Seattle Anglophile Dylan Carlson plays Reynardine like you never heard it before

This was a real surprise, and one that may intrigue Fairport Convention.

"Come and see the man who bought the shotgun that Kurt Cobain killed himself with play some rock and roll," was the invitation. Who could resist such a morbid offer? Not me...

Dylan Carlson was best friend of the unhappy Cobain, which puts him if not actually in the rock and roll hall of fame, then lurking somewhere in an anteroom nearby. Rock loves a good tragedy and so, if we are completely honest, do most of us so long as it's happening to someone we don't really know. Carlson carries with him a trace of that mortal glamour and, accordingly, his later show sold out so quickly that The Lexington cannily decided to schedule another at 5pm. This also sold out, if I'm not very much mistaken, despite starting at a time when only freelances and students were really likely to make it.

It was quite a show though. Dirty, fuzzy, grungey guitars played by seated musicians - first Thurston Moore and friend, then Carlson accompanied by a really sympatico drummer - in the Lexington's upstairs room with all the windows blocked up, organised in such a way that it was completely mesmerising: it felt like a cross between a rock and roll show and an extended dope-smoking session. Or something that the Barbican might put on as part of a modernist season.

It was great: a mind-altering musical experience.

And then Carlson pulled a cultural rabbit out of the hat. A young female vocalist came on, the drummer departed temporarily, and they proceeded to do the filthiest, weirdest version of Reynardine that you're ever likely to hear. The grunge curled and twisted around the familiar tune as the singer, who went by the name of Teresa Colmonacco, gave it a kind of haunted-house Sandy Denny without overdoing it. It was perfectly judged and fantastically surprising under the circumstances.

It turns out that Carlson is an Anglophile, in a semi-mystical, imagined Albion, renaissance faire kind of a way. His Twitter handle - @drcarlsonalbion - reflects this and when I asked him about Reynardine he said: "Liege and Lief was one of the first albums I ever had. It was given to me by my uncle, so the songs on it are all part of my personal history."

I wonder whether his curiosity has taken him to Cropredy yet? He may be ripe for a crossover project, clearly loves the material and does something darkly enjoyable to it.

* If you were intrigued by the mention of renaissance faires you may also be interested in this, about the Mediaeval Baebes.

* 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

Blair Dunlop hits the open road

Blair Dunlop is quite a confusing proposition if you don't know anything about him. I'd been vaguely aware that he was on at Cropredy last year and what I heard seemed extremely competent - as you would expect from someone on a festival's only stage - but I was only half listening.

Then there's the fact that his website comes with a quote from Q magazine, which suggests that he's been around for a while - lots of bands would be delighted to have one of those, even though it's short. I also remember thinking that he was in a different league musically when I saw him do something assured alongside Ashley Hutchings at Cecil Sharp House last year but didn't realise he was Hutchings' son until some way through the set and, as a result, put that particular issue to one side.

However, since it's relevant now, here's what I think: you can't help who your family is. I've sort of followed in my father's footsteps - as has my sister - so I have some empathy. When you see people making a living doing something, it's easier to consider it for yourself than a trade of which you have no experience. Also, life has a way of telling you whether you're any good at what you do, which is a separate issue to why you started and - especially in a very competitive field - early advantages soon melt away. I'm going to shut up now.

Anyway, I had an idea that Dunlop was quite young - the elfin stature and hair gel issues gave it away - and associated him in an Americana-ey way with the wonderful ahab who I guess are hovering somewhere around their late twenties, early 30s. That was especially the case after listening to what is described on his website as Dunlop's "new" album a few times, with rising excitement.

So it came as a bit of a shock to realise that it is, in fact, his first album. And that he is only 20.

I say it was slightly shocking because Blight & Blossom would be an excellent record for someone who has ten years on Dunlop - for a first outing it is nothing short of miraculous.

OK, everything about the production values, from the mixing to the memorable cover art by Elly Lucas, speaks of a lifetime's experience - presumably not his - and the sleeve note thanking Richard Thompson personally for the dark, dark song Seven Brothers, as well as the picture of the two of them on Dunlop's website, well... I guess it would be worse to be ungrateful.

Yet there's so much here that can be nothing except Dunlop's that these trappings are as a beach hut to a tsunami.

Two major points.

Firstly, although there is a version of Black is the Colour on here, there is nothing niche about this album. Folk may be where his family comes from but it took me a while to realise that the open road, big sky feel to several of these tracks is not exactly Americana, although there's definitely a slide guitar on Less the Pawn. It is the sound of gilded youth and ambition in the 21st century, the noise that goes with having everything to play for and the wind in your hair. It's the sound of being young, Dunlop makes it resonate and it is, quite simply, thrilling.

Secondly, this is only possible because he is already an extremely accomplished guitarist. And because when you put this together with sinuous musicality, a precocious wisdom, lyrically speaking and some terrific arrangements, the result is an album that rings like a bell. With Blight & Blossom he seems to have made something true.

The standout tracks for me are Bags Outside the Door - a statement of intent par excellence - and Less the Pawn, which is a young man's song about a world that was already fucked up when he got here. But there's plenty more where that came from. The album as a whole is a grower and I predict that Blair Dunlop will go on to write some songs that will outlive him by a great many years, which seems like an odd thing to say at this early stage. But still...

* There are three more songs from the album on Soundcloud.

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

John Tams to Bellowhead: what are your politics?

John Tams was fresh from his set with Home Service on Thursday at Cropredy, including a stand-out moment from The Lark Ascending played on the flute. I said that I'd especially liked their brass section.

"Ah yes. We were the only ones doing that when we started out. And now there's Bellowhead..." Suddenly he looked a bit mischievous.

"You know, I'd really like to see them get more political. It seems a shame to be as big and successful as they are and not to use their platform. I'm a great fan - I live just down the road from some of them, I know them pretty well. And I've known Benji's dad for decades.

"But I can't help feeling that it's all a bit of a waste if they don't do the political stuff."

But there's hundreds of them! (See above if you don't believe me.) What are they supposed to do: form their own parliament in order to decide what line they're going to take? All those songs about prostitutes, it's probably not women's rights they're interested in, is it? And anyway, isn't Jon Boden's dad a stockbroker or something?

"You should stir it up between us. The Home Service and Bellowhead. It could be a bit like Blur and Oasis: I always thought that must have been a manufactured grievance. And instead of Britpop we could call it Britfolk.

"Tell Bellowhead I'm calling them out about their politics." Him and his mates.

And with that he belted off for the stage, where he was supposed to be saying goodnight to UB40...

I took this all in the puckish spirit in which it was intended... But a few hours after I originally posted this blog, I got an email from Mark Whyles, Bellowhead's manager, saying: "It's very easy for one man to have political opinions. It's much harder for eleven people to agree entirely about anything so important and as such it's almost impossible for Bellowhead to take a political standpoint."

He included this statement from Jon Boden: "Since you ask (and speaking for myself, not the band) I'm a card carrying member of the Labour party, who prefers traditional music to 'political song writing' (aka preaching to the converted...)"

Bellowhead were also instrumental in organising a Folk Against Fascism gig at the South Bank Centre, where they performed for free.

And breath... At least no one brought up John Tams' involvement with Help for Heroes.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook news feed you could *like* its Facebook page. That's all from Cropredy this year, but there should be something later in the week about the BBC and its music policy.

* My other Cropredy blogs were

John Tams on Steven Spielberg and Richard Curtis

Fairport's line on The FLK hardens, a bit

ahab's Four Weddings and a Funeral moment

The Urban Folk Quartet's secret weapon

ahab's Four Weddings and a Funeral moment

Fuck, fuckety fuck fuck fuck... 

Last year at the Cropredy festival ahab got their big break. Jamie Smith's Mabon had insuperable transport difficulties and ahab replaced them at short notice on the main stage: they'd been scheduled to play at The Brasenose Inn, a fringe venue in the village.

Bob Harris saw them and got them in for a session on Radio Two. And, as I wrote a couple of months back, they acquired a management team in the form of Gareth Williams and Stevie Horton, who also manage the festival. 

It's been a big year for them and there's an Australian tour in the pipeline. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given who their management are, they were booked to play at Cropredy again this time, at The Brasenose, noon on Saturday.

But with a beer garden packed full of increasingly excited teenage girls - and some of their mums - Dave Burn (second from right, above) stepped up to the microphone with 15 minutes to go to say that they were two men down and the set would start at 1.30 instead.

It did. Much whooping and hollering from the audience later Callum Adamson (on the left in the picture) told me what had kept him and Seebs Llewellyn (other end of the row) - when the rest of the band had come up a day early.

"I overslept," he said, with surprising frankness. "I really wanted to spend a night at home because we've been away a lot recently and I was supposed to be getting from my place in west London to Seebs's house for a lift. I hadn't had a big night on Friday, honest - just a curry and bed. But when it became clear I'd messed up and there wouldn't be time for my journey across London and the trip by car, we came up separately. He drove and I came up by taxi."

And how much was that? "£270," said Adamson without blushing.

After a pause to digest this information, I realised the money involved was in proportion to how much was at stake - the appearance of ingratitude on the anniversary of their big day would be a hard one to shake off. 

"Yes," nodded Adamson, looking a tiny bit sorry for himself. "Stress city. I'm just glad I made it and I'm hoping to be forgiven."

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook news feed you could *like* its Facebook page.

Other Cropredy posts are

John Tams on Steven Spielberg and Richard Curtis

Fairport's line on The FLK hardens, a bit

The Urban Folk Quartet's secret weapon

John Tams to Bellowhead: what are your politics?

John Tams at Cropredy on Steven Spielberg and Richard Curtis

Pennants flutter, heavy looking clouds jostle overhead and the fields near Banbury are bristling with wild-haired men (and sometimes - oh yes - their ladies) wearing tankards on their belts. It must be Cropredy...

John Tams was emceeing yesterday as well as fronting The Home Service and in between whiles took a moment to talk about the making of War Horse in Hollywood, with which he's been involved. He was one of the originators of the music for the award-winning play, which transferred from the National Theatre in London to the West End to Broadway and which Steven Spielberg is currently transforming into a film.

"There was a moment when I had a four-way conference call with Spielberg, John Williams [the composer] and Kathy Kennedy, one of Spielberg's producers. The biggest thing with the music has been trying to prevent the over-celticisation of it. I love celtic music but the story has Devon as its hinterland and after Titanic celtic music became a Hollywood cliche, a trap waiting to be fallen into. We'll have to wait and see how it turns out.

"I was down at Castle Combe about three months ago for the filming. They had 12 different drays playing Joey (the eponymous war horse) and a whole trailer for horse makeup. They painted them red and even put a little yak-hair wig on each of them before they 'became' Joey.

"Richard Curtis wrote the screenplay and I was joking with him that they should have called it War, Actually... but he didn't seem to find that very funny." Tams, who's had more than his share of on-screen war as he played Rifleman Daniel Hagman in Sharpe - wiggled his moustache at the memory.

"One day there was a scene in which they had an Irish Catholic man playing a high Anglican priest, emerging from a church singing a non-conformist song. And I asked Richard Curtis whether he thought that was a good idea? He looked at me and said "Do you want to see your f------ song in the film or not?"

Gulp.

* 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

Other Cropredy posts

John Tams to Bellowhead: what are your politics?

Fairport's line on The FLK hardens, a bit

ahab's Four Weddings and a Funeral moment

The Urban Folk Quartet's secret weapon

ahab in a perfect storm

Seeing ahab on stage at the Wychwood festival the other weekend was a bit like watching the taper on a firework being lit. A really big firework.

Driving home, the CD on the car stereo was their EP, called kmvt. "Rumour has it that stands for 'kill my valour tonight'," said Cal Adamson, who plays 12-string guitar and bass. "Or it could be 'kiss me vile troubadour'." Ha ha. "Or kill my vintage tiger."

I couldn't decide by this stage whether he was being playful or irritating (because he was irritated with me). There had been an ambiguity during the interview because I'd learnt, while poking around on the net, that his father was the late Stuart Adamson, of Big Country, something that stunned me, because of his untimely death and because I own four Big Country albums, saw them play god knows how many times and know most of the words. 

But despite some fairly heavy handed prompting Cal had said nothing to address this. (Me: "You father's a musician then? Anyone I would have heard of?" Him: "No.") Awkward. On the one hand, why should he? ahab's four-part harmonies and Lyle Lovetty song-writing had hooked me without the back story, which I didn't discover until I'd already decided to write about them. But Nashville, where he spent time after his father moved there, is pivotal to the band's history, as well as their Americana sound, and my professional twitchiness and fear of seeming to have over-looked something important meant I couldn't not mention it. So: his dad was Stuart Adamson and he has a sister, who's also a musician. That's all. I'm sure he has his reasons for not wanting to talk about it.

Because ahab is interesting enough without the ghoulishness. It started with Adamson (left) and Dave Burn (second from right), when they were in their early 20s, five years ago. "I heard Dave open for the band I was with one night soon after I arrived in London and it was a case of 'he's great, my band's not'. Not a hard decision."

They came up with the name during an evening in an unfortunate hotel in Winchester. "Dave and I had gone away to write some songs. We got drunk, messed up a hotel room and re-enacted the scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in which Johnny Depp brandishes a curtain rail, saying 'Don't fuck with me now, man. I am Ahab.' There was £380 worth of damage."

Multi-instrumentalists Luke Price and Seebs Llewellyn joined when Adamson and Burn received an invitation from Nashville in 2009 to play at a festival. "We didn't want to be a quiet little folk duo - we wanted to make some noise. We spent two weeks over there and had a blast." 

Then when they got back they started busking on Brick Lane, soon getting into trouble with the police for drawing the kind of crowds that upset the local market traders' business. Then a video - possibly the one linked in the previous sentence - found its way to the organisers of the Cropredy festival, someone dropped out and they ended up playing to 17,000 people on the main stage last summer.

Bob Harris heard them and booked them to do a session on Radio Two. John Leckie, who was there to see Bellowhead, heard them and invited them to record with him, telling Navigator records that he had a band for them and they wouldn't be cheap for long. They also acquired a manager - Gareth Williams, who is Cropredy's festival director - a record label and a top-notch PR and agent - Stevie Horton at Iconic Media - as a result.

So now they're  surprisingly well tooled up, professionally speaking, for a band that has only had people paying to see them for around six months. Seventeen more festivals this summer should sort that out.  

Adamson says that the songs are a joint effort. "Someone brings a pick-up or a verse and then we all work on it. We're a very democratic bunch." If their drummer, Griz (or Graham, more prosaically), seems slightly semi-detached that might be because he has outstanding work commitments with Bonnie Tyler (!) 

They sing three-minute twangling Americana as if their lives depended on it, which in an understated sort of a way they do. Seeing them play the Scolt Head in Dalston last week - to check I hadn't imagined the whole thing - was odd because the audience was split between drunk youngsters shouting through the music and the slack-jawed and spellbound, who couldn't quite believe what they were hearing on a week night in a back room.

That's the point they're at. The fuse has been lit. But it has to be said that the odds are stacking up very substantially in their favour...

* Here's a post about ahab from the Cropredy festival in August.

* And another about borderline obsessive fandom from the Bristol festival in 2012.

* 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