Bits of Bristol Folk Festival, Colston Hall 29th April to 1st May 2011

Been dancing around this all week, undecided whether to go for a lengthy narrative exposition of the events of three sweltering days spent folkin' around indoors over the May Day bank holiday, or whether instead to take the course of a series of monosyllabic reviews of the high- and low-lights of the Bristol Folk Festival.  The thesaurus having done a runner years ago, the latter seemed a little ... bold, so, a compromise seemed in order: brief comments on the best (or otherwise) of the music at the festival. 

By the way, the Show of Hands clip above is part of the series of acoustic sessions filmed for the bizarre and wonderful Songs from the Shed, which took up residence throughout the festival - and which, for reasons which still aren't clear, was selling branded t-shirts... 

Anyway, here goes. 


Under the Driftwood Tree:  Winners of the first Isambard Nu-Folk Award (perhaps the organisers can explain how nu-folk differs from new folk?), this intriguing South Wales acoustic 5-piece was so laid-back the audience could see the soles of their feet.  Think Jack Johnson spaced out on khat.  They seemed to be of the view that their best song is If Only If, a pedestrian sub-Stereophonics ballad.  They need some PR advice.  Their best song by a country mile is Teachers, a fine tune strung around the words of an hilarious letter sent to their landlord by a previous neighbour complaining about the late-night goings-on next door ("It's like living next door to the hillbillies // It's a doss-house from the local scrub-side (?) // How did we get stuck with these so-called professionals ... There's no way that they are teachers...").  That said, learning that lead-singer Chris Stoodley is an ex-teacher did lend a certain unwelcome frisson to the first line of his track Cheeky Little Smile ("It's the cheeky little smile from the back of the room")...  Solid musicianship, and a surpirisngly mature and easy vibe with the crowd, but really to take off they're going to need to mix up their sound and lose some of their Jack Johnson fanaticism.  And steer clear of the Stereophonics.

Bella Hardy:  Bella Hardy played the early evening slot on the Fred Wedlock stage, named after the local folk hero who passed away in March.  With her crystal-clear voice filling the old bar at the Colston Hall, Hardy reminds BRoutes of nothing so much as a young June Tabor.  Between songs, she was pleasant but a little uncomfortable.  Yet the moment she dived into a tune, she - and the crowd - were immersed.  Hardy is a formidably intelligent songwriter, drawing on dark modern fairytale tropes and ancient myth, and it was in her self-penned offerings rather than songs from the traditional songbook that her set came alive.  She's also, it seems, becoming pretty hot property in the more mainstream media.  Catch her live session from today's BBC Radio 6's Cerys Matthews show while it's available on iPlayer.

Seth Lakeman:  Hmm.  Don't get Seth Lakeman at all.  Can't see why he is so adulated, so adored.  Readers of previous posts will know that BRoutes is no dyed-in-the-wool folk traditionalist.  Far from it.  But this sort of plodding stadium-dad-rock is supposed to have gone extinct in the 1980's.  It wasn't just the music, though that's the main complaint.  It was also other, little, irritating things.  Why bother playing your fiddle like a ukelele if you're not doing it to get a laugh?  Get a ukelele.  Why be the patron of the Bristol Folk Fesitval if you seem to think it's called "Bristol Festival"?  Read the programme.  As suggested in the previous post on the festival, Lakeman might as well as have yelled out "HEELLLOOOO BBBRRRISTOOLLL!!!" and have done with it.

Belshazzar's Feast:  ... were on the wrong stage. They are brilliant live musicians.  They are hilarious performers.  They are such adept technicians that they can play every note out of tune and still be applauded to the skies.  Their set was funny, occasionally moving, and drew a crowd so big that the tiny Fred Wedlock stage barely had enough space to breathe in.  And that was the problem.  Belshazzar's Feast play sitting down.  They don't do standing.  The crowd, however, had to stand.  Which meant that if you were anywhere further than 3 metres from the front, you couldn't see a thing.  And if you couldn't see a thing, you'd have missed half of the fun, which lay in the cod-cantankerous interaction between Paul Hutchinson (accordion) and Paul Sartin (oboe, violin, whistle, possibly kazoo and vocals - and what vocals they were, belting out the words to the Cornetto advert just to show he could).  So if you can't see the performers in a Belshazzar's Feast gig, you might as well go home and listen to their records.  As blogged previously, managing the location is something that the organisers are going to have to re-think for next year...

Show of Hands:  How on earth anyone could ever have mistaken Show of Hands for nationalist nasties is baffling.  Staunchly regionalist they may be (frontman Steve Knightley is a proud Devonian, and Phil Beer would stand out anywhere as the hairy Cornishman in the room), but their liberal-left agenda oozes through every song, every lyric, every traditional song brought movingly up-to-date.  They didn't play Roots, the (unfortunately-too-ambiguous) lyric which was kidnapped by the BNP because to some ears it can sound a bit anti-Johnny Foreigner, so long as those ears ignore most of the words.  They did, however, play pretty much the rest of their "greatest hits" back-catalogue during their headline set on the second evening of the festival.  An early highlight was Santiago, Knightley's song about the exiles from Pinochet's dictatorship, re-dedicated to the rescued Chilean miners last year.  But the best moment of the night was undoubtedly the first encore.  Joined by Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends (presumably now Cornwall's richest men), Knightley led a word-perfect crowd in a rendition of Cousin Jack - their exquisite elegy to Cornish miners.  As with all the best of Show of Hands, it would be easy to be cynical about the comfort of the romantic-left outlook, the quasi-revivalist fervour of the audience (congregation?) or the occasionally over-slick delivery (too many "repeats to fade" on the microphone for comfort).  But, though these thoughts may have arisen in the cold light of the morning after, they weren't even buried in the subconscious during the performance.

In short, Show of Hands were confident, outstanding and, above all, still exciting.  Blogger Andrew Rilstone reckons the Show of Hands set was "simply the best live gig [he's] ever seen, by anyone, ever".  BRoutes couldn't go that far.  Not least because it's not entirely clear from Rilstone's posting whether he saw the headliners on the Sunday night.

Bellowhead:  Bellowhead were, well,  Bellowhead.  The word needs to become adjectival.  Huge, frenetic, tight, joyful, thrilling and ever so slightly dangerous, it is hardly a surprise that they just keep on winning awards for their live act.  Fortunate that the crowd had been warmed up by the frenzy of Bristol's very own Balkan jazz / folk eclecticists, Sheelanagig, they bounded onto stage with the joyful oompah of Yarmouth Town, and for the next 2 hours didn't let the energy drop.  The gig was essentially part of their Hedonism tour, so most songs were drawn from last year's album - the set before the encore concluded with the album's opener, New York Girls, Bellowhead's re-arrangement of a traditional cautionary tale of naive sailors, predatory ladies and too much late-night carousing.  It is rare to see an audience so varied in its make-up having so much fun; rarer still to see the band having even more. 

Frontman Jon Boden was the focal point of the action, what with his bedraggled Goth get-up and mad scientist manner, but your eye and ear could wander to any part of the 11-piece band at any part of the gig and find something going on that was exciting, intriguing, or just plain silly (robotic shadow puppetry from the strings; the brass section engaged in seemingly good-natured mockery of Jon Spiers' squeeze-boxery).  It was, frankly, difficult to fault the performance.  Bellowhead have become audacious enough to take on big audiences with big effects.  The pseudo-punk re-arrangement of sea shanty Little Sally Racket, the low point of the album, came alive with clever-clever on-off back-lighting; at the final encore two huge stage cannons fired a snowstorm of tinsel into the audience.  You've got to know you're good to get away with that.  This was the best gig of the festival.  Mr Lakeman might want to see how stadium-folk is really done.

There's no question but that the festival was a huge success.  Yes, BRoutes has already grumbled a bit about the venue, but all problems can be overcome with thought.  Perhaps the Colston Hall might even be kind enough not to overcharge for the drinks (£4.00 for a beer??  We know what they normally cost in that place...).  But roll on next year.  From a note on the website, it looks like they're considering running the festival over four days.  If so, Sidmouth's going to have a run for its money.