about the man who survived the firing squad, with the audience clicking and clapping as appropriate. Utterly perfect set. If anyone asks me to explain my political beliefs at the moment, I tell them to listen to Chumbawamba albums. Not that anyone ever does. (Ask me, I mean.)

Show of Hands came on next. It could probably be argued that, more than anyone else, Show of Hands is responsible for Folk Against Fascism's coming into being. Chumbawamba are, as we know, anarchists: Mr Beer and Mr Knightley's songs often seem small-c conservative, although Steve might say that he is articulating characters' points of views, not necessarily his own. The opening number, "Country Life", is clearly looking back towards a better rural past: not a pastoral utopia, but a time when the small holder could scrape a living, before Tescos and foot and mouth finished him. "Cousin Jack" is a thumping anthem for the Cornish diaspora, which ends with miner in South Africa seeing a future in which the English buy up his cottages as holiday homes, and the Spanish fish in their waters. [*]

And then there is "Roots", the great, heartfelt, three-songs-in-one crie-de-couer for the English to stop despising their own folk-culture. With Indian, Asian, Afro Celts, it's in their blood, below the belt / they're singing and dancing all night long / so what have they got right that we've got wrong. Steve is quite clear: of course it wasn't intended to be taken up as a theme song for the extreme right (I believe he took legal action to get the song removed from the BNPs website). The target of the song is, if anyone, Kim "bullshit" Howells, the culture-hating junior culture minister who (defending Nulabour's bonkers plan to make pub landlords buy a performing rights licence if anyone sung a song their pub) opined that "listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell". The song is demanding the return of the flag from the far right, not from the immigrants. I chickened out of wearing my Union Jack tie to the event, which I rather regret.[**]

I don't like everything Show of Hands do: I can't really get my head round the easy ranting of "Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed" (A.I.G, geddit?). Mr Tilston and Mr Wood have both written much more reasoned songs about the Global Credit Crisis. But their treatment of the traditional "Keys of Canterbury" is quite wonderful. When they get into their groove, hardly anyone provides a better stage experience: "Cousin Jack", "Santiago" and "Roots" are all handed over to the audience with Steve getting into "caller" mode -- " 'where there's a mine'....'copper and lead'....little bit louder.... raise the roof....one last time."

After the interval, we find that someone has placed song sheets on our chairs. Jackie (Jim Moray's Sister) Oates comes onto the stage unannounced, and sings the unaccompanied tale of the sweet nightingale that sings in the valley below, below, which sings in the valley below, whereupon the lights go out, and then red spotlights shine into the audience, and an uncharactersitcally smartly dressed Jon Boden launches into the Prickle Eye Bush. I don't think I've heard Bellowhead do this before, although it's a regular part of Spiers and Boden's act when they're being a duo. Over-the-top even by Bellowhead's high standards, the brass section go into a Morcambe and Wise skip-dance routine at one point; there's a silent-movie style tension-fanfare in the middle of the final verse ("Oh my love have you brought me gold...and silver to set me free?" da-da-da-da "oh yes, I have brought you gold...") and many audience participatory repeats of the last chorus. Sensational. I rather think that 20 years from now, old folkies will still be saying "Aye, lad, I were there when Bellowhead sung Oh The Prickley Bush at the festival hall."

They rattle their way through a good mixture of old and new material: we get Fakenham Fare (which passes for a "slow" track where B'head are concerned) and Haul Away Johnny Oh and finish with the New York Girls, off their forthcoming album. It can be Portsmouth girls or London girls, depending on where you are but you'll always wake up stark naked on the bed thinking that "you have to get up early to be smarter than a whore."

It is possible to have too much of a good thing, and I can sometimes think that by the end of a Bellowhead set I've been repeatedly beaten over the head with a mellodian. In between the songs, there were more unaccompanied acoustic numbers, by Jo Freya and Tim Van Eyken which mitigated the overwhelmingness of it all.

I had wondered what the climax of the event would be – I mean, having had "Roots" and the "Day the Nazi Died" and Bellowhead starting with an earthquake and building up to a climax , how do you end the evening? (When I saw Spiers and Boden in Bristol, they'd suggested that the three groups would be trying to sing each other's songs, which would have been interesting... I still haven't quite got over the fact that I missed Bellowhead covering "Fairy Tale of New York" at their New Year gig.) But in the event, and very sensibly, they kept the conceit of the village fete going and brought everyone onto the stage, including the Voice Lab choir, and sung unaccompanied again, three traddy songs, with the audience joining in off the song sheet for "The Larks They Sung Melodious" and "Farewell Lovely Nancy."

In a way, I was surprised how apolitical the event was. But this was really as perfect an end to the evening as you could possibly have had. It's Mayday. It's pissing down. An English (and, let's be honest here, entirely mainly white) audience are singing English songs. And what's brought us together is a pressing need to say "Bollocks to Nick Griffin."

Bollocks to Nick Griffin. It's our flag too, and we want it back.

[*] When I heard Chris Wood a couple of months back, he noted that his own song, the Cottagers Reply, contained the line "I need the earth that bred my race" and admitted that it would be possible to misinterprate it.

[**] I've only just understood the line "I've lost St George in the Union Jack": I think he means that Englishness (warm beer, morris dancing, folk songs, ye diggers all stand up) has been subsumed him Britishness (land of hope and glory, rule Brittania).

CORRECTION

While it is literally true that I have never heard Bellowhead play The Prickle Eye Bush before, if I had a copy of their Eponymous mini-album, I would have done....

Will Kaufman

Jazz@FutureInns Bristol

24 April

Woody Guthrie was Bob Dylan's last idol. For me he was more of an acquired taste. I picked up an album called something like The Very, Very Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie and Several Other Rather More Obscure Ones as Well on Bob's recommendation. When I popped it on the CD player (this was before iPods) my first reaction was: "oh, a cowboy singer". I found the music and the accent slightly squeamish and embarrassing. Tastes change; Guthrie can be corny and sentimental; most anthologies insist on including things like "Put My Little Shoes Away", "A Picture From Life's Other Side" and the unforgivable "Goodnight Li'l Arlo" which don't show him in the best light. Even some of the wartime songs can seem a bit astringent by modern standards. "We'll kill the axis rattlesnake and thieves of old Nippon", indeed. Aren't folksingers meant to be about peace and love? Guthrie, of course, painted "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar. Pete Seeger preferred "This machine surrounds hatred and forces it to surrender."

But you can't listen to Woody Guthrie for very long without coming to see why he is revered, canonized, even deified not only by American folksingers but by singers all round the world. Everyone knows Bob Dylan's long monologue about how, in the end, you either turn to God or you turn to Woody Guthrie; but Dylan's tongue-tied introduction to the piece is, in a lot of way, more moving than the poem itself. ("But Woody...is really somethin' more than a folksinger.") I think that we British have been taught that we have to choose between patriotism on the one hand and left-wing or radical politics on the other: that the Union Jack inherently belongs to the Conservative Party (if not the BNP) and if you are a liberal it's your duty to stay in your seat during the National Anthem. What knocks me out is the way that Woody can support the trade unions, identify with the working man, hate the cops, the bankers, the lawyers and the rich men while all the time continuing to love the United States: this land is my land. I don't think that there has ever been, or ever could be, a British equivilent of Grand Coulee Dam, probably my single favourite song by any performer. There's the deep love and affinity for place and landscape alongside a triumphant enthusiasm for the wonders of modern industry; like a good Marxist, he treats the farmers and the factory workers as the real heroes, but puts all that alongside a deep affection for good old Uncle Sam and his battle against the Nazis -- and wraps it all up in a catchy old tune about a steam train. "Now in Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum / Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum / And there roars the flying fortress now to fight for Uncle Sam / Spawned upon the King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam."

Will Kaufman's is both an academic (Professor of American culture at the University of Central Lancashire) and a mean guitarist and singer. He describes his show "Hard Times and Hard Travellin' " as a "live documentary". There's a slide show; there's a lot of talk about Guthrie's life story; and there's also a lot of singing. Kaufman concentrates on the early part of Woody Guthrie's career – the time of the depression and the dust bowl migration, finishing with the composition of "This Land" in 1940. He provides a lot of historical back-story: the opening section about Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt and their varying degrees of culpability and attempts to cope with the Great Depression was invaluable for those of us whose teachers inexplicably skipped the chapter on early 20th century American history. He has a relaxed style; with well rehearsed one-liners and a deep knowledge of the subject. He's slightly apologetic about talking about American political history on Saturday night in a jazz club, but although I learned a great deal, I never felt that I was being lectured at. A lot of the time, he feels more like a story-teller than an academic speaker.

He spends a good deal of time on the appalling story (new to me) of Joe Hill, the radical song writer who was framed for murder and executed because of his revolutionary views, and performs a powerful rendition of The Preacher and the Slave ("Pie in the Sky"), Hill's most famous song. Sung in it's original form, it's an absolutely vicious bit of political satire, which Kaufman argues was a model for a lot of Woody Guthrie's political music: humour, catchy tunes, and instantly memorable political slogans.

I had entirely failed to realise how many of Woody Guthrie's songs were responses to or direct parodies of the popular music of his day. The great migrant anthem, "I ain't got no home in this world any more" is (obviously, now I come to think about it) a parody of pious hymns which tell the faithful that "this world is not my home / I'm only passing through". I've heard "If you ain't got the do-re-mi" a hundred times without understanding the specific context. (The California police and thrown up an entirely unconstitutional road block along the state line, and were ruling that any migrant who didn't have at least $50 was unemployable, and turning them back.)

Rather sensibly, Kaufman makes no attempt to impersonate Woody Guthrie: he's singing his own versions of the songs. I perhaps didn't agree with all his renditions – I'll stick with Guthrie's own jaunty, melodic version of Do-Re-Me over Kaufman's more bluesy version. But a lot of his songs are absolute eye-openers. He does a trio of songs about outlaws, finishing with a brilliant, finger picking banjo version of Guthrie's great ballad of Jesus Christ – complete with a rather pointed attempt to make the word "coward" rhyme with "Iscariot". It's a fine old melody, of course, but Kaufman really conveys the fire in Guthrie's Marxist Jesus. The story finishes, as it has to, with "This Land Is Your Land" – except that Kaufman chooses to sing the words from Guthrie's original manuscript, when the refrain was "God Blessed America For Me" -- a riposte to Irving Berlin's syrupy "God Bless America" -- an angry, ironic protest song. It's an astonishing, in-you-face restoration of a too-familiar piece; quite worth the price of admission by itself.

During a brief Q & A I asked if Guthrie was likely to have read The Grapes of Wrath – Kaufman had said that he spent more time in libraries and was better educated than he liked to pretend. The answer is that no-one really knows, but I was rewarded with a performance of the long and brilliant Ballad of Tom Joad, which summarizes Steinbeck's novel (or, arguably, John Ford's movie) in a dozen verses. "Wherever little children are hungry and starve / Wherever people ain't free / Wherever people are fightin' for their rights / That's where I'm gonna be, ma / That's where I'm gonna be."

Quite an evening. Prof. Kaufman seems to do this show all round the country (and there's a second part specifically about Guthrie as an anti-racist campaigner). If you get a chance to hear it, grab the opportunity with both hands.

Olden Days

Martin Simpson

Folk House, Bristol

3 April

You know that bit, just before the last song of the first set, when the performer mentions that there are copies of his latest CD on sale at the front? Tonight, Martin Simpson used that space to point out that we are all agreed that all the politicians on all sides have, this time around, been more corrupt, useless and dishonest than ever before, that it is incredibly tempting to say that they are all the same, but that people died to get us the right to vote, and that if we don't use our votes on May 6th there is a real danger that the BNP will get in.

I don't necessarily share all their politics or all their religious views. But over the last few weeks I've increasingly felt that old guys with guitars in poky little venues are the only people left who talk my language.

There is a rumour going around that the BBC are going to rename the Radio 3 Folk Awards "The Martin Simpson Awards". This year he was nominated for Best Singer, Best Musician, Best Song (twice), Best Traditional Song and Best Album.

Quite unaccountably, the actual prize for best song went to Show of Hands' obvious bit of ranting about not liking politicians and bankers very much, rather than to "One Day", Mr Simpson's hauntingly delicate song of grief and healing. Simpson's songs have an absolute knack of changing direction half-way through: almost like a well wrought joke, except that the result is tears, rather than laughter. His most famous song "Never Any Good" (winner, Best Song, 2008) appears to spend six stanzas writing his his father off as a wastrel, before suddenly revealing how much he owes to him in the final stanza. (Come to think of it, the lyric doesn't identify who the song is about until the penultimate verse, where it is revealed almost in passing: "If you had been a practical man / You would have been forewarned / You would have seen that it never would work / And I would have never been born".) "One Day" takes this a stage further. As he explains it, his friend Martin Taylor wrote the opening, heart-breaking stanza's about the suicide of his son Stewart. Taylor wrote "You rode like a king and you sung like an angel / but it brought you no pleasure, it brought you no joy" and Simpson turns the song round with the inspirational "One day I'll hear hoof beats and not grieve for the rider / and the songs that you sung will bring peace and not pain." He absolutely proves the old rule that the most specific is also the most universal: a song full of reference to gypsy customs and snatches of Romany language, it will speak to anyone who has ever lost a loved one.

Although the new album is called "True Stories", Simpson isn't really a story teller in the way that Chris Wood and Martin Carthy are: these are songs expressing feelings and (very often) places.

I think this gig was the first time I've properly understood what it is he does with his guitar: over and over again his hands are playing a different tune to the one his mouth is singing. Counter-melody is probably the polite term. Which is, I imagine, physically very difficult to do. He doesn't have the world's greatest singing voice: the complexity of the guitar and voice arrangement is greater than the sum of its parts. Louise said that it often sounds as if there are two guitarists playing together.

The set contains a good mix of his American bluesy material English traddy stuff and his own songs. I have to say I'm not convinced by his Patrick Spens (which actually did win the award for Best Traditional Track) but that may be because I prefer June Tabor's versions of practically everything on general principles.

He finishes with two pieces on an electric banjo, complimenting the audience for not running from the room when such a monstrous device appears. Everyone agrees that Stag-o-lee was, all things considered, a Bad Man. Woody Guthrie has him hanged, where Peter Seeger has him going to the electric chair, but Martin tells us that "Stag-o-lee shot Billy in eighteen ninety five / Billy's in the grave yard, but Stag-o-lee's still alive" which is both a better line and closer to what actually happened.

I believe that if you are a proper French Gourmet, the correct answer to the question "What was the best meal you ever ate" is "The last one." I am told by people who know that Martin Simpson is one of the greatest acoustics guitarists in the world; I think he's certainly the best musician I have heard.

Oh, and he sings "Come Down Jehovah" better than Chris Wood does. Sorry, but it's

true.

P.S

Which reminds me. Chris Wood complained about sound engineers who play unrelated CDs before and after the main act comes on. So was there some obscure ironic vengeance in Mr Wood's raucous Cold Hard Haily Night blaring out over the PA only a few seconds after Martin's delicate encore of Boots of Spanish Leather had faded away?

Robin Williamson & John Renbourne

South Bank Club, Bristol

12 April

After Dylan, the Incredible String Band's "Big Huge" was the first folk album I bought. The first bars of Maya bowled me over with their overwhelming strangeness; self indulgent, certainly, fey, possibly; long rambling songs which contain several different melodies; lyrics which make no sense at all and one track that lasts exactly 20 seconds. Yet it all seemed to hang together in some kind of vision. All very child-like and English: where John Lennon's controlling muse was Alice in Wonderland, theirs was clearly Winnie the Pooh.

So while the Band itself are (I believe) not on speaking terms, I feel incredibly –seriously– privileged to have heard Robin Williamson perform live on three separate occasions. He has matured from the archetypal hippie to the archetypal ageing hippie, in an entirely positive way: white beard, long hair, wise, whimsical, charismatic, yarn-spinning, the chief bard of the order of celtic-something or other. His primary instrument is the harp; but in the course of the evening, he also pulls out a recorder, a whistle, a mandolin, and does some drumming. John Renbourne, an equally venerable 60s veteran, sits to his right, looking like your slightly bemused grandfather, doing his guitar thing content in the knowledge that he invented jazz folk (arguably) and doesn't need to show off.

There was a minor glitch at the venue. Everyone marched into the downstairs bar where the music usually happens, and found that this time things were being set up in the upstairs bar, which wasn't quite ready. This had the neat effect that the people who arrived first had the last choice of seats. Two of the haven't-been-to-a-concert-in-years fraternity kept opining that this was a poor show given how much we paid for the tickets. (Two members of the same club became rather agitated at the Martin Simpson gig because the venue's doors remained closed until the, er, "doors open" time.) I refrained from saying that the really surprising thing was that one could get into the presence of these demigods for less than fifteen pounds. I mean, seriously. Does Bob Dylan play church halls in Southville? Next month, the Colston Hall will be asking £40 to hear Don McClean. (I thought American Pie was a clever song until I heard Desolation Row and realised where it came from. Forty pounds!)

They start with a long blues number, Sometimes I Just Can't Keep From Crying. Then John Renbourne picks out a long, delicate instrumental which becomes a tub thumping gospel song. He and Robin Williamson sing together. They are arguably not singing quite the same tune, but it doesn't really matter. "Thank God I can sing this song of his love / I know some day I'll be singing above." The last time I heard Robin, it was in the basement (one could hardly say crypt) of an evangelical church in Clifton. He seems to be one of those hippies who takes a little of this and a little bit of that from the different religions of the world, as happy singing "Keep to the sunny side of life" as something all Celtic and mystical. Or maybe he can just enter into the spirit of whatever song he happens to be singing. Later on, they do a country and western number called something like "You keep me stoned on your love baby" which Robin described as corny and mawkish and sang without a trace of irony. He tells us that Bob Dylan once described the Incredible String Band as "quite good" and then sings "Where are you tonight, sweet Marie" on his harp. I don't know whether it was intended as a send up of Dylan, or whether slowing down and articulating the words simply allows us to see what funny, witty lyrics the master wrote. John did "Lord Franklin" (which, as we all now know, mutated into Bob Dylan's Dream) sounding unbelievably sad and unbelievably ancient. Robin told us that real life cowboys were nothing like John Wayne, but more likely to have been Mexicans or Irishman, and then did an arrestingly different version of Buffalo Skinners, which he thinks probably gives an accurate picture of what cowboy life was like: "Well then our season ended and the drover would not pay / You've ate and drunk too much, you are all in debt to me." A strange artefact; a bluesy version of a song more associated with the Oakie tones of Woody Guthrie, accompanied by an ethereal harp. It works.

We finished on some daft Irish musical hall whimsy. Robin is enjoying himself so much that he sings the last verse twice, and the audience join in the chorus. "Her lips were like the roses / Her hair was raven hue / By the time that she was finished / She had me ravin' too." He relishes the daftness; the cod Irish accent; the silly jokes. Yet there is no incongruity of going from heavy blues (he loves to play blues on an actual harp, instead of a "blues harp") and "Buckets of Rain" to wondering where on earth the blarny roses grow. This song, just as much as the hymn or the country ballad, is worthy of his respect.

He said that the man who made his steel whistle was the closes thing he'd even met to a Hobbit; yet it was hard to avoid thinking that this old, bearded, whimsical, wise hippy was the nearest thing you'd ever seen to a leprachaun.

Godlike. No, seriously: God like. And for fourteen quid.

Jim Moray

Jazz@Future Inns, Bristol

April 14

"This is a song about beating your sister to death with a stick and throwing her body in a river".

Last week, Martin Simpson told us the story about how a young man met two sisters and gave the younger a gay gold ring (and didn't give the elder anything). This week, Jim Moray tells us how a younger sister was given a beaver hat (the elder sister, she didn't like that). In the first version, once the younger sister had been murdered by her jealous sibling her body is fished from the river by a miller, whereupon "a fiddling fool" cuts up her body and turns it into a violin, as you do. "But the only song that fiddle would play was 'oh, the dreadful wind and the rain' ". (Martin Carthy does a version in which the ghoulish instrument, more helpfully, identified the older sister as the murderer.) In Jim's version, the dead girl floats down the river. The miller fishes her out. And then he takes the rings off her fingers, and throws her in again.

There is probably some kind of a message here, both about millers and about folk songs.

The first time I heard Jim Moray (at the Folk on the Oak festival) I was a little underwhelmed: he seemed to to be singing a lot of old standards which hardly any one else would touch (Barbara Allen; Early One Morning) with electrical beats which mostly drowned out his voice. However once I'd listened to his albums, especially the superlative Low Culture, I decided that I had totally misjudged him. He has a sweet singing voice and uses a range of electronic sounds to put genuinely clever twists on (mostly) familiar old songs. Not all of it works, but when it fails to work it fails to work interestingly. ("Lucy Wan" is a charming folk song about incest and murder; the Daily Mail complain a lot about how nasty black people's music is violent; so the notion of alternating the traditional verses of the song with a modern, how you say, hip hop interpretation of the same story is extremely clever, even if I don't care to listen to it very much.)

So I was decidedly intrigued to hear that he was doing a purely acoustic set – grand piano and guitar only – in the Jazz club beneath the hotel in the new shopping centre.

He certainly knows and cares about his folk music, and, to my untrained ear, he can play the piano very well and the guitar well enough. He opens on the piano with a rather good Dives and Lazarus ; his plinky plonky guitar version of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies had Martin Carthy written all over it. The more raucus songs survive the acoustic treatment best. Lord Willougby is loud and dramatic (the recorded version depends mainly on Jim's keyboard, I think); and he makes Oh Don't Deceive Me, Lord Never Leave Me sound almost sinister in such a way as to banish all memories of Frank Spencer! He seems like a nice, self effacing chap – and frankly, he's a big enough "name" that he doesn't need to be playing this tiny venue – but has no real stage presence or "patter". Some of the songs outstay their welcome: Lord Bateman can seem interminable at the best of times.

On record, he has a rather interesting voice – words like "cheeky", "naive", "boyish" and "innocent" all entirely fail to describe it. Tonight he was, I think, getting over a cold: that thing where your voice changes from low to high half way through the line was probably happening more than he meant it to. On the CD, "Gilderoy" is a really, really, poignant ballad: listen to that giggle or twinkle he puts into the word "rakish" in the line "he's such a rakish boy". He carried the song off well enough on the piano tonight, but that detail didn't seem to come across.

All credit to the guy: his massive reputation depends on sticking two fingers up at sacred cows and singing Early One Morning with a drum machine, but he's still prepared to come to a venue that seats 50 and let his songs and his pleasant voice speak for themselves. He's not a natural story teller like Martin Carthy or Chris Wood and he's not a brilliant musician like Martin Simpson. He his, however a man with an absolute genius for iconoclastic recordings of familiar songs. And Low Culture is a superlatively brilliant album.

Mawkin: Causley

Theatre Royal Bath

April 16th

Mawkin: Causley is the result of a coalition between Mawkin, a folk instrumental band, and Jim Causley, a folksinger. They have been described as a folk boy band, and there is certainly a general sense of boyish naughtiness in evidence: a sort of camp rivalry between band and singer. You never quite forget that this is a team up between two acts, rather than a single entity. ("I wrote this song," says Jim "And then I gave it to Makwin, and they did what they always do..." "Yeah," says the guitarist "We threw it in the bin.")

There's a pleasant variety to the evening: Brothers Dave and James Delarre (who say they learnt their trade as buskers) do a guitar and violin set together; the whole of Mawkin does a set of hornpipes without Causley; Jim straps on a piano accordion and sings a comedy song with Alexander Goldsmith, the real squeeze box expert. (I was aware of the song which warns young married men about the dreadful consequences of allowing German musicianers to tune their wives' pianos, but I hadn't heard this one, in which a German clock winder winds up a married ladies clock. What is it about these Germans?) And no-one can restrain Jim from taking to the stage by himself to recite, with voices, Roahld Dahl's version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. You can honestly only get away with this kind of self-indulgence if your music is stunningly good.

Which it is.

There are some weird musical jokes. The traditional North Eastern song "Greenlanders" is presented in a cod Spanish arrangement – because Dave once met some Geordies on the Costa Del Sol. (The Greenlanders were Geordie miners who spent the winter on whaling ships. "I know that's not very popular nowadays, catching whales," says Jim. "But it's better than catching crabs.") But mostly it's just clever, beguiling arrangements. The absolute stand out is "Jim Jones in Botany Bay". The band create a complicated changing sound scape around the piece, particularly notable for Dave using the guitar almost as a percussion instrument. ("A bit like Voodoo Child" he says, which leaves me unenlightened.) But the arrangement never seems to swamp the original song -- although perhaps Jim can't quite do "angry" in the way that the last stanza requires.

One bijou problem, by the way, is acoustic: in the songs where the whole enemble is together and Mawkin are getting into the groove it can be quite hard to hear Jim's voice over the instrumental; which doesn't matter too much in something like The Cutty Wren -- which is more or less giberrish anyway -- but a bit of a shame in something like George's Son which has a good story to tell.

If the Radio 3 people had followed my plan and given Martin Simpson the prize for "Best New Foksong" then they could have given Mawkin: Causley the "best traditional track" prize for "The Cutty Wren". I don't think anyone knows precisely what the song means, although it has something to do with the Peasants' Revolt, but this arrangement manages to make the repetitive lyrics positively sinister. Jim confides that one day when he sings "oh where are you going said Milder to Molder" it's going to come out as "said Mulder to Scully".

Jim's introductions take the mickey out of all his songs – and out of other singers, and folk music scene in general. ("Some other, more...mature...singers on the folk scene also take a long time to tune their guitars.") Yet he knows where his traditional songs were collected, and the one song he wrote himself ("The Keeper of the Game") is derived from a volume of Anglo Saxon riddles that he just happened to be reading. Given the subject matter, Mawkin naturally decided that the arrangement should have a reggae vibe about it. There is something self consciously over the top about the performance, which tempts one to say "camp" -- as if they are trying to put the songs in quotation marks. But it's less showy and anarchic than Bellowhead. Jim apologizes for the number of depressing songs he's singing: the little drummer boy who dies at Waterloo; the soldier singing about all the places he's seen action – which actually turn out to be the names of London pubs and brothels; the psychotic sea captain who has killed his entire family and means to starve the passengers on their way to Americee. But in fact it's a funny, joyful, sing-a-long evening. They finish with a drinking song ("Let union be with all it's fun / For we will join our hearts in one") and then top it by doing "Cropper Lads" as an encore. There is a huge sense that the band is having a good time and sharing it with the audience.