FolkingCool.co.uk

Kris Drever – Mark The Hard Earth (Navigator Records)

FolkingCool.co.uk — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:08:04 +0000

Ian Wylie

Like a sign of spring, Kris Drever’s Mark the Hard Earth sees the Scots guitarist bring more sunshine and warmth to his singing and playing – and is far from the hard slog its title might suggest.

The Orcadian takes a second, well-earned break from edgy improv of his day job as guitarist with Radio 2 Folk Group winner Lau, and from collaborations with John McCusker and Roddy Woomble, which produced this correspondent’s favourite album of 2008, Before The Ruin.

Recorded in two sessions in North Berwick and Yorkshire, this album follows a similar recipe to Drever’s 2006 debut, Black Water: top-drawer line-up including fiddler and producer McCusker, American multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien and Irish singer Heidi Talbot, applied to a handful of fresh takes on trad classics, interwoven with material from Sandy Wright (Wild Hurricane, Shining Star) and Boo Hewerdine (Sweet Honey In The Rock).

But final track aside – Freedom Come A’ye, a duet with Karine Polwart which pairs words by poet Hamish Henderson to the tune of a pipe march, Bloody Fields of Flanders – the production and tone this time round are not so spare.

O’Brien and Hewerdine take Drever down American country roads, while Wright’s waltzes are sentimental but rousing singalongs for closing time.

Drever finds room this time for one of his own compositions, the title trick, and one from brother Duncan, Crown of London that has his sibling declare: “The devil’s made plans for the wealthy man. He’ll never get to me.”

Blessed with the voice of someone twice his age and experience, Drever’s Mark the Hard Earth is the sound of a self-assured and maturing talent growing into that voice.

www.krisdrever.com

Cara Dillon, Artsdepot, London (March 2010)

FolkingCool.co.uk — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:01:55 +0000

Joy Thomas longs to get out of the stalls

First things first: Cara Dillon has a Proper Lovely voice. Nothing new in that comment, but her voice really is extra-special. It sounds so effortless, so clear and makes you lean into it in order to stuff as much as possible into your ears. This tour has seen Cara’s voice being more at the forefront than usual; rather than a full backing band she has just been accompanied by her husband, Sam Lakeman-with-his Lakeman-jaw, who contributed piano, guitar and facts.

Now then, I do confess that possiblymaybesometimes I have found Cara Dillon to be a bit twee. However I don’t know whether it was some magic cast by her live performance or the fact the music seemed more pared down but I was definitely much more impressed at this gig than I am when I listen to a CD.

Cara is so personable and comes across, along with Mr Lakeman, as being Really Awfully Nice. She apologised for having a bit of a tickly cough and, whilst Sam paused to re-tune his guitar, chattered happily to the audience about playing with her twin sons on the morning of the gig. Her comfort on stage and love of the music was unquestionable; here is a woman doing the job she was born to do.

But… (oh come on, there’s always a but) there was just something a bit soulless about this music being performed in a theatre space with everyone sitting neatly in rows watching in reverential silence. Tales of broken-hearted girls becoming crazy recluses, of homesick sailors remembering their distant home, of friends divided by The Troubles; these tales all felt a bit sanitised and removed, something I feel they wouldn’t have been if we’d been in a more initimate venue. To me, folk music will always work best in pubs, clubs, or at least more ‘democratic’ rooms where people jostle and share space and seats. In fields, in tents, in front rooms, in sheds. Not in a hushed theatre. It almost felt like we were watching the memory of something that was exinct, almost a tribute to folk music. Like seeing artefacts laid out neatly in a museum; there was something final about it, something pickled, labelled and preserved.

Having said this, people did join in with some songs when Cara encouraged them, but it was low and polite and controlled. The low, sorrowful hum accompanying There Were Roses was quite moving … but I didn’t feel able to lose myself in it in seat H3 of the stalls. At no point was there a chance of anyone getting carried away, of talking to her, of shouting suggestions. And if they had it would have felt really inappropriate.

Cara and Sam were obviously very comfortable and pleased to be in the space and expressed a hope to return. I do concede that the sound quality was more professional than you could ever hope for in a more coarse venue; the excellent sound system (and Techie) meant each note reverberated and almost quivered in the air which could be pure joy. And ok, looking round, it seemed like the clientele were possibly more inclined towards theatre rows than rickety bar stools or muddy fields so perhaps she’s aimed it exactly right for her die-hard fans. Nonetheless this gig confirmed that, for me, however powerful and talented the musicians, a large part of live folk has to do with the atmosphere created, the roughness around the edges, the shared sense of the grubbiness and mistakes of humanity.

Joy Thomas

Big Session Festival (18-20 June)

FolkingCool.co.uk — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:54:01 +0000

Joy Thomas

De Montfort Hall and Gardens, Leicester

Gawd, how exciting! De Montfort Hall and Gardens will resonate this June with the sound of folky songstresses as The Big Session welcomes sweetie pie Cara Dillon, folkingcool love bunny Jackie Oates (whose latest album Hyperboreans the press release delightfully mis-spells as Hyperbeans) AND dear Kate Rusby. Oysterband return as reliable festival hosts, seeming to have done a brilliant job rounding up emerging artists; I’m particularly excited about seeing Nancy Elizabeth, Raghu Dixit, the Moulettes and stamping over-excitedly with Julian Gaskell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. The bloody PROCLAIMERS will be there (folkingcool might have to get drunk for that) and melodious boffins Stornoway (hopefully doing some onstage DIY as backing music). Apparently there are impressive recycling initiatives AND a vast range of real ale. Folkingcool cannot WAIT and hope the sun shines. Watch this space for reviews of the festival in words, pictures and possibly noises.

Yipppeeee for Big Session!

www.bigsessionfestival.com

www.aiforg.com

Catch Folk Award-winner Cara Dillon on tour

FolkingCool.co.uk — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:41:08 +0000

One of the most original and stunning singers of traditional music, Cara Dillon, is currently touring, following the release of her beautiful fourth album, Hill of Thieves.

The album marks a return to her roots with an outstanding collection of traditional songs. Already a highly acclaimed torch-bearer of traditional music, songwriter Cara, and her husband, producer and fellow musician Sam Lakeman, will produce interpretations of classics from her album.

Born in Northern Ireland, Dillon has a number of accolades to her name including BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Traditional Track, Best Traditional Act at Big Buzz and Hot Press Magazines as well as Irish Tatler’s Woman of the Year. In 2004, she won the prestigious Irish Meteor Award for Best Female Singer.

Catch her at London’s artsdepot on 5 March or visit her website for more tour dates. We’ll be reviewing the show at artsdepot so head back if you don’t manage to catch the gig…

Larmer Tree Festival (14-18 July)

FolkingCool.co.uk — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:45:54 +0000

Hugh Wilson

If you fancy a festival with 14 stages, four mung bean burger stands and a Big Bank sponsored corporate VIP alcopops enclosure, Larmer Tree is probably not for you.

This is a friendly little festival which makes much of its cosy 4000 capacity and pretty-as-a-picture location on the Wiltshire/Dorset Border. It wins awards for “having stuff to do for kids” (or somesuch), and mixes music with theatre, comedy, workshops, crafts and “fringe entertainment”.

The music, too, is a glorious hotchpotch of styles, with folk (confirmed acts include Chris Wood, The Bad Shepherds and folkingcool’s beloved Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrel), Americana and world music high in the mix. You might have to suffer a bit of jazz in-between, but you can’t have everything. If it’s really getting too much, you could just go for a stroll in the verdant Victorian gardens.

Larmer Tree is described as a “boutique” festival, but don’t let that put you off. The festival is free of corporate sponsorship and, despite 20 years on the go, retains a pleasantly unprofessional vibe. If you want lots to do but not lots and lots of people trying to do it at the same time, think Larmer.

www.larmertreefestival.co.uk

Caitlin Rose – Dead Flowers (Names)

FolkingCool.co.uk — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:05:55 +0000

Oh blimey. Some marketing person broke into my brain and designed a singer – Weird Science-style – to ruin my life,

I say ruin but only in the “I will never listen to anything else ever again” kinda way. Nashville-born (REALLY) 22-year-old Caitlin Rose could have wandered off the screen of a chipper Reese Witherspoon movie about a perky country singer with attitude. She has the name, the heritage and the achingly bar-room voice destined for a biopic. She’s perfect. Sniff.

A precursor to a full length album due later in 2010 (when? when? when? when?), Dead Flowers features the likes of Andy Wilkins on pedal steel guitar, Zach Serchfield on guitar, Bob Grant on mandolin and Travis Collingsworth on bass. It’s a beautiful snapshot of an artist I am in danger of loving until I die.

Dead Flowers refers to the title track, a cover of the Rolling Stones song. She also covers Patsy Cline’s Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray with gut-wrenching Nashville authenticity.

A couple of her self-penned tracks, Docket and Gorilla Man– reminiscent of Jenny Lewis and Kimya Dawson – are feisty, potty-mouthed modern numbers (”the surgeon general can suck on my dick”). But T-Shirt is a delicate and timeless-sounding (though a capella) country standard.

Hazel Davis

http://www.myspace.com/caitlinrosesongs

FolkingCool.co.uk — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:41:02 +0000

Indie film-makers read on. Next year’s soundtrack is already written. Hazel Davis meets Lail Arad

“When we were about 12 me and my best friend declared ourselves hippies, stole our parents’ old clothes and records and formed a band called The Hippy Hippopotamuses,” laughs Lail Arad. “We wrote crazy psychedelic songs called things like Cutting Into Peace, completely kooky and daring, mixed in with some very teenage ‘together/forever’ rhymes,” she adds.

Luckily, the poetry has improved since then and 26-year-old Tel Aviv-born, London-raised Lail Arad has morphed into a songwriter of some panache. Her songs are Loudon Wainwrightesque, Jewish-tinged pithy numbers – the optimistically titled Hit Single (which she played at Stella McCartney’s party) starts, “I wish I was a fashion victim, but I just don’t care enough”. She’ll get the DIY-London Lily Allen comparisons. We won’t be making them here but we WILL be using the word kooky. We’re sorry.

Her influences are mixed and it shows: “When I grew out of Hello Children, Everywhere, Danny Kaye, and Woody Guthrie’s Songs to Grow On, I heard a lot of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, The Kinks, The Incredible String Band, The Beatles, Donovan. This is who my parents listened to, so it kind of runs in my blood, and I’d say I rediscovered it all with new ears over and over as I grew older.”

Of her peers, comparisons with Jenny Lewis and Kimya Dawson are obvious. But her biggest influence must be Adam Green, for whom she wrote the piss-funny tribute, Adam Green, on youtube (“this is a song for you Adam Green. It’s also a shameless self-promotional scheme”).

Her debut album, Someone New, features 12 songs, written over two years, many of which have, says Arad, “survived the test of many, many live shows.” Shows which have seen her gather a considerable London folk-scene following and the admiration of Devendra Banhart.

All artists think their work is eclectic when really what they mean is that the songs are in a different key but Arad really does veer gleefully between pop and raw acoustic folk. “I wanted to treat each song as its own boss, and give it whatever it needed to work,” she says, “so some have biggish pop production as a result – horns and backing vocals – others are very bare, voice and guitar.” Who Am I is pithy look at fashion and identity and Winter is a delicate love song (“even though we said that it would be good for us, to be alone cos we’re too co-dependent, let’s face it who wants to be free when it’s freezing?”) surely destined for a Michael Cera flick before the year’s out.

The album’s producer is Guy Katsav, a marriage made in heaven. “We met at a party and I woke up the next morning (not with him) saying ‘I met the person who’s going to produce my album’,” she says simply.

Also on the album is Roi Erez, the musician Arad’s been performing with for the last few years. She explains, “the three of us worked very closely together and our dynamics just worked. As well as them, we brought in a lot of friends and musicians (including David Beauchamp, who works with Jeffrey Lewis and Johnny Flynn, on drums).”

Arad was raised in a boho household by an architect father and psychologist mother. She says, “It means that anything was on the cards. If I decided to be a marine biologist I’m sure my parents would have been very supportive. But yes, of course I don’t underestimate the fact that I was exposed to a lot of art and a lot of creative thinking.”

Arad attended a progressive school “with friendly teachers and a lot of opportunities to perform, music and drama”. She adds, “It wasn’t a pushy school so it gave me a lot of time to what I loved. I played in a lot of little concerts, I’d get make-shift bands together with my friends and prepare covers – I think ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ by Joni Mitchell was the first song I ever performed (when I was 11) but the school definitely gave me a taste for music and singing.” She still found the time to squeeze out maths A level too.

The world of comedy song is a tricky one to write about with any authority. But Arad says she’s definitely not a comedian: “But I’m not a Serious Folk Musician either – that sounds very purist to me. I’m a songer, ‘a worker in song,’ to quote Leonard Cohen. I take what I do seriously, I do it as best I can, but that involves not taking myself too seriously.”

With “lots of exciting shows” planned for the UK and France this year, you’d be advised to remember you heard of Lail Arad here first…

http://www.myspace.com/lailarad

Doncaster Folk Festival

FolkingCool.co.uk — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:04:16 +0000

Stephen Taylor

I’ve only been to Doncaster once and I had a Very Bad Day. As the snow melts and the green shoots peek out, I could be tempted back by the sheer loveliness of the local line-up at this year’s Doncaster Folk Festival. Part of the city’s Hothouse festival which encompasses comedy, theatre and music, the Folk Festival weekend had brought together a bunch of artists (with reassuringly crappy websites – never trust a folk musician with a flash site, they’re not suffering for their art enough) from Yorkshire and across the east.

Highlights include cream-smooth folk string duo FYRISH, close harmony group Hissyfit, rollicking electric folk rock foot-stompers from The Duncan McFarlane Band, Ukrainian folk dance ensemble Musicians Orlyk, old favourite Bill Caddick and perhaps the pick of the bunch Little Sister, an eclectic all girl group from Brum dishing out Irish, Welsh and klezmer tunes, as well as sweet slices of twangy Americana.

To kick the event off there’s a grand Ceilidh on the Friday night with music from Pierrot, and to tie the 2 nights of folk together there are workshops, singarounds, morris dancers and traditional English mummers plays from Colby Plough Jag.

www.doncasterfolkfestival.org.uk/index.html

Holmfirth Festival Of Folk

FolkingCool.co.uk — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:26:05 +0000

Hugh Wilson

You’ll know Holmfirth as the location for Last of the Summer Wine, the endless BBC sitcom that featured lovable pensioner rogues Compo, Clegg, Dopey, Happy and Not At All Funny and always used to be on at your gran’s when you popped round on Sunday.

But Holmfirth has so much more to offer than guided tours of Last of the Summer Wine country. Thank God.

The pretty West Yorkshire village, nestling in picturesque rolling countryside a few miles outside Huddersfield, is also home to the Holmfirth Festival of Folk (7,8,9 May), an event that grew out of the ashes of the Holmfirth Folk Festival (splitters!) in 2005.

HFF is small and perfectly formed. Most of the action takes place in pubs and on the streets and the vast majority is free. It’s fair to say it’s not a starry occasion, but acts already confirmed include Belshazzar’s Feast, Jeff Warner, Miriam Backhouse, Muldoon’s Picnic, Ray Hearne and Ray Padgett. Expect lots more.

It all makes for a bumper weekend of good folk and a very good excuse to spend more time than usual in pubs. Take time to visit Nora Batty’s famous tearoom if you like, but we wouldn’t advise it.

For more information visit www.holmfirthfestivaloffolk.co.uk

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2010

FolkingCool.co.uk — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:00:37 +0000

Joy Thomas brings disrepute on the good name of folkingcool but has a nice time in the process

Dear Reader,

Bwa, ha, ha! Silly old trusting folkingcool, allowing me to review the BBC Folk Awards last Monday 1st February. It was too exciting NOT to be a bit naughty…

First things first. Yes I did touch Jackie Oates but I don’t think she noticed. I very nearly reversed into Ralph McTell. Chris Evans is taller than you’d expect and sort of perfectly cared-for looking, like he’d been taken out of some cotton wool, given a polish and send out for the night. Is this what happens when you reach a certain level of fame, o Reader? Richard Hawley confessed that Norma Waterson reduced him to a “puddle of piss” and never once took his bloody coat off (maybe some piss stains to cover up?). Kevin Whately wore the moustache of a knicker-elastic-selling spiv and Lembit Opik just stood there, as per usual. (It should be a verb, “to Lembit Opik”).

After a rousing (pink!) champagne reception accompanied by some morris dancers (many under the age of 30, please note) we “chosen few” were allowed into the Inner Sanctum to hear Mike Harding tell some really shit jokes. The Bad Shepherds were the first band of the evening to play with their ~~blah~~ folk version of I Fought the Law. I managed to keep my opinion to myself and clapped politely. All that changed as soon as Show of Hands started winning awards, however. Best duo? Piss off. Best Original Song for Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed??? WHAT a load of bollocks. No song with the lyrics “your probity you betrayed for greeeeeed” should even be considered for such an award. And then they only went and bloody well sang it didn’t they? Good LORD.

When Bellowhead failed to win Best Group I managed to refrain from booing as I rather like the winners, Lau. Darling Bellowhead did win Best Live Act and Jon Boden picked up Musician of the Year. Boden thanked the landlords of all the pubs which had allowed them to sing and play (and drink, I presume) until 3 in the morning. Rather charmed me, that did.

A Lifetime Achievement Award went to Nanci Griffith after Bob Harris read out some of her dreadful lyrics (sacrilege maybe, o Reader, but it’s just my OPINION so stop complaining). Dick Gaughan won the other Lifetime Achievement Award which I thought was a bit more like it… but then I was distracted by Observer music journalists not putting white wine back in the wine cooler. Thankfully Dick managed to swing my attention back by being Just Ace and singing like a bloody hero.

Sadly my beloved Jackie Oates came away without an award (how I roared with pain, Reader) but Cara Dillon sang beautifully, accompanied by her Lakeman husband with his Lakemen jaw (Sam, on piano) so I decided it was ok for her to take album of the year. She’s older than Jackie, after all.

Reader, I booed, I bitched, I cringed, I roared and I accidentally guffawed with laughter when Bob Harris talked of his and Nanci Griffith’s battles with cancer (my guffaw was UNRELATED and BADLY TIMED). And then as the Transatlantic Sessions, winners of the ‘Good Tradition Award’ were quoting Horace (art is in hiding the art’ – nice) I noticed another journalist’s dictaphone on the table. And, like a hero, I fled. So, dear sweet Reader, you ain’t seen me and you can’t remember my name. Ok?

Joy Thomas