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The instrumental arrangements are equally essential to the band’s ability to draw us into the songs; the subtlety, sensitivity, vari- ation and creativity of the band’s arrange- ments are of the highest quality. They skilfully create catchy instrumental hooks to frame the verses of the ballads, and compose counter tunes that contrast with the main melody.
The Irish emigration song Mickey Dam has a great driving rhythm and sparkling, inventive counter-tunes on fiddle and flute. The magnificent rendition of Nic Jones’ Ruins By The Shore is beautifully enhanced by the delicate pizzicato accompaniment. The slow ballad Mother Nature (one of two Paul McKenna compositions on the album) has rapid rhythmic string and percussion accompa- niment, building dramatic tension and burst- ing into a superb, up-tempo counter-tune. The band’s version of James Keelaghan’s Cold Mis- souri Waters is an emotional rollercoaster that leaves you feeling like you’ve stumbled out of the cinema after watching an epic drama.
At December 2012’s Scots Trad Music
Awards, Paul McKenna won Scots Singer of the Year and fiddler Mike Vass won Compos- er of the Year. This album tells you why.
www.paulmckennaband.com Paul Matheson
MICHAEL CHAPMAN Rainmaker Light In The Attic LITA 079
Fully Qualified Survivor Light In The Attic LITA 060
Wrecked Again Light In The Attic LITA 101
Remastered CD editions of the first, second and fourth Michael Chapman albums (origi- nally released on EMI’s Harvest label) beauti- fully packaged in gatefold sleeves with exten- sive new booklets.
Rainmaker (1969) documents Chapman’s early adventures in Cornwall (where he first pitched up in1966) – a jazz-obsessive from Leeds who accidentally found himself in the midst of a burgeoning guitar-based folk boom, spearheaded by Ralph McTell (from whom he learned his first alternate tuning) and Wizz Jones. The accompanying booklet is full of memorabilia and photos from this scene, including one of Michael accompany- ing ‘La Grande Cornouaillaise’, Brenda Woot- ton (who, in 1974, recorded this album’s No Song To Sing as the title track of one of her own releases). While this album occasionally (and understandably) sounds like an artist still finding his feet (You Say is a close relative of Girl From The North Country), many of the celebrated Chapman trademarks – the lan- guidly soulful vocal delivery, the proper, grown-up, masculine love songs, the pen- chant for quirky titles, the dextrous, atmo- spheric instrumental compositions and that monumentally huge acoustic guitar sound – are already present and correct on this evoca- tive record, the very epitome of ‘heavy folk’.
Fully Qualified Survivor (1970) is, to date, the only Chapman album to trouble the com- pilers of the UK Top 50 album chart, and is home to some of his best-loved songs (Post- cards Of Scarborough, Kodak Ghosts, Aviator, Rabbit Hills) and instrumental pieces (Naked Ladies And Electric Ragtime, Andru’s Easy Rider.) It’s also the album that introduced Chapman’s fellow guitar-playing Yorkshire- man buddy Mick Ronson; so catching the ear of David Bowie who, if only ‘pastiching’ Anthony Newley’s style on The Laughing Gnome, was just lifting Michael Chapman’s wholesale for Hunky Dory, as Stranger In The Room and Soulful Lady here reveal. Fully Qualified Survivor, with its superb core combo of Chapman, Ronson, Rick Kemp and Barry Morgan and empathetic Gus Dudgeon production, remains Chapman’s signature
work (in much the same way that Solid Air remains John Martyn’s) and should be any- one’s first Michael Chapman album purchase.
Wrecked Again (1971) was Chapman’s final album for Harvest and a last-ditch tilt at the elusive big time. Producer Gus Dudgeon recorded it at Rockfield Studios, in something akin to the country-rock style with which he was enjoying considerable success via Elton John. The album sports a much bigger sup- porting cast of session musicians than any of its predecessors (including drummer Pick Withers, now famed for his work with Dire Straits, Bob Dylan and, er… Ian A Anderson), backing singers and orchestrations. The release was followed by an ill-starred US tour that saw the hitherto staunchly loyal Kemp bale out midway (with “a lady in a green Mustang”) and Chapman, skint and disillu- sioned, heading back to Cornwall and vowing never to perform again. For all that, Wrecked Again is still a very good record indeed, well worth discovering, not least for the quality of the songwriting.
Thankfully, Chapman didn’t hold good on his threats to quit. He’s still singing his beautiful laid-back songs of loss and regret, still producing that colossal guitar sound and still exuding what Plinth’s Michael Tanner memorably dubbed that ineffable truck driv- er cool. He’s also enjoying something of a late popular flourish (thanks, in part to the homage-paying likes of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Espers’ Meg Baird). These early records chart the beginning of a continuing legend.
www.michaelchapman.co.uk Steve Hunt
BLACKBEARD’S TEA PARTY Whip Jamboree BTP 003
There used to be a glorious bunch of sinners called Arkwright’s Ferret. They gleefully mixed folk rock with pointing finger poetry and were often found gigging on the pave- ment as much as the stage. All another story for another day, but Blackbeard’s Tea Party don’t half remind me of that same cavalier spirit, the same ‘play wherever they’ll listen’ intention and the same ‘heads down, let’s have a good time’ motivation.
Whip Jamboree is just a bit decent as well. If you’ve got to improve in public then making giant leaps between debut and second offer- ing is the way to be going about it. They really have invested time, thought, and a huge dol-
Michael Chapman
lop of yo ho ho into this new album and if it doesn’t pay dividends there is no justice.
They’re all packed tight as sardines on the dance floor roaring, with latest box play- er Stuart Giddens looking a little unsure as to what he’s let himself in for, whilst Tim ‘have bass will travel’ Yates gurns and sweats pro- fusely. Full throttle is pretty much the setting for the whole CD; if they’re not reeling and jigging they’re into chunky chorus numbers, revenge killings or lusty bedroom antics.
From the off, the music’s rounded, loud and beat driven, plenty of deep-end bass, staccato fiddle, surges of Martin Coumbe’s lead guitar. Tunes galore remind you that the Tea Party are a top drawer ceilidh outfit – plenty of festival floors to be filled this sum- mer – they roar through old-time stomps, fleet-footed reels and plump morris melodies.
An item of prospective attractions for those who like to be left breathless and pret- ty chipper for anybody else. Thumbs up with- out a doubt.
www.blackbeardsteaparty.com Simon Jones VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Beautiful Old: Turn-Of-The-Century Songs DR-104
One of those brilliant ideas that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before, The Beautiful Old takes a selection of popu- lar of Victorian and Edwardian songs and gives them to a stellar cast of contemporary performers and lets them loose. Richard Thompson, Kim Richey, The Band’s Garth Hudson (contributing magnificent piano throughout) and Eric Bibb, amongst others, have a ball and in doing so both reinvent the songs and show another side of Victorian popular song, so often seen as just bawdy, raucous and unimportant.
Everything is taken straight, there’s no knowing irony or Good Old Days nudge- nudge hamming it up. Thompson’s The Band Played On is done in the style of Al Bowlly’s In Heaven, while one of the most well-known pieces and a mainstay of the folk scene for years, Silver Dagger, is given an almost jaunty reboot by Jolie Goodnight. But it’s two veter- ans who steal the show. The Flying Trapeze, one of those songs where everyone knows two lines (“he flies through the air…”) is given to Graham Parker who sounds as if his vocal cords are made of elastic, so far does he
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