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 Girlsso 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.
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After yesterday's post about the all-party folk arts group at the House of Commons, in which it was suggested that English and Welsh folk music might benefit from having its own high-profile international showcase - like Celtic Connections - I was sent this video by an English folk fan.
Have a look and see what you think. It went up on YouTube a couple of days ago and it's for something called Spotlight England, which involves England being the guest foreigners at Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow this winter. Canada has benefited from the arrangement in the past. Just take a moment to think about that...
There is currently a long list of 24 English folk bands that has been put forward by industry experts, so the final six can be chosen next month by Celtic Connections.
Some points
* It doesn't say anywhere in the video what Spotlight England actually is and there is no mention of Celtic Connections. The video might just about work if it were shown on a screen at Celtic Connections where the context would probably be evident, but why waste public money on something that's fit only for one purpose? Just one mention of Celtic Connections would have been enough for you to get the gist. The first time I watched the video I didn't know what Spotlight England was at the end of it and had to go away and look it up.
* Its point of view appears to be "English folk is not as rubbish as it used to be 10 or 15 years ago, although we don't really know why". The tone of the talking heads is apologetic, not explanatory and you are left with the impression that they are marvelling at England's good fortune at having had Bellowhead and Laura Marling beam down from outer space and that young people have deigned to bestow their favours upon folk bands. No explanation for this is offered. Suggestion: perhaps the music's fabulous? In fact to suggest anything else in a promotional video is beside the point.
* I've often been left breathless with excitement by English folk music. This video makes the entire enterprise seem dull.
* John Tams' name is spelled wrong.
* Where is Show of Hands on the long list of bands being considered to showcase England to the rest of the world? Are they popular enough to fill the Albert Hall several times over but not popular enough for EFDSS to include on its list of England's top 24 folk bands? How has this happened? To hear that they were unaware of the application process - which will inevitably be the case - is silly and poses more questions than it answers. It doesn't take much to pick up the phone.
* Alan Bearman appears on the list of decision makers here and yet many of the bands he represents appear on the longlist. This is a conflict of interests and undermines the integrity of the process since he stands to gain financially. It's not his fault - you would, wouldn't you? It's the fault of the organisers. And no amount of explanation that Alan Bearman was out of the room at the appropriate moment will cut the mustard, I'm afraid. When public money is being used to market an industry - as it is here - there has to be no discernible corruption. It's axiomatic.
* It's bizarre that English music does not have its own international showcase (I'm told that Wales's national Eisteddfod has an international offshoot), organised to the same professional standards as Celtic Connections. Perhaps one day it will and may summon the self-confidence to invite the Scots to participate as foreigners. I wonder how they'd react to that?
By the way, I've also heard a whisper that the folk awards will be held in Glasgow this time around. Interesting, eh?
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Kevin Brennan MP is the Labour member for Cardiff West, he's the shadow schools' minister - so I guess he was pretty busy yesterday with all this business about the baccalaureate - and he's been in parliament since 2001. Plenty of time to get his shoulders under...
Last Monday he hosted the first shin-dig of the revivified all-party folk arts group at the House of Commons, in the Jubilee Room - shades of Cluedo here - featuring beer and crisps, with Katzenjammer, Lisa Knapp and Jack Harris for entertainment.
And he's got form with with folk music. "I was in a band called Cadlan in the late 80s and early 90s. We were a Welsh folk dance group - the equivalent of a ceilidh band, only in Wales it's known as Twmpath - and I played guitar. We were teachers with full-time jobs but we toured around south Wales, evenings and weekends. We called a halt to it when one of our members, Graham Simpson, who was a brilliant mandolin and banjo player as well as an all-round good egg, was knocked off his bicycle and killed."
These days he plays with MP4 - see what they did there? - a cross-party rock band of four MPs, including Pete Wishart, formerly of Runrig now of the Scots Nats, who were gigging last weekend at the Pocklington Arts Centre in Yorkshire.
"The all-party folk group was kicked off, I think, by John Battle," Brennan said. "But Alan Keen took it on: he was a very big folk fan and was responsible for getting a couple of events on in the Commons. He had Ralph McTell and Tom Paxton in.
"But sadly Alan died of cancer last year. I'd met him at the folk awards in London in 2010 while he was having his chemo and when he passed away I thought I should keep the group going.
"So it was the first event the other night. My thoughts were that if we had a couple of events a year to showcase folk and acoustic based music - trad or contemporary - we could interest other MPs in some of the issues surrounding folk and get them to mingle with people from the folk music world.
"What I'd like to do is develop a little manifesto of things that the folk world would like us to do to support the sector: aims that people can agree on. So far I've been liaising mainly with the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) and Trac in Wales."
Brennan had a success with the all-party muscular dystrophy group a while back, as a result of which he got £3 million from Whitehall for much-needed treatment.
So how did he end up with the Norwegian all-girl band Katzenjammer at the first event? "They were doing a gig in Hyde Park for Radio 2 and thought 'Why not get them in?' Along with some British folk artists, it could be part of the antidote to The X Factor."
"Anyone who wants to get in touch with me about folk-related issues can email me on brennank@parliament.uk or write to me at the House of Commons," he said. He's also on Twitter, where his handle is @KevinBrennanMP
I'd say that England and Wales have a lot to learn from Scotland on the subject of showcasing their music to the rest of the world, potentially as an export. Celtic Connections in Glasgow works very well, with the support of the Scottish government, as a Scottish music event that draws music lovers and music industry folk from all over the world.
And to make the all-party folk arts group the destination parliamentary event of an evening, form an alliance with the all-party parliamentary beer group and marry it to some fine ales and ciders, and possibly a hog roast. It's how most of us appreciate our folk.
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Sam Lee's told someone who's highly unlikely to fib about these things that he's been nominated for the Mercury Prize - an announcement is expected on Wednesday. This would be for his first album, Ground of its Own. Congratulations.
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Karine Polwart was between sets at the Shrewsbury festival - one on each main stage. She'd dramatically underestimated the number of people who wanted copies of her new CD signed, so she was running late, and the couple who were last in the queue were warming up for a domestic incident. The husband was telling his wife that she was useless in front of the famous singer with whom they'd both like their picture taken, and the wife, unsurprisingly, was getting upset.
She wasn't the only one. It was a bit stressful.
So Polwart was a trouper for picking up two plastic chairs and setting them down behind the signing tent, where fewer people would spot her, for a brief chat.
Her song Sorry (above) really reminds me of something from the American TV series Deadwood (below), I told her.
"That is so weird. I was obsessed with Deadwood." I suddenly had her full attention. "Being a musician I can never watch anything on a weekly basis because I'm always out working. So there's an underground trade in HBO box sets on the Scottish folk scene and that one was on my mind for months. At the moment it's Borgen and The Killing."
And we're off... So it seems that Scottish female singers are having a bit of a Disney moment, what with Julie Fowlis doing all that work on Brave, and Cara Dillon writing a song for Disney World as well as doing the narration for Tinkerbell. With a cast of mind that appreciates the operatic levels of bloodshed, betrayal and alienation in Deadwood, could Polwart ever see herself doing Disney?
"Well, I think it was a bolt from the blue for Julie. It's the kind of phone call we all dream about getting. But both Cara and Julie have bell-like voices. They have the kind of voices that, if you were to think about folk and you didn't have a notion of what was about, you might think of beautiful voices like theirs. Mine is a bit too screechy - it doesn't have the same cut-glass quality. And they come from a different tradition from me. They are both a part of the Gallic or Gaelic song tradition and use their voices in a completely different way.
"Julie Fowlis is a tremendous musician - she has a degree in cultural studies and musicology. And, let's face it, there are only so many ways that a folk singer is likely to be given an opportunity like that. It's a massive opportunity. It's every songwriter's dream to have a song of theirs used in a film or on TV because it puts you before an audience you wouldn't ordinarily have and allows you to transcend your genre.
"One of mine - Cover Your Eyes - was on a television documentary recently called You've Been Trumped, which was about Donald Trump and the golf course, and Sigur Ros were on the soundtrack as well. So that was good.
"But I've written an album of songs about child murder, so I'm probably not the right person for Disney."
Um, why did you do that?
"I have two little kids and it's my worst nightmare. And I write from a place where everything has to matter to me. So I'd probably be a rubbish person to write something to a specification for someone else. I'm not sure I could write in the abstract."
But surely writing something to a specification isn't writing in the abstract?
"I have friends who write songs for Nashville. What I mean is that I can only write music for myself. However... I worked on the Darwin Song Project a while back and the one that I kept was the one that meant the most to me, which was We're All Leaving (below). That's another one about child death."
Yes. I can see a pattern developing here.
"I'd just had one baby and I think I was pregnant again... I write about the risks that are most relevant to me at the time."
So do you ever write political songs?
"Sorry would probably be the closest to a political song that I've written. I've never explained to anyone what that's about, which was an accident to start off with. But then I really liked the responses that I got to it. People would interpret it and the interpretations were more interesting than my original idea..."
She's clearly really enjoyed seeing the song take on a life of its own, so much so that she was pretty reluctant to say where the original thought came from. 'Sorry' won't pay for this loss, the lyric runs.
"It was of a time when there was a lot of George Bush and Tony Blair and the Iraq War in the air. That may have been what kicked it off. But I like that the song is a bit enigmatic. That's my choice when I write about political issues: I like to make other people do the work.
"I studied philosophy and for a long time I was all about community-based philosophy, which would be going on in schools and pubs. That was what I wanted to do with my life - but no one wanted to fund it. And yet I feel that is what I do with my life, oddly. There's work to be done making these things - the things we habitually talk about - meaningful.
"Don't get me wrong. It's not that I find talking about politics boring. I find it fascinating. I just don't think it's my job to deliver a lecture. I don't like preaching to people."
She's actively involved with the Green Party in Scotland, which she says is in favour of independence at the moment. "And I'm swaying to a yes on it too, though it's about having more power residing locally for me. I'm not a nationalist."
Local for her is Pathhead in Midlothian. "There are sixteen professional musicians in a village of only 900, including Martin Green from Lau. We've got folk, jazz and experimental musicians - Inga," who plays in Polwart's band, wearing the headscarf to cover alopecia, "Inga lives in Pathhead too. There is a session on a Thursday night in the Foresters' Arms on the main street and we have fiddles, box players and a pipemaker who plays in a band with some Indian musicians," which sounds as if it would be worth seeking out if one were touring Scotland by car, for instance.
So does Polwart dance?
"Oh. What a question. Dancing makes me very uncomfortable - unless it's ceilidh dancing of course, in which case it's genetic and everyone does it. But I'm not one for dancing in clubs, no."
And what's she listening to these days?
"If I'm listening and really listening, my favourite at the moment is Anais Mitchell. Her new album is mighty, just mighty. I love it. And then there's Laura Veirs, who trained to be a scientist of some kind - was it meteorology? - before turning to music, and so all of her images are science-based images and they're just absurdly beautiful.
"And, of course, I have two small children - a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter," with her sound engineer partner, "so there are lots of counting songs. And I like Gillian Welch."
This leads to a discussion about Louise Mensch, the former Conservative MP who's husband, Peter Mensch, manages Welch (as well as Metallica). "I liked Louise Mensch. I'm sorry to see her leave parliament," said Polwart. "She's articulate and she didn't mince around with her words. I was enjoying seeing a woman in public life - on the culture committee, wasn't it? - who spoke her mind even if I didn't always agree with her."
Me too. So what's next?
"I really need a project. I like being asked to do things and at the moment I really need a project for when I've finished touring with this album. I'm thinking that it might be time to focus some of my energy much closer to home musically than I have been doing. When I got into music it was through the community in my village - I was in a band as one of about eight singers. And I have a strong sense of obligation. There is a bank of young ladies in Pathhead of 11 or 12 years old who would go for it, if we set something up. It seems only right in a village full of musicians."
And with the admission that I'd come to the end of my line of questioning, Polwart sprang to her feet and, whirling a plastic chair over head, was gone in a trice leaving only a few pages of my notebook blowing in her wake.
* You can buy a copy of Karine Polwart's new album, Traces, here.
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Blue Horyzon were busking in between cloud bursts at the Shrewsbury festival yesterday and made quite an impression.
Genevieve Tudor interviewed them about a terrible train journey they made recently, for use on her show today - Sunday - on BBC Radio Shropshire. And I believe Spiral Earth also interviewed them for one of the talky bits on the somewhat amazing Shrewsbury festival webcast.
So not to be left out...
They've got a banjo, which is fine by me. And before too long they had launched into Mumford & Sons' Little Lion Man. The thing that marked it out, though, more than anything else was that they had altered the lyrics, removing the most memorable line - which goes I really fucked it up this time, didn't I my dear? - so that it ran I really messed it up this time... instead.
As you can probably tell, from the picture and also from a close textual analysis of the way they spell their band name, Blue Horyzon are young, both in absolute terms but also by comparison with many people at Shrewsbury this weekend. I would go as far as to say that they were among the youngest people in sight when they were busking.
So when I asked Lyndon, their drummer, "Why change the lyrics?" and he nodded towards the audience and said, apparently seriously, "the children" I was momentarily bewildered.
Lyndon, I should explain is the old man of the band at the age of 29.
Young people today.
Cuh.
Here's them playing something completely different.
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It's the four-day Shrewsbury festival this bank holiday weekend, which sold out back in April and where KT Tunstall (below) is headlining on Monday night.
But never fear... If you didn't manage to get a ticket you can still get a flavour of it because - glory hallelujah! - it will be webcast live in high definition and available to watch by clicking on
Friday
19.35 Session A9
20.50 Madison Violet
22.10 Anxo Lorenzo
Saturday
13.00 Hat Fitz and Cara Robinson
14.15 Jackie Oates Band
15.30 Global Dance Project
19.00 Jim Moray
20.15 Kate Rusby
21.35 Show of Hands
Sunday
12.00 The Wilsons
13.00 Fay Hield and the Hurricane Party
14.10 Baskery
15.30 Jon Boden and the Remnant Kings
19.30 Karine Polwart
20.45 Plainsong
22.00 Richard Thompson
Monday
13.00 Old Man Luedecke
14.05 Caroline Herring and Kathryn Roberts
15.30 The Sweetback Sisters
17.00 KT Tunstall
It's all in British Summer Time, for those reading this outside the UK.
This will be the third year that Shrewsbury has been webcast and I invite you to consider whether there may be a connection between this and the fact that it's sold out. Here's my earlier post on the subject.
For the first time this year the live music webcasting will be augmented by interviews with bands and other bits and pieces, brought to you by the team from Spiral Earth.
Enjoy!
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