Music / Reviews
Review: Martin Simpson, Folk House – ‘A touring stalwart proof of the living folk tradition’
I last saw Martin Simpson about twenty years ago, performing in a sheepmart. In what was otherwise a perfect performance he made some jokes about class A narcotics which put the middle-aged Yorkshire audience in a quandary: total disapproval at the same time as not wanting to look uncool.
The awkwardness was so amusing and I eagerly anticipated a reprisal at Friday’s Bristol gig. My heart was beating harder than a left-wing liberal getting coked-up while realising their direct complicity in slavery, murder and deforestation. But the best we got from Simpson this time was hearing about the ‘massive bag of drugs’ his doctor gave him to recover from a stroke.
I saw Martin appear in the back of the Folk House hall to make his way to the stage at the front. While everyone was mumbling in their seats, he clocked the packed room and gave a charming little gasp of excitement to the soundman.
is needed now More than ever
From then on, though, the evening was one long, expansive, careful wash of soothing sounds and playful anecdotes which were variously moving or fascinating.
In the sixth decade of his career, Simpson weaves song and story with beguiling and complex guitar melodies
In fact, Simpson’s chat gives a beautiful setting for each gem-like song, even though the background is sometimes lengthier than the song itself. In no way did this feel like short change. The stories, histories and detail given around each number genuinely foregrounded the music so as to carefully tend to the authenticity of songs he’s inherited from the folk tradition as well as to ground his own material in that continuum.
What’s more, Simpson played, sang and spoke for nearly two hours with ne’er a stir from the entranced crowd.
Friday’s set list was a tour through the diverse periods of Simpson’s career, now in its sixth decade and clearly still as productive as committed. Material ranged from traditional British folk to bluesy Americana.
Guitar parts were beguilingly simple, weaving melody and counter-melody around variation-on-variation, with a subtle fluidity of tempo that dances around the narrative emphases that emerge from the clear and unaffected vocal delivery.
Martin really likes guitars. He told us so a few times. But he also told us about history, musicography, ethnography, politics, the personal, the ecological. He really, really likes birds. And he reads a lot of obscure books by self-publishing local history enthusiasts.
And as gentle as he is, his own enthusiasm for all these things – sometimes of massive import, often very humble – is of a kind that draws you into the writing process as much as the performance.
There is a genuine gentleness and humility – at one point Martin apologised over the mic as he worked through some highly complex finger-work. A bum note, apparently, although I’d just taken it for a nifty phrase briefly passing through mixolydian modulation. That gentleness, alongside the background info, is what allows the songs to really speak for themselves.
Simpson entranced the Folk House crowd with his tales and playing for two hours
And that’s what Martin seems to want, so that the songs let their subject matters speak. Brought to life is the plight of the UK harrier hawk population, ancient Easter carols, Sherman tanks raised from the waters, persecuted black buskers, saw mills, folk clubs, highwaymen, coalmines and war.
The detail that pulls you in is the political that cries out for justice. And of one song touching on UK politics, Martin politely observed “I couldn’t find a sufficiently poignant melody to support the line ‘what a bunch of lying twats’”.
I hate the American habit of routine standing ovations. Thankfully English folk clubs are good and noone did this. But this was one of the best gigs I’ve seen and the closing applause was a strong affirmation, full of affection, devoid of sentimentality, and confident that we’ll see this hard-working man again soon.
All images: Seamus MacDougall
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