23 f The Demonisation Of Folk
There’s a Facebook campaign to have the Demon Barber Roadshow play the opening ceremony of the Olympics. As ideas go, it’s less daft than some. Colin Irwin catches up with the spectacular troupe. Photos: Judith Burrows.
D
amien Barber is looking rather pleased with himself. Pious even. The morning after the BBC Folk Awards and he doesn’t have a hangover. Sen-
sible, see. Didn’t hang round at the end. Behaved himself. Decent night’s sleep.
He’s just turned 40 – had a lovely week
off in the Peak District to mark the occa- sion, thanks – and is no longer the party animal he may have been at 39, seemingly replacing this part of his life by making a new niche for himself as the folk world’s premier tweeter. “I don’t feel I need to prove myself any more,” he says, attacking the first of several coffees. “It’s quite a relief, actually.”
The other members of the Demon Bar-
bers aren’t quite as chipper, drifting into the café amid an avalanche of yawns and groans, chiding Bryony Griffith for dancing like a dervish when The Levellers – a major obsession during her teenage years – came on. Yep, they ended up back at the after- show party talking gibberish, spending their life savings on hotel drinks, staying up deep into the night and now feeling like death warmed up. Damien observes their pain benignly. The poor wee lambs are all still in their 30s…
Two years ago when Damien was a mere 38, the Demon Barbers were nomi- nated for the Best Live Act award and, up against Bellowhead, Lau and Seth Lake- man, they came to London anticipating nothing more than a good night out. “We were just amazed to be nominated and we certainly didn’t expect to win,” says Damien. But win they did, returning to Yorkshire with a fresh spring in their step and a sexy new line to stick on their promo. “It made a huge difference to us winning that award,” says Damien. “It still does. I think we all know what the Folk Awards is about – it’s not necessarily a pat on the back, it’s business and it makes a big difference – CD sales, book- ings, publicity…”
No gongs this year, though. Best Live Act went to Bellowhead, with whom they performed so spectacularly at the 2005 Awards, but are they downhearted? Nooooooooooo, they echo. They had a good time, it was an honour just to be nominated, etc. “I’ve no idea what Dono- van was going on about though,” confides Damien. “Did he invent folk music? Was that it?” Last night drummer Ben Griffith met one of his heroes Jeremy Vine (you know, Eggheads Jeremy Vine) who, much to Ben’s unabated delight, subsequently
mentioned him on the radio. They also had their photo taken with Tamsin Greig from one of Damien’s favourite TV shows Green Wing (and Black Books, Episodes and The Archers). “Makes up for being losers,” he laughs.
So, not downhearted at all. Besides, an exciting year pans out ahead of them. The Demon Barbers – and especially, the considerably larger force of nature that is the Demon Barbers Roadshow – have been steadily advancing the horizons of tradi- tional music and dance for a decade. And now they’re poised to take it all a whole lot further with a new show – Time Gentle- men Please! – which takes their bold fusion of folk-rockery with clog, morris and rapper “maverick English folk” to quote their own publicity – to a whole dif- ferent level, blending it with modern street dancing.
The show is set inside a pub called the Fighting Cocks – no typecasting there then! Damien is dressed as a gangster, all swagger and porkpie hat. Melodeon play- er Will Hampson is a rowdy football fan. Fiddle player/singer Bryony Griffith is a goth. Her brother Ben Griffith is Jasmine The Betty, the bearded fool who, Bryony observes, looks in full make-up just like their gran. A couple of bouncers emerge to keep order as cultures clash and the clog dancers get involved in a battle of skills with street dancers indulging their acrobatic expertise in the thrilling dark arts of breakdancing, popping and krump- ing (not, as you might imagine, a variant on apple-stealing but an intense hip-hop dance born on the streets of LA). With two sets of archetypes on either side, it all results in a stand-off, including a surreal confrontation between Jasmine The Betty and the human beatboxer supplying rhythms for the street dancers. And then, in classic Run DMC v Aerosmith Walk This Way heavy-rap-meets-heavy-metal fash- ion, they all get together to prove that, apart from a couple of centuries, an occa- sional ocean and radically different tech- niques, there really is very little difference between them.
“Clog and street dance actually come from similar backgrounds,” says Damien. “In time-scale and geography they’re totally different but basically it’s still poor people entertaining themselves and we were interested in looking at that.”
The show has been germinating for a long time, almost since the Roadshow was first mooted more than a decade ago.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108