Sidmouth Folk Festival 2021: Wednesday

Wed 13.42

It is finally hot. A little girl in a floral dress and plastic daisy headband beats time. A boy in a reversed Spider-Man beanie makes a fair attempt at breakdancing. A dog barks. The seagulls provide an aural backdrop. (Steve Knightley suggested sending for Sam Lee on Saturday.) The rock and roll shopping trolley grannies are  not as funny as they think they are. 

All lady folksingers under thirty are called Hannah. (Most of the guys are called Sam.) Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage are as mellow as the afternoon requires. Let No Man Steal Your Time merges into Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose (Will I  Never See You Wed.) Ben tweaks his guitar like a dulcimer. “This song isn’t really about chickens and cherries” they explain, “but this is a family friendly set.” 

“Ain’t  nobody who can sing like me, way down yonder in the minor key” suits the mood,  Is that the first Woody Guthrie song of the week? 

It is very hot. I have taken off  my waistcoat. 

Wed 14 31

The girl with the daisies has progressed to cartwheels. A little girl with a red and white spotty dress throws her ice cream on the grass when she is menaced by a wasp. 

Someone needs to arrange a folk duel between Jack Rutter and Cohen Braithwait-Kilcayne to establish who is the Best Traditional Singer of  Their Generation. Cohen (one third of Granny’s Attic) plays melodeons and accordions and sings traditional songs and music hall numbers. His version of the New Deserter has the hero released from the firing squad by the Duke of York rather than by Prince Albert. The Duke sends him home with some money, where  Prince Albert usually just says he’ll make a good soldier if he can get over the running away thing. That’s what I like about folksongs. So many versions. Cohen’s Jolly Highwayman has lots of verses in common with Alan Tyne of Harrow but its a quite different song. He winds up with the good old Good Old Days standard about the man who’s had cigars and ginger ales with the Duke of Baden-Baden and the Prince of Wales. I wish his set had been five times as long. 

Speaking of ginger ale, I am going to get an ice cream. 

My IPad just informed me it is too hot to type any more. 

Wed 15:34

Red and white spots now has a purple tongue because of her slushy. 

A band called Banter are playing up tempo dancey tunes. Many people bop in their camp chairs.  A grown up lady in sandals at the front shows signs of knowing some actual dance steps. Banter have put a pulsing rhythm to Some Time I Do Reap And Some Time I Do Sow, which I think of as a piece of Paul Sartin miserablism. They do catchy Strike The Bell First Mate and corpse over the word “poop deck”. They sing happy birthday to a young lad of 6 who looks a little bemused. 

I went for strawberry ice  cream but may now resort to beer. I have put my shirt back on to avoid sunburn. 

Wed 18:25

Kellaway Gardens. I am eating a chick pea and spinach curry with a punjabi samosa. A small boy is shouting loudly that he is a “grown up” and a “red tailed booby”, both of which claims I am inclined to doubt. Two of the  travelling people outside the library (the only source of internet coverage) think that folk week is shit compared with previous years, but agree with me that Miranda and Hannah were wonderful on Monday. 

Due to hotness and beer I may not have given the EFDSS Shooting Roots newcomers the attention they deserved. Penny Kempson does very sweet bird themed songs with a fiddle. She sings about sweet nightingales, magpies and song birds. Apparently Victorian ladies tried to teach their caged birds new songs (by playing recorders to them) and books of tunes were published to help them. Who knew? 

Tom Kitching reads funny stories about busking around England and plays phenomenal fiddle tunes to go with them. 

Zoe Wren is also a former busker. She has a funny song telling punters to keep their hands off her guitar and a powerful Alison Kraus cover. She reimagines the famous song so that Sovay, Sovay decides she prefers being a highwayman to her wet boyfriend.

The curry was excellent. The young lad is now a spider bigger than the universe and space. He plans to eat his sister, but since he is a magic spider he is not going to poo her out. 

I make my excuses and leave.

0.31

Bedford is rather sedate. I have half a pint of IPA and listen to some people playing folk music. But then I give up and go back to the Swan where I’ve spent everything is over Avery evening so far. The There is a man with a double Denise there

//BATTERY RUNS OUT//

Thursday 10:12

I am back in the Rincon coffee shop. One of the staff showed me to a table and remembered that I like brown sauce. There are three other people with laptops. Blade Runner was right about cyberspace but wrong about mirror shades. And space colonisation. I digress. 

Hannah and Ben did roughly the same set they did at lunch time which is fine by me. They also did Boots of Spanish Leather which works well with a male voice and a female voice. This brings the number of Dylan songs I have heard this week to one. 

I have tried to like Seth Lakeman, I really have. He is clearly a great musician, and has genuine cross over appeal. The crowd was significantly younger than at the other concerts (although not significantly less white). Only a small amount of his act now consists of the extreme surface-to-air fiddling that I have found wearisome in the past. A lot of it is ballads on good folk themes — the pilgrim fathers, a mining disaster. They, thinking about it, have a distinct Show of Hands vibe. I don’t know which way the influence runs (is there a less well known group that influenced both of them, I wonder?) But it all washes over me, not unpleasantly, but failing to connect. Sorry. 

The man in the Swan had a double BASS. He wound up the night with Knock Knock Knocking on Heaven’s Door,  bringing the Dylan score to two.

Autocorrect will be the dearth of us all. 

 

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