Sidmouth Folk Diary: Saturday

I got a bus from the campsite to Sidmouth and then I got a bus from Sidmouth to Exeter and then I got a bus from Exeter to Bristol and then I got a bus from Bristol bus station to very nearly outside my house and then I had a nap and then I went to hear some folk music in a pub on Whiteladies Road. (*)

Thing to remember for next year:

a: Pack two more t-shirts. But stuffing everything into one small rucksack that I could carry on my back worked fine. I don't know why I didn't think to put the tent in a suitcase with wheels years ago.

b: Pack a notebook and pens so I am not jotting down the names of interesting songs on the back of tickets and loosing them. 

c: If you are going to go to late night singing sessions (finishing 2 or 3 am) don't imagine you can also go to 9.30 talks and still be compis mentis the next day.

d: Tom Pearse's Old Mare is funnier if you stop two verse before the end, let the audience start to clap, and then do "But this isn't the end of that 'orrid affair"

e: Similarly, the Two Ronnies Morris song is only funny if the singer doesn't get the double entendres (this was Eric Morecamb's advise to Andre Previn). Although "don't make up your own jokes" after "fill not my cup with liquor up" usually gets a laugh. 

e: Learn some camp-fire type songs -- can't really do a funny one when someone else is doing Turn, Turn, Turn and Which Side Are You On

f: Find out exactly what knowledgable singers mean by technical terms like "key". 

g: Although it saved money, it would have been better to buy the full all-in ticket (including the Big Name evening slots in the marquee) even if you are not going to use it, than to buy the cheaper season ticked (everything except the Big Name evening slots) and then fret about whether you want to hear Ralph McTell or not. 

(*) Liar. It was Sunday. 

Sidmouth Folk Diary: Friday

So: having had the Perfect Last Night of the Festival on Thursday, naturally, on Friday I went to the Best Gig of the Festival.

The Best Gig of the Festival was in the morning at the Kenneway arts centre. Labelled "eyes on the future", it was supposed to showcase the best young folkies on the circuit. First half were two young guys, Arthur Coates and Kerran Cotterell, doing an instrumentally driven set (powerhouse fiddle and guitar) but with forays into "Now Is The Cool Of The Day" and "The Fiddle and the Drum." They played the kind of instrumental music I can keep track of -- tunes that could have had words attached, rather than spirally didddly diddly dees which I get lost in. And also the kind which goes into an identifiable Tatooine jazz riff for no very good reason. Arbrevyn were a three handed mostly acapella traditional harmony outfit from Cornwall, offering a heartbreaking "Granite Is The Hardest Stone" and Cornish language number about salting pilchards. (Refrain: Pilchards! Pilchards! More Salt!). And they finished with a song about libraries. They were in favour of libraries. It became very easy to identify the members of the audience who do the same day job as me. We were the ones who were crying. 

TOO MUCH INFORMATION: I did, in fact, exert my Male Privilege and go through the door with Boys written on it (where there wasn't a queue) rather than the one with Girls written on (where there was). But since behind one of the doors there was a perfectly ordinary toilet; and behind the other door there was, er, another perfectly ordinary toilet, I can't imagine that even JK Rowling would have minded if everyone had disregarded the signs and gone into the next available room. Or am I missing something?

The Best Gig of Festival  was in the afternoon in the main Ham marquee. Chris Wood was having a reunion with his former duo partner Andy Cutting. (Andy Cutting is one third of Leveret, and probably the best box players in the world.) I associate Chris Wood with miserable political song writing, but one forgets that he is an absolutely stunning fiddle player as well. ("Can you turn the sound up because its hot in here and I can see you're all fucking asleep.") Another mainly tune driven exercise with a few outbreaks of singing (I have a dog and a good dog too, tum te tum, while game keepers lie sleeping.) They made a slight thing of not having rehearsed, but I guess that's true of these kinds of musicians. They just play. 

I went to the Middle Bar sing around. I sang Widdicomb Fair and Oor Hamlet ("there was this king sitting in his garden all alone when his brother in his ear poured a little bit of henbane") and having done a dead horse and a dead king I thought I'd better do With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm so I had the set. I think I very nearly got away with it. 

The Best Gig of the Festival was in the evening at the Ham. I have heard Angeline Morrison's Sorrow Songs before -- I think I have even listened to the album -- but it really clicked with me tonight. It's a series of self written songs in a traditional style, trying to come up with an alternative folk tradition about black British history. Which makes it, er, quite bleak in places. The song about Fanny Johnson, a slave whose stuffed hand was put on display in a glass case by her loving owners (and remained there until the 1990s) is genuinely shocking. But there's some hope and affection as well: the set finishes with Slave No More, about a slave who was set up in business when his "master" died and was buried alongside him. (And also one, shanty style, about Billy Waters, the same disabled fiddle playing beggar who Martin Simpson did a tribute to earlier.) The singing is exquisite; but the band (including Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, one third of Granny's Attic and probably the best box player in the world) pushed it to a whole nother level. The second half of the evening was the mighty O'Hooley and Tidow. A sentimental song about watching a neighbour take his crippled dog for one last walk, just as their baby was taking his first steps. The slightly silly one about Beryl the champion cyclist. A thought provoking one, new to me, about the duo's autism diagnosis.  And (not surprisingly) the set and therefore the festival finished with the audience splitting into two halves to sing the chorus of a certain ditty about a cross-dressed Yorkshire business woman. She's gentleman Jack behind their back, behind their back she's gentleman Jack. Someone should turn it into a TV show.

And apart from slightly too many drinks in the Bedford and another drop-in to the Middle-bar (where the week finishes with a deranged in a good sense rendition of "I am the music man and I come from down your way") that's it for another year.

Sidmouth Folk Diary : Thursday

Well that was just about the perfect end of the festival.

Someone has brought marshmallows to the Bulverton bonfire. There are some families with small kids, although I would have thought it was past their bed times. A young guy with an astonishing voice joins in towards the end. Rory McCloud does a good bye song, imitating the sound of a phone with his mouth harp and pretending to take a call from his auntie. A man with a guitar does “which side are you on”.

There are some anti war songs, Johnny No Legs maybe and one by Rory about not never needing a gun. On a wild whim I volunteer to sing my favourite pro war song — Woody Guthrie’s “good people what are we waiting on”. Rory and the man with the guitar bravely improvise around my noise. The other marshmallows toaster join in with “all you fascists bound to loose” which actually comes from a different song.

At about 2.15 am the guitar man apologizes for being corny, and sings Who Knows Where The Time Goes at the dying embers. 

As I say, the perfect way to end the festival. There is actually a whole nother day to go.

# The Middle Bar singing session finished on time, so unfortunately I didn’t miss The Breath (who were opening up for Martin Simpson.

#Martin Simpson sang Deportees, which he says is about dehumanizing migrants, and stuck to his promise to sing Palaces of Gold an every gig until the Grenville Tower families get justice. A new song about a one legged black nineteenth century London fiddler, to a shantyish tune. And one about his Dad, of course…

#There is a version of Another Man’s Wedding, where, instead of wondering how many strawberries grow in the salt sea, the jilted lover ties a yellow ribbon all around his hat.

# Hey John Barleycorn and Ten Thousand Miles away are synthetic folk songs invented by a music hall singer.