Review: Bristol Folk Festival – ‘The best encapsulation of everything wonderful about folk music’

The really great thing about folk music is that some things are different but some things stay the same. The new is made from the old. Some things are new but others feel warm and comfortable.

For the Bristol Folk Festival this year some things are different but some things stay the same. The venues are new – Bristol Cathedral and Trinity – but it’s just as friendly, just as welcoming, just as full of wonderful, eclectic music as ever.

Whatever strangeness is happening out there, here, in this three day folk filled bubble, everything is going to be alright. Probably better than alright.

Definitely, decisively, “better than alright” are Friday’s headliners, Lady Maisery.  Having been together for twelve years, they are already huge Bristol favourites – Rowan Rheingans tells us they love it here, “it’s like the Sheffield of the South West” – having played everywhere.

Slowly, steadily they have become giants of the modern folk world. Hannah James (accordion), Hazel Askew (Harp) and Rowan Rheingans (fiddle and banjo) were, very simply, jaw-droppingly, chest-tighteningly, tear duct-botheringly magnificent.

Three voices effortlessly filling this gorgeous, twelfth century space with irresistible cathedral songs. Trading in three part harmonies and polyphony, there were times when the three sounded like a multitude, their voices rising, meeting and falling, notes ringing out for an eternity.

Mostly playing tracks for their extraordinary new album, Tender, there were delicate folk-pop tunes, snatches of a Requiem, winter-y hymns, 16th century Broadsides and clever cover versions.

They are everything that makes contemporary folk wonderful. In a set stuffed with goodness, the highlight was their rendition of Hyperballad, the Bjork classic.

Stripped of the original’s quirkiness this becomes a heart-stopping centerpiece to their set. It is so, so beautiful.

Last year the Folk Festival was delightfully eclectic and this year takes that a few steps further on. For the early birds on Saturday afternoon Sisanda Myataza was an absolute revelation.

Is there anything more “Bristol” than kicking off a Folk Festival with a South African singing queen? Probably not. She, however, fitted right in.

Backed with subtle electric guitar and solid percussion – largely thanks to a cajon – she effortlessly covers Zulu lullabies, Miriam Makeba songs and an infectious, almost Latin, groove.

Her voice is incredibly powerful and, whilst everything is sung in Xhosa, you realise that language is no barrier to wonderful storytelling. By the end of her short set they were dancing in the aisles.

The Ciderhouse Rebellion are the English half of the remarkable Anglo-Irish band The Haar. Adam Summerhayes is an incredible fiddle player whilst Murray Grainger matches him phrase for phrase, cutting through some frantic playing with his accordion.

Improvisational, instrumental and wildly inventive, the duo are like the greatest wandering musicians you’ve ever seen.

They cram a thousand notes and a million ideas into their set, danceable tunes ebbing and flowing around this lovely place.

Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage are, like Lady Maisery, no strangers to Bristol. Their take on Americana-tinged Folk has the very lightest of touches.

There are moments when you have to, literally, lean forward to hear them as they gather around their old-fashioned, bluegrass-style microphone but, as there’s pin-drop silence in the room, it’s not much of an issue.

Suffused with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sunlight, Sanders and Savage spin gorgeous melodies from telepathic harmonies. Two acoustic guitars and two contrasting voices twine around one another to create something entirely classic.

It speaks volumes that covers of Springsteen (Dancing in the Dark) and a Leadbelly song do not stand out from their set. Their own songs are just as vital, just as timeless.

A-Life A-Lie is slow, hushed and beautiful while Deep Blue Sea features a lush, swooning melody and those terrific harmonies. Savage’s voice is bashed and bruised, Sanders’ the balm.

If his voice is the dust on the windscreen, hers is the sunlight coming up over the hills.

So far, on this warm(ish), Spring Saturday the definitions of folk have been stretched pretty thin. Nick Hart, though, is as trad as they come.

One of the very finest interpreters of a folk song around, he is a raconteur with a twinkle in his eye. There’s something of John Martyn about him, something of his hero, Chris Wood, too as he tells his stories and mines the Broadsides.

Jack Hall, Lord Bateman and The Press Gang (also known as Man O’ War) are staples in the English folk tradition and Hart gives them all an exceptional treatment. His voice strong, his delivery spot-on.

This is what great English folk singing sounds like. His version of The Yellow Handkerchief sees a melodious sing-along too. Not exactly “flash company” but brilliant company nonetheless.

Saturday night ends with, quite possibly, the greatest folk musician that England has to offer. It’s pretty hard to overstate the importance of Eliza Carthy to this music.

She’s a member of the folk royal family (the Waterson/Carthy dynasty), has made some of the most important folk albums that there has ever been and is, simply, an upholder, and upsetter, of all of the traditions.

This evening she is accompanied by Dave Delarre on guitar and Saul Rose on melodeon. You couldn’t possibly imagine a better trio, a better way, to end a fantastic day.

Kae Tempest doesn’t come close to Eliza Carthy’s storytelling. photo: Barry Savell

About half way through The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green you start to wonder whether there is a better storyteller, anywhere, than Carthy. She’s so expressive, so honest.

Even someone like Kae Tempest doesn’t come close. Add to that her ferocious way with a fiddle, as well as her filthy chuckle, and it’s incredibly difficult not to imagine that she might be the most treasured of all national treasures.

When the three of them play together electricity crackles through the air. Delarre is a brilliant, lyrical guitarist, Rose a virtuoso on melodeon but Carthy is a whirling, thrashing maelstrom at the heart of every tune. She is, truly, the Queen of the Whirl.

With no particular album to promote, no set of songs that need to be plugged, The Eliza Carthy Trio just do as they please. The Light of Other Days is a nineteenth century poem about depression with a melody written by Carthy and Rose.

It is utterly beautiful and then Carthy’s fiddle rips right through it, leaving it in shreds on the stage. Pretty Polly/Knife in the Window, using the same tune as Hares on a Mountain, has Rose tearing it up on his melodeon and The Downfall of Gin set is simply a foot-stomper and a hand-clapper. It’s intricate but totally joyous.

After all of the Saturday evening excitement the perfect Sunday morning, coming down act were Janice Burns and John Doran.

Largely plundering the folk canon, they harmonised beautifully. Burns’ voice, in particular, is a lovely thing, high with graceful poetic, balletic notes.

Song of the Fishgutters is billed as “our hit”, having racked up very decent streaming numbers, and is an impressive version of the Radio Ballad. Equally Georgie, taken from their debut EP, is exquisite. Gorgeous melodies, wonderful playing and two strong voices.

Creating an altogether different kind of hush was Angeline Morrison. Countless column inches have been written about her in the last year, or so, mainly due to her extraordinary Sorrow Songs album and her determination to have the black British voice heard in folk song.

The hush was created because everything she said, everything that she sang, seemed so loaded with an enormous amount of importance. From stories of slavery – Slave No More – , to a meditation on abusive relationships, to a story of the careless death of a child – Unknown African Boy (d 1830) –  the words were, undoubtedly, the thing.

Accompanied by little more than a shruti box or an auto-harp, everything was sparse and bordering on the experimental. Morrison’s voice carries weight and depth, perfect for the genre challenging mission on which she has set herself.

Where whoops met Janice & John, an awed silence greeted Morrison – often they seemed almost too stunned, too respectful of the subject matter, to even applaud. Almost as though it diminished her achievements.

By the end of her set the audience were emotionally wrung out.

In contrast, as Fay Hield, Sam Sweeney and Rob Harbron took the stage, there was a quick look to either side, a huge grin and a “Right. Are we in tune? Go!”. And “go” they did.

Hield is not only a brilliant Folk singer and banjo player but she’s an academic too, a lecturer in musicology and folk song.

Each song has a story attached, a tale to tell and, by the end of their wonderful set, you just wished you could spend your days in a lecture theatre with her.

She introduces folk standard, The Cruel Mother, as “the worst folk song in the world” but, by the time she has dissected it line by line, idea by idea, she declares it “awful but brilliant”.

The three of them make the oldest songs new. Springfield Mountain – Hield calls it “America’s first folk song” – is attacked with a wild enthusiasm, Hield’s voice full of untamed glory.

There are ragged harmonies on Pretty Nancy, as well as random rattling and blowing from the audience, and a feeling that these wonderful songs can be treated with a tiny bit of irreverence.

Sweeney and Harbron are, of course, a pair of musical geniuses. Effortlessly switching from the sweetest of melodies to a foot stomping fury.

The musical genius doesn’t really let up from there. Calan played to an absolutely packed room, and delivered the kind of late-in-the-festival set that a seriously up-for-it audience needed.

As Welsh as laverbread and daffodils, they were utterly embraced by Bristol. Calan are another of those bands that take something old and make it new, old Welsh folk songs are given a ferocious, danceable make-over with guitar, accordion, pipes and a beautiful, big harp tearing it up.

Kan is partially sung in Welsh, partially in English, it is proudly defiant and so fast that Bethan Rhiannon almost raps the verses. On As the Night Closes In she channels Stevie Nicks for a wonderfully anthemic song – if Wales ever enter Eurovision it should be with this, the perfect mix of tradition and pop.

Mainly, though, Calan are all about creating a delirious noise. By the time Rhiannon step dances on the last set of tunes the Trinity is going wild.

Which is just as well because The Longest Johns are the band that a lot of this (surprising young) audience have come for.

There’s no chin-stroking, aran-sweater wearing stuff here, there is, however, a bloke wearing a pirate hat festooned with light-up ducks jumping about down the front. Taking the old and making it new? Something to irk the purists? Whatever, this is fun.

This is a hometown gig for The Longest Johns and they are, clearly, reveling in it. Raucous shanties are a given, fabulous ocean deep melodies, infectious sing-alongs, numerous songs about boats, the set has it all.

Anything that starts with the Spongebob Squarepants theme isn’t going to take itself too seriously but half way through Haul & Drag you realise that the only thing that matters is that lovely communal thing of singing along. And bouncing like crazy.

The Longest Johns give this audience ample opportunity to do both. By the time Wellerman rolls around there’s no stopping them, the roof comes off, everyone is grinning, everyone is dancing, everyone is singing.

It is the best encapsulation of everything wonderful about folk music.

In our protective weekend bubble the Bristol Folk Festival has, once again, reminded us that everything old can be made anew. When it is, it’s the most beautiful, uplifting, glorious thing you can imagine.

Main photo: Barry Savell

Read next:

• Review: Bristol Folk Festival – ‘From Sengalese Kora to Americana, the festival made a triumphant return’

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