Folk by the Oak 2014: this time with beer

I love this festival. I love the idea of it, of naming a folk festival after a tree under which something important happened: in this instance Elizabeth Tudor discovering that she would be Queen while living at Hatfield House.

I also love the location, the fact that it is only about half an hour out of central London by train and that therefore every folky in the capital could, theoretically attend. And that it was on the same weekend as Lovebox, a fairly horrific hip-hoppy celebration of public drunkeness, vomiting and urination that happens pretty much next to my home - the eponymous (and ironically named) Glamour Cave - in Bethnal Green. While I was enjoying Richard Thompson and Seth Lakeman, other people on my Facebook timeline were already complaining about the mess that Lovebox makes.

I didn't care. I was being discerning at Folk by the Oak. And I don't get to feel smug or discerning very often so this was a bit like a holiday for me.

I love this festival. And this year it didn't even run out of beer, which was good because it was as warm in Hertfordshire as it was everywhere else last weekend and running out of beer would have constituted folky armageddon: the festival equivalent of fate giving us a big ding over the head with a banjo.

I missed Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker, for which I basically have no one to blame but myself. But obviously this won't prevent me trying. Part of my brain was convinced, as I lazed in bed for an extra half an hour, that there was no way the schedulers would put them on first – not while there were other, less self-evidently brilliant, acts to choose from – and I didn't get much of a clue from the website. I should have asked for more information but... didn't. You know how it is. I'm looking forward to their new album a lot though, string arrangements and all.

So the first thing I saw that made a big impression was The Elizabethan Session, which was arresting mainly for the voices. There was Nancy Kerr, who is in my considered opinion a genius, singing the word "Gloriana", her flattened vowels making it unique to the place and the occasion forever now in my mind. And there was John Smith, who had me Googling him before two verses had escaped his lips, only to remember receiving a suggestion a while back from Phil at Folk Cast that I should do a follow up to my much-beloved post (judging by the number of hits it still gets, anyway), Gallery of folk musicians lying in foliage, with a new gallery of damp folk musicians, inspired by this.

For the avoidance of doubt: it's John Smith. In fact, please contact me by email here or on Twitter @emma1hartley with other pictures of damp folkies. This would be good.

It turns out John Smith has a great voice, so standing up to your waist in water is obviously honey for the vocal cords, if not necessarily your other body parts – it's more likely to be trench foot, mould or fungi for those – or your musical instruments, come to that. Having Bella Hardy, Jim Moray, Martin Simpson, Hannah James and Emily Askew as backing couldn't have hurt either.

The second stage then played host to Salt House, a Scottish four-piece with some new takes on old tunes – She's like the swallow, for one – while one among their number played a beautiful, cherry-coloured double bass that had been buffed to a high shine. Somebody clearly loves that instrument very much.



While they were doing this, I sat on a bale of hay and reflected that the crowd was clearly adoring the combination of old songs and young musicians and that the rest of the music industry, with its incessant re-releases of songs from the 1980s is becoming more like the folk scene all the time.

Speaking of which, Beth Orton clearly had a few fans in the crowd.



And it wasn't hard to see why, although her between-song banter sounded a little as if she were attempting it for the first time after having awoken from a 10-year snooze. It centred around how she was feeling old... but she looked fabulous and was talking to a field full of folkies who had an average of 15 years on her, I'd say, and who were also being rained on at the time, just to make them feel even more glamorous. Not me though. I had an ugly rain-deflecting garment taking care of the water (no, I don't have a picture, sorry) and word has it that Beth and I were in the same class at the Hewett school in Norwich for a while: one day I hope to be able to ask her about that and some other things for the blog.

Keston Cobblers Club, at the Acorn stage, made a big splash with their oompah, brass-bandy brand of folk that would sound comfy on a bank ad. I say that with love and I hope they make their fortune eventually: they had us wondering why they weren't on the main stage?



But then the Richard Thompson and the Seth Lakeman finale kind of supplied the answer: folk festival programmers play to the essentially conservative nature of their audiences and it is both why folk festivals do better than average and a bit of a drag sometimes to those of us who consciously enjoy novelty.



I mean, I love Vincent Black Lightning as much as the next person and also that Seth Lakeman sings songs about mainstream male experiences like being in the army and being a lifeboatman. But... *sigh* No actually, it was fine. Especially as Seth came with fireworks, allowing the male, heterosexual portion of the audience to experience first hand that for which the rest of us did not need fireworks. (I'm just fighting with myself, don't watch.)

In fact, it was more than fine. Did I mention that I actually love Folk by the Oak?

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter at @emma1hartley

Crisis averted: Ruth Skipper fails to leave Moulettes

Saturday was one of the final outings for the Moulettes' Bears Revenge album, at a gig in Islington town hall that also had Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker on the bill. And it was an amazing night: I took two friends who hadn't seen Moulettes before and by the end they were both slightly dazed by the sheer volume and energy of the thing, which some might say defies description. However, I am characteristically undeterred...

It's got a folky vibe while consisting only of original songs, but with more energy on one stage than you'd normally get in an entire folk festival: something that Shepley got around nicely by booking them this year. Comparisons with Bellowhead and The Destroyers are apt because at one stage there were 15 of them playing - not even  including Arthur Brown, who appeared in full make-up towards the end. But neither Bellowhead nor The Destroyers have a bassoonist in a dirndl, or the majority of their melody lines played by a cello and a fiddle. And it's all about the girls. When they really let rip they have a touch of the Indigo Girls about them, musically speaking, exploding with colour and romance: imagery piles on top of swooping, banging, melodies in such a way that you feel you're being taken on a magical journey to a place they found themselves. As it turns out, this is entirely what they had in mind.



They're also extremely playful, something that got them into hot water in Liverpool, where they have a hard-earned reputation as sexually deviant pagans. But there was a disturbing rumour going around that Ruth Skipper - of the dirndl, the bassoon and, just recently, the Bride-of-Frankenstein-style hairdo - would be leaving the band at the end of this tour, due to commitments to her medical career: she is a qualified doctor.

"But I'm not going," she said.

Yay!

"We did loads of auditions, including several French people who couldn't understand our lyrics. So we were treated to their interpretations of our lyrics instead, which was, um, interesting."

But there was no bassoon-playing, dirndl-wearing Bride-of-Frankenstein-a-like among them?

"Not a one. But  I'm not wearing the dirndls any more. Haven't you noticed?"

Sorry. I guess they left a pretty big impression.

"Well, I'm not wearing the dirndls any more because I'm trying to move away from the whole folky thing."

I see.

"But I've got 15 of them. So it's hard to imagine they're gone forever," she added. "We may actually have found a replacement for me of sorts, but she doesn't play the bassoon."

So in what sense is she a replacement?

"She sings."

Excellent. I'd wondered whether the pianist - Matt Gest? - who'd appeared that evening might be up to the job because he had the whole bass range going on. Not that a piano packs quite the same punch as a bassoon at full, buzzing volume.

"No... My replacement would have to be a girl," she grinned.

So the girl in the dirndl with the doom stick and the badger-flashes in her hair is completely irreplaceable: who'd've thunk it? But how she's going to combine touring the forthcoming new album with a full surgery rotation in Brighton next year is anyone's guess

In one other nice piece of news, it turns out that Hannah's mum has something in common with John Spier's dad, in the sense that both took up their offspring's instruments after hearing and appreciating the success that was being made of them. So there are, presumably, now two fabulous cellists in the Miller family.

* Stop press: I understand there are, in fact, three cellists in Hannah's family, as her sister Esther also plays.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Ben, Josienne, The Young'Uns and Navigator Records

Two bits of news.

Firstly, I understand that the frankly marvellous Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker - for whom the expression "I don't usually like this kind of music but..." could have been coined - have been taken on by Navigator records for the purposes of their new and third album, to be released in July and called Fire and Fortune.

Navigator will be doing marketing, manufacture and distribution. I asked Ben how that came about?

"We met someone from Proper who was interested in distributing the new album. The two ways Proper would distribute it were if we were to self release, or get it released through Navigator... So we gave the CD with an introduction to Navigator, heard they weren't interested, then a couple of days later they called back and asked to meet up..."

What changed their minds then?

"They hadn't listened to it, then they listened to it..."

Yup, that would do it... There's an album launch in July at The Forge in Camden. Get them while they're hot etc.

And the second piece of news is that The Young'Uns, who I saw at Kings Place the other Friday and who made me laugh particularly hard after a long, long week, tell me that they are about to go professional. What does that mean, I asked David Eagle?

"We're all kind of giving up our jobs. Mike is signing up as a supply teacher, Sean will do his story telling and work in schools on a freelance basis, and I'll be doing freelance work too." David does radio work.

As luck would have it, The Young'Uns are also signed to Navigator, so did they have any advice for Josienne and Ben?

"Signing to Navigator is great for profile but you have to sell quite a few albums to make it work for you financially. They should make sure they read the contract and understand what the deal is. But that's great news for them."

What are the practical advantages of being signed to Navigator?

"Exposure, publicity, radio play, media coverage, prestige, complementary groupies..."

But the terms are not especially favourable for the band?

"It depends what you want. If you're as committed and as active as Lucy Ward then I'm sure it worked out brilliantly. But we were part time. It was still a great thing for us though."

It sounds to me as if what The Young'Uns learnt was that they needed to go professional in order to make the most of their Navigator deal.

What's next?

* The Young Uns are on tour at the moment. Check out their website for dates. You can also tweet them here and if you do, it's important to only talk to David, as Mike will then get an annoying ping on his phone every time you send a message but will be unable to do anything about it...

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Josienne, Ben, Sam and Hannah go vintage at the Green Note

At a time where the young are often jobless and as a result the golden "olden days" telescope backwards from the 1980s, everything retro and handmade has recently grown an undeserved glamour. This has got to be a good thing for the Green Note in Camden, where the same red velvet curtains appear to have been hanging for at least the past thirty years, their folds retaining the flavours of delicious vegetarian meals long eaten and - if you listen carefully - pockets of music from the folk dimension linger, to be emitted in faintly fluorescing puffs as the lights dim.

The place has a kind of magic.

My friend David Firn came along with his camera to try and capture some of it the other night, when Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker supported Sam Sweeney and Hannah James. He previously did the same at The Old Queen's Head for O'Hooley and Tidow and Bella Hardy, with some success, I think.

Ben jumped up early to re-tune his guitars again, producing nods of agreement between Josienne and Michelle, Ben's girlfriend, that this was a symptom of his, um, fastidiousness when it comes to anything with strings.

Josienne (above) and Ben had tailored their set to the idea that they were at a folk club, which on the one hand meant that they gave a reverence to the standards. We got Silver Dagger - beloved of folky fathers everywhere for the line "My daddy is a handsome devil" - Green Grows the Laurel and an encore of Who Knows Were the Time Goes? On the other hand, they've just started doing a version of Dolly Parton's Jolene but left it off the list for being insufficiently trad, which made me droop a little with disappointment.

A good song is a good song, whatever accent it comes wrapped in. You can hear their stunning recorded version here.

That's Josienne doing her thing.

By the way, if you carry on down that Soundcloud playlist, you may well find that the two of them have written a superb country song called Homemade Heartache. It's been covered several times already, despite being only a year old.

Sam Sweeney and Hannah James had driven down from Sheffield for the gig.

These two are only in their late twenties but have a timelessness about them. Sam is the multi-instrumentalist whose wild fiddling kicks off Bellowhead's New York Girls so that the hairs stand up on the back of your neck (complete there with a ludicrous introduction by Jools Holland, also a classic of its kind). And Hannah, whose stately accordian and unerringly tuneful voice are set off by the precision and muscularity of her clogging. 

There is an attractively closed quality to her: she has a stage presence like a tiny fist. It's as if the two of them were reincarnated from somewhere where all the light is sepier and dray horses still rule the cobbles. And I know it's not Sheffield because I was there recently...

Congratulations on your engagement to a long-haired forest ranger, Hannah.

He was at the back, near the bar.

And there's the set list, which saves me the trouble of running through it. Something really unusual about Sam and Hannah's sound is that sometimes it's really hard telling the accordian part from the  fiddle as they wrap around each other, which is surprising when you think how unalike the two instruments are.

Things we learned during the course of the evening included that there is a place near Shrewsbury where the bunting is knitted (Woolverhampton?), Hannah has a diary with a picture of Alan Titchmarsh on the front, and that until Sam took part in something called Men on the Fiddle recently, no one had ever referred to him within his hearing as "a man".

Other reminders of his youthfulness included that when he was growing up he believed the term "primadona" referred to anything that had taken place before the advent of Madonna, the singer.

I know.

He also speaks good French and once, we were told, introduced a gig entirely in that language, which seemed to go well, right up to he point at which it turned out that the word for "ring" is easy to confuse with the word for "sheep". Clarification arrived in the form of 600 French-speaking people baa'ing at him.

This gig was wonderful, there was no baa'ing this time and if you missed it the good news is that Sam and Hannah have been invited back to the Green Note early next year. Get in.

* You can check out the Green Note's forthcoming gigs here. Ben and Josienne are playing there again on October 15.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook news feed you could *like* its Facebook page. Or you could follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

A musical love letter to Dolly and Emmylou

Dear First Ladies of Country,

I grew up listening to you and number you among my hearth goddesses.

For some reason or other, as well as having music from the folk revival in their collection, my mum and dad are very fond of country and bluegrass. It's probably to do with it being acoustic and preoccupied with love and loss - the staples. My mum and dad are both sentimental old things.

As a result you became part of my musical hinterland, irretrievably embedded in my life, and I love you both for it.

Dolly, I remember when I was barely big enough to see out of the windows, sliding around on the leather back seat of my uncle's Jaguar with my sister and cousin as he went round corners at speed to amuse us, while playing Jolene at enormous volume on his stereo. Not something I'd ever do at the wheel myself these days (they've changed the law on seat belts over here for a start) but it was great fun and we were in a part of the world - Norfolk, UK - where there wasn't much traffic.

And Emmylou, I remember seeing your beautiful face on Bob Harris's Old Grey Whistle Test and thinking, childishly, that you looked like the Queen of America. I later went on to study politics at college, so now realise what was wrong with that particular construction. But if there were any justice I still maintain that you would be.

This post is my tribute to you. More impressively, it contains Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker's tribute to you - Homemade Heartache. This summer in the UK has been a bit of a washout, which is British understatement. But before the skies opened there was a brief blaze of brilliance on Clerkenwell Green in central London, when these two played in the sunshine on an early May evening and said that they'd written this delicately wrought thing for you.

I thought I'd pass it along, in the hope that you'd like it, and also because Josienne and Ben are among the best and hardest working musicians I know and could, frankly, do with some luck. It's a country song made in London, which is probably not unique but does make it at least a little bit special.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

All my love
Emma

* If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy this, which is an interview with The Civil Wars.

* If you'd like posts from this blog delivered directly into your Facebook news feed, you could make it so by *liking* its Facebook page. Or follow me @emma1hartley

Josienne Clarke, Sam Brookes and Laura J Martin go all Ron Burgundy at The Old Queen's Head

It's traditional for The Old Queen's Head on Essex Road in Islington to hold an all-day music festival on bank holidays for those unwilling to leave the big city and commit to a couple of nights under canvas in the face of meteorological uncertainty.

The essential queeniness of this particular weekend made the pub feel like even more of a destination than usual - the upstairs room is so beautiful that it's a pleasure simply to be there.  But this time, rather than the regular, slightly under-organised folk event, it was publicised using the name of a Radio Six DJ, Tom Ravenscroft, who turned out to be John Peel's son. He hit the decks when the live acts finished at 10.30pm and the day's music was as eclectic as you'd expect it to be when Peel's name is invoked - although to be fair, they hadn't done that. I only realised who Ravenscroft was this morning when I was poking around on the net.

Taking a strong early stand for the folk contingent, Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker were on second at 1.45pm and the opportunity to hear them play while eating a doorstep fish finger sandwich (me, not them) was too good to resist *wipes imaginary breadcrumb from the corner of mouth in happy recollection*

They've nearly finished making an EP of four original songs including Homemade Heartache, which I insert into this blog at the slightest opportunity. In fact I've a good mind to make it my personal mission to get a copy to Emmylou Harris, for whom it could have been written. But they also rolled out a version of Sandy Denny's Who Knows Where the Time Goes? that both nailed the song's source code and lifted it higher than I've ever heard it go, emotionally speaking. It took so much vocal power to produce that Josienne said she's going to have to be a bit careful: they played it live for the first time this weekend and in four different venues on Sunday alone - which was uncomfortably depleting by the sound of it. Ten out of ten for effort though.

There was lots else to see, lots to talk about, including a rather moody and attractive PJ Harvey-a-like called Anna Lena and the Orchids, a stadium-ready synth outfit called Plant Plants, who only needed a light show to rival DeadMau5, and a couple of testosterone-fuelled guitar bands called The Riff Raff (all werewolfy facial hair, biceps and popping veins, though sadly they seem to have the same name as someone else and I can't find them or their biceps on the web) and Glitches, who were great, though their unpromising taste in knitwear made me think that the invasion of the UK by Polish plumbers must have been singlehandedly responsible for the 80s revival.

But the most fun for me was to be found at the acoustic end of the spectrum, where Sam Brookes produced an assured and original set: he simply wasn't trying to be like anyone else and sounded as if making music came as easily to him as breathing. I'm not sure I'd remember any of the songs but would go out of my way to test that theory because the spirit of his playing was so free, as if he were playing the best gig of his life on an empty mountaintop.

The find of the day, however, was Laura J Martin, who plays something akin to jazz flute, uses sampling to reproduce herself during live performances and has a wonderfully kooky stage presence that involves hopping, finger-wagging and emphatic nods of agreement in response to her own music.

"Uh-oh," said one of my companions as she kicked off her set with a loud jazzy toot. "It's Ron Burgundy." But the affection I feel towards Anchorman knows few bounds, so I was much more taken by the novelty of hearing something this unusual and well-put-together and less with the eccentricity of it. She also plays the mandolin, is from Liverpool and made a huge impression on my rather shy second cousin Alick, who talked to her for a little while afterwards before sliding under the table on his way to the loo in a gesture that made it look as if she'd just melted him.

I love The Old Queen's Head as a place to spend bank holiday weekends. If they'd put beer taps upstairs so you could avoid having to make a choice between expensive bottles and climbing the crooked stairs with a tray it would be perfect.

By way of encouragement to the pub's management, here's some ham and eggs coming atcha... Hope you've got your griddles.

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