A gallery of folk musicians lying in foliage

It all started at the Bristol folk festival when a leaflet with this image of Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston was thrust into my hands.

I puzzled over it for a while because it was just so bizarre - are they dead? - before deciding that it looks like the aftermath of a mid-air collision between a double bass and a mandolin with the two musicians as collateral damage.

It also reminded me of something else and it didn't take long to figure out that it was this...

... in which a slightly vampiric Jim Moray - red lips, red lips! - appears to be sleeping in a wood, hoping to be crept up on by the Big Bad Wolf, or having had a spell cast over him by somebody's wicked stepmother.

Or it could have been this one by Jackie Oates

which was probably consciously conceived of as having overtones of Waterhouse's Ophelia

but which was almost certainly taken by someone who had also seen this Eliza Carthy shot (hat-tip Leslie aka @EnglishFolkfan on Twitter).

This bizarre meme has a venerable history. I love this picture of Sandy Denny

in which The Lady clearly has a raging hangover. And this one of Lisa Knapp

which looks to be a haunting study of what happens to you when you're overcome by hayfever (thanks to Alex @FRUK).

I also very much like this of up-and-coming fiddler and photographer Elly Lucas, which makes me wonder whether she took it herself with one extraordinarily spindly, pale and prehensile arm that bends around the back of the shot?

And then there's this prize by the late, lamented Uiscedwr, suggested by @ruth_angell

in which the grass and foliage have been cunningly replaced by rose petals to create an entirely different feel.

Which was probably admired by The Devil's Interval, who'd given the same concept a more orgiastic slant by staring in glassy confrontation at the camera from underneath a pile of fruit and veg a year previously.

And if that qualifies then so does this contribution to the genre from Fay Hield, in which I think she looks, frankly, a bit chilly.

I also wish she'd wiped out that tub a bit before climbing in in her nice frock. I'm thinking frog spawn, cow poo...

One could pontificate about the meaning of it all. What is the symbolism of such passivity in the face of nature? Does it indicate a one-ness with beloved Albion or a languid, come-hither sexuality that invites the viewer even as it somehow implies victimhood? Or perhaps they each had one too many pints of Hobgoblin and didn't make it all the way home from the pub?

I'm pretty sure that's what happened to this lot. They're in there, in the undergrowth if you look. Honest. (Non folkies click here for a clue of what I'm on about.)

Hat-tip Phil Widdows @FolkCast for that. The dog's a genius touch. Apparently the pic was originally taken for this and the pooch's name is Holly :-)

* If you have a contribution to make to this sub-genre of the music snap please send them to me on Twitter @emma1hartley Coming soon... Ten things you never imagined Seth Lakeman could do with a glitterball.

* 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

How squeezy is John Spiers?

The sun shone on Sunday afternoon at the Warwick Folk Festival. Paul Sartin had wandered off looking grumpy, Jon Boden was soliciting praise for his first attempt at cutting his son's hair - it was pretty good - and Dr Fay Hield was saying something about how festival crowds were getting better-looking as her gaze played in the general direction of ahab, who were standing near the No Bones Jones food stall.

I'd recently been told that squeeze boxes were what give English music its distinctive sound and thought I'd try that theory out on John Spiers - of headliners Spiers and Boden, also Bellowhead - who was obligingly forthcoming.

"The piano accordian was the first squeeze box I had: I was 18 and I'd only played the piano before. The right hand is like a sideways piano and it's got the dynamic of bellows, which I love because you can swell a note - obviously you can't do that with a piano.

"The swelling of a single note is one of the essences of English dance music, the noise that sounds like some other kind of music going backwards. It makes people spring their legs and jump off the ground. There's a lot of jumping in English dancing," he mused, as my shorthand picked up speed and my beer buzz burned off rapidly. I hadn't been expecting to have this talk. "Only certain instruments encourage that and percussive instruments can't do it at all. I don't have that accordian any more. I sold it to a gypsy."

You're making this up now, aren't you?

"No. Honestly. Whoever sold it to me didn't know what a good instrument it was. I bought it for £40 and sold it for £100. But it was very heavy and when I was 19 someone suggested that because I was mainly playing morris music it was difficult to make it sound right on an accordian and I should get a melodeon instead.

"By this time I'd gone to study genetics at King's in Cambridge, which is a musical college but mainly for its choir. It's a bit snooty. But the head tutor there was a wonderful man called Rob Walloch. I got robbed in the college bar one evening, which was awful. They'd got my coat and my wallet and so many of my things needed replacing anyway.

"But when I'd first started there he'd made a speech about how if there was anything you needed you shouldn't be afraid to ask because the college was so old and there were so many bursaries available for this and that. He said he'd look for loopholes for us. I think there's a bursary for the sweetest smelling boy from Faversham."

It's unclear from my notes whether this is the bursary that John was awarded.

"So I'd been saving up anyway and my jacket was worth about the same as the melodeon I wanted. It was a cheap melodeon.

"I'd been warned about how different they were to play but when I got it back to my room it sounded lovely: much sharper and stronger. I couldn't play it at all because I was used to an instrument whose note stayed the same when you changed the direction of the bellows and the melodeon is diatonic. It's got the action of a harmonica and changes a whole tone: if you're playing a C and you change direction it produces a D.

"It's a very physical instrument: if you want to do a fast run of notes you need to put your back into it. It's the most regular exercise I get but it's nice because you're half dancing while you play. The English melodeon makes you play with a choppy rhythm that's almost impossible to overcome: you have to work within that style.

"The Irish melodeon, on the other hand, has a row of buttons that are the white notes and another that are the black notes - and you don't have to work the bellows in and out so much. When you hear someone like Sharon Shannon playing you get something that is phrased in a very solid and modern way and played to the taste of the musician rather than the action of the instrument."

John also plays the bandoneon (above), which he says was invented to sound a bit like a church organ and exported to Latin America by sailors, where it was taken up by missionaries, then into brothels (not necessarily in that order) eventually becoming the sound of the tango.

And then there's the concertina, which is disconcertingly expensive for such a small instrument. "The average price of a concertina you would hope to get good on is about £2,500. I don't know any young person who can afford one."

I heard later, from someone else, that there's a supply and demand issue: that very few are made these days and there's someone out there who buys them up to drive up the price. I don't know what to make of this.

"I eventually sold that melodeon to my dad - the one Rob Walloch helped me buy. My dad was a morris dancer (with The Ancient Men and the Abingdon Traditional Morris Men) and he'd taken note of the fact that I was playing the squeeze box. I'd been doing lots of busking in the streets of Oxfordshire and playing for ceilidh bands, and I think he'd secretly always wanted to do it. He used to sneak into my bedroom when I wasn't there during university holidays and have a go. Then one day he took it up and I taught him.

"I've also learnt how to fix them. The first time I ever noticed something had gone wrong was when a note just carried on after I'd stopped playing. I was playing all the time and couldn't send it to London to get fixed, so my mending was trial and error. When I found the offending spring I managed to flick another one out of the bay window and into a hedge by accident. I mended the broken spring with a rubber band and a drawing pin and then it took me about an hour and a half of feeling every bit of leaf under the hedge to find the one I'd lost. It was about one and a half inches and made of thin black wire.

"I learnt much more about my craft when I went to work at The Music Room - an instrument shop - after university. I was forced to leave the job in the end because I'd been being playing with Jon (Boden) and we went on tour to Australia for three weeks. In those five years I think I had a  go on every single model and sold about 1,000 squeeze boxes to people, many of whom I still see on the folk scene. I also started a website called Melodeon.net which is still going."

I probably should have asked him what he did for a coat if he spent the money on a melodeon...

* If you like Bellowhead you may also be interested in this interview with Pete Flood, Bellowhead's percussionist.

* If you'd like to buy a copy of Spiers and Boden's ten year anniversary compilation album The Works there are links to lots of places you can compare prices here.

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

That's Dr Fay Hield to you

Fay Hield has received her doctorate from the University of Sheffield. After five years, including two bits of maternity leave, the folk singer who is the partner of Jon Boden (Spiers and Boden, Bellowhead) has produced an 80,000-word, 256 page thesis called English Folk Singing and the Construction of Community about the folk scene in Sheffield.

"I was very worried about writing about it," she said. "Because if I made enemies, that would be my employment and my social life gone in one. But so far everyone seems chuffed that I've done the work and am speaking up for the area - though I'm not sure anyone's read the whole thing." There's a link in the first paragraph if you feel like rising to the challenge.

"Jon and I celebrated with curry and a bottle of champagne, then the following evening we spent  singing in The Royal at Dungworth with a load of people who participated in the study."

The thesis concentrates on social singing, rather than music in which someone is paid to stand on a stage and others pay to listen, so it's not hard to imagine that a lot of people feel a kind of ownership of the subject matter - anyone whose done any social singing at sessions in Sheffield over the past five years, in fact.

"There's some confusion about community folk singing and why people enjoy it so much. I mean, if you took a picture during a session you'd probably find that everyone looked very sombre. But very often you'd also hear those same people saying afterwards that they'd just had one of the most enjoyable experiences they can remember."

Static crackles about dry wit and it being grim oop north are nearly audible on the line. "I'm not saying that all social folk singing is miserable by any means. It's just that everyone who will be doing it understands what's going on and it doesn't make much sense if you come fresh into it."

So you don't need to be grinning like a loon in order to enjoy yourself in Sheffield.

Which is probably just as well, because in a household containing two touring musicians and two small children - Polly and Jacob - it's hard to imagine she'd have the time. "When we first had Polly it was difficult. But we've worked out how to manage now."

So what's the secret? Full-time nanny? Accommodating parents-in-law? Prescription drugs? "Google calendar," she explains. "Everyone's got a copy. Me, Jon, our agents. There are still clashes but having it written down like that means it doesn't become a problem. I mean, we know what we're doing as far ahead as 2013.

"It's good in a way because it's a result of Jon being offered so much work. As a self-employed person it's your goal to reach a point at which you don't have to say yes all the time, to have a day when you can afford to pick and choose."

And what will she choose for herself? Will there be more academia? "I love ideas. I love reading other people's good work and reading things written by people I disagree with. Also making little connections in my head and having an original thought every once in while. I might apply to do a post doc in a year or so. And I thought about trying to incorporate my working life as a musician more closely into my studies. I'm still doing little bits of teaching.

"I think academia is very similar to being self-employed, in the sense that you're constantly creating your own way of doing things. I'm very much an Excel spreadsheet kind of a girl. I like lists and planning and I enjoy keeping my head on who's thinking and saying what in my field, making connections between them."

There's a new album on the blocks, ready to be recorded in September, following Looking Glass, which was out last year. "There's going to be a bigger band - although not quite so large as Bellowhead. My passion is for English trad folk, so that's what to expect."

Does she have a personal theory about what constitutes "folk music" then? And her answer, while probably true, reminds me that I'm talking to someone with academic detachment who is also nervous about making enemies. "I don't really get the label. There is so much that folk could mean that it seems kind of pointless to make those distinctions: lots of people create systems within which some things are allowed to be folk. But I can't be bothered to start thinking about it."

When she's relaxing she listens to Thomas Tallis, medieval music and Dolly Parton. "She came to Sheffield a few years ago but it was Jon's 30th birthday so I couldn't go. It was very inconsiderate of him."

And it would be remiss of me not to ask about her name but I think I can hear a sigh at the other end of the line as I raise it. "My parents didn't really notice [that it's a spoonerism of hay field]. But by the time I was about seven, people were starting to mention it. I've always thought that I should be a gardener really - like Pippa Greenwood, Bunny Guinness or Alan Titchmarsh. And then I've had a few people who assumed it must be a stage name. But no."

Many congratulations, Dr Hield, on a hard-won reward for all your academic endeavours.

* 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

The Bristol folk festival at Colston Hall

Not knowing Bristol, I'd imagined a red brick stately home built by a prosperous slave trader back in the day. In fact Colston Hall is a glass-fronted building with a municipal feel, built high into the air in a part of town full of squats, financial services outlets and fast food joints. But it was easily identifiable as folk central from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening by the morris men and rapper dancers making the most of the sunshine out the front. These included Nonesuch Morris - Best in Class for leaping - and the Silver Flame Rapper girls, who were exciting because of the worried look they habitually wore with their purple sashes, giving the impression - nearly entirely erroneously, as it turned out - that something could go wrong at any minute. Always a concern with jiggling flesh in close proximity to swords.

Being indoors this early in the year had theoretical advantages, although sunshine and light breezes in the end gave the two dark, main venues the feel of places to which you regretfully retreated when compelled indoors by the need to hear some music. The walk through the foyer was brightened by an on-trend novelty pedicure station, involving hundreds of little fish nibbling at your hard skin for a tenner.

There were squeals from it on Friday because it tickled (apparently). But by the end of the three days the poor little fishies had taken to laying low in the bottom of their tanks, bloated, torpid and probably a bit cheesed off with the formerly be-sandalled feet of hundreds of folkies. Definitely rather them than me. Several friends who were indoor camping in a nearby church hall ("but where do you put the tent pegs?") with just a sink for washing were considering treating themselves and the fish to a full body immersion by Sunday though, so perhaps the fishies got off lightly.

Kathryn Roberts and her partner Sean Lakeman played a lovely set of sad tunes early on Friday afternoon. "Do we ever play anything else?" asked Roberts at one point. She later explained their musical choices to me in a way that reminded me that I sometimes used to meet Sean's dad, Geoff, on jobs when I was a cub reporter in Cornwall and he was the Daily Mirror's man in the west country. "So much of folk music is the news of the time when it was written - songs about events with a newsworthy sensation. As a result they are very often sad. I suppose we celebrate the joyous things but don't necessarily write songs about them. And I live such a happy life that it's a kind of therapy to get out and do something else."

But with Lakeman being an ace rhythm guitarist, could there be a missed opportunity for upbeat, rabble-rousing numbers? "Sean does a lot of rhythm guitar with Seth (Lakeman, his brother) but he's primarily an excellent accompanist. It's just a different style for him."

In the innumerate tradition of Fun Boy Three, the first thing you noticed about 3 Daft Monkeys was that there were four of them, or five if you included Athene Roberts' amazing, steam punk corsetry (see above). They almost magically lifted the mood and caused the first sighting of punters galloping up and down the aisles in each others' arms. When Roberts said "You're a lovely audience, yes you are" it was as if a pixie were tickling us under our collective chins.

The evening continued with Ruarri Joseph, who was funny as well as good and had a memorable line about an unlucky man whose dog had been "snagged by a train and was ten miles east". And then Seth Lakeman, who raised the audience to such a pitch that one of my companions was moved to observe that it was almost certainly the excess of female hormones in the air that was making his fiddle strings go out of tune.

However, in the interest of balance I would like to point out that despite the legend that Lakeman is "making folk sexy" I thought I observed an equal reaction to Fay Hield on Sunday afternoon, something that struck me as I failed to see through the forest of burly admirers crowding the front of her auditorium. She got a supportive yet faintly yearning audience response to her suggestion that, since she'd failed to bag Prince William after all, she wouldn't mind if "that Mr Boden" asked for her hand now...

Friday evening was also when I realised that there was behaviour around the bar that was, in my experience, unique to folk gatherings. Never in my life, apart from at Bristol this weekend and the South Bank Centre once for a folk show, have I seen people spontaneously form a number of queues for the bar equal to the number of bar staff. This was instead of the more traditional scrum. While I can see that there is something irritatingly fair about this, it also takes much of the romance out of the situation, which is - let's face it - something that most of us have been in training for all of our lives. It negates the possibility of small acts of kindness, the idea that someone might be thirstier than someone else and takes all of the risk out of a situation that most of us have absolutely no problem with in the first place. It then replaces this tiny risk of unfairness with the kind of irritation more usually experienced in a post office when one queue appears to be moving faster than another. Plus it takes up much more space. Gah... I can feel a backlash coming on.

Saturday morning brought a young, male trio called Wildflowers, who were two fiddles and a Spanish-flavoured guitar with a combined age of about 40. They were very, very good for their ages, putting the wild into wildflower. I was intending to make a series of observations about them, starting with the idea that they would be a perfect match for Joe Broughton's violin masterclasses at the Birmingham Conservatoire or the Guildhall school because of the style in which they play (similar to his with the Urban Folk Quartet but less practised by about 20 years). But I've decided to stop there because someone saw me jotting notes and came over, asking who I was writing for and mentioning that he was father to one of them. And I know when I'm licked.

Jane Taylor was brilliant and gave me my first "got to buy a CD" moment, but I'm going to write about her separately. And she was followed, with a sense of the occasion having picked up some strong momentum, by Pilgrims' Way - "we're the only band who won't try and sell you something this weekend because our first CD's not printed until next week", count me in - and then Jamie Smith's Mabon. While "mabon" produces nothing from my dictionary, wikipedia says that it's the autumnal equinox in the Wiccan tradition, when you can traditionally balance an egg on its end. Not sure what to make of that, but they also got my vote with a CD.

Elfynn reminded me a lot of Little Johnny England with a female singer. Then there was the Fisherman's Friends, who said that they'd landed the "old farts novelty slot" at Glastonbury this year but left me, as usual, with the feeling that I always had after meeting Cornish lifeboat crews (more cub reporter anecdotes): that somehow I'd had the wool pulled over my eyes by someone more canny than me. 

One-time Irish Eurovision contenders Dervish were hilarious but made Boots of Spanish Leather sound like incidental music from Titanic. And then Steve Knightley, Phil Beer and Miranda Sykes did their impressive thing, made me blub to Cousin Jack and then sent us off to the silent disco over the way, where we discovered all over again that Jim Moray is a genius. On this occasion it was because he mashed up Billy Jean by Michael Jackson with Seth Lakeman's Kitty Jay in such a way that it was clear they should have met sooner and will undoubtedly spend the rest of their lives together, curled up in some kind of funky Bristolian love nest.

My Sunday got off to a slow start because I was talked into getting up at 5am to go and watch several troupes of suprisingly alert morris dancers dance the sun up by Cabot tower for May Day, and then had to go back to bed again with exhaustion (me - probably not them), grateful that someone had the situation in hand.

However, memorable parts of the day eventually included being asked to judge a poetry folk slam, a role I believe I was born for; seeing a magician rightly called Kieran the Mighty produce pre-marked playing cards from the inside of a mobile phone in the terrace bar and shocked expressions on the faces of his audience; and deciding that there must have been something wrong with Sheelanagig's sound desk because their set was SO LOUD it made me quite scared, to the point at which I broke out in a sweat and had to leave the auditorium. Their flute sounded like nothing except feedback and the amplification meant I couldn't understand a word spoken between songs, which just made me feel old. But they had to contend with a gigantic banner picture of Bellowhead louching around behind them, so perhaps I should cut them some slack.

When Bellowhead finally arrived they were phenomenal. A pleasantly unhinged Jon Boden bashed his tambourine against his chest, giving the impression that he was only a very short trip from banging it on his forehead. There was a song enigmatically introduced by Paul Sartin as being about "wizard copulation"; they did Across the Line, which they don't always play but is my personal favourite; and when Cholera Camp came around complete f****** chaos broke out. Pete Flood was running around the stage apparently looking for his snare drum and either found it just in time, or made it look as if he had. Boden threw his jacket in the air, which after all the songs about whoring gave the impression he might be about to take the rest off it off too, and at the end of the set there were cannons shooting what looked like glitter in the air, at which point even the band looked amazed. There was a short debate afterwards about whether any of us really enjoyed Little Sally Racket as much as Boden clearly enjoyed singing it. But hey, I shouldn't think they care after a performance like that.

Folky Bristolian youngsters carried on singing, playing and dancing in the bar afterwards until the staff threw everyone out. I think it would be fair to say that a good time was had by all, with the possible exception of the nibbling fishes.

* 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