Live Reviews Bromyard Folk
Festival 9-11Sept 2011
fter a week of late summer gales and squalls, the prospects of dry weather looked pretty remote. Even the early morn was damp and drizzly as I set off from the Yorkshire Dales, but the forecast was drier to the south & west. Low and behold, as the M6 carried me south on to the M5 there was sun, and warmth, and blue skies, all good omens for a delightful weekend ahead, in the small west midlands town of Bromyard, and their annual folk festival.
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Bromyard is a small town, and the annual folk festival, usually held in mid September and regarded by many as the last of the summer festivals, attracts just a few thousand people. The festival’s main site, which is also the home to the town’s football team, is where the main events take place, with two large concert marquees and a sizable 1100 capacity Ceilidh house, as well as smaller venues, open-air dance stages, and of course trading areas to cater for the needs of body and soul. Camping is conveniently spread all about the main area, and showers? Well, the football club’s facilities are more than adequate for the average festival goer.
The festival proper kicked off on Friday evening with three events on the main site. Festival Jack-of- all-trades Keith Donnelly hosted the main Wye Valley sponsored stage, introducing the first of several enthralling appearances by Derby’s electric blue-haired songstress Lucy Ward, followed by accordionist Brian Peters, the Glastonbury-based Sieze the Day and the Martin Simpson Band. With the main site being quite compact, it took almost no time to flit over to the Arts Centre marquee, barely avoiding the lure of metallic Glorystrokes entertaining dancers in the Ceilidh House, to sample the sublime Northumbrian young folk award finalists Tyde, and Newfoundland visitors The Once.
Friday night at Bromyard for many ends in the football club bar. Not especially for the beer, as the main bar on site has infinitely more variety, but for one of the
The Living Tradition - Page 60
Review by Andy Piper photographs by Pete Heywood
most rousing festival sing-arounds around, hosted by Graeme Knights and Jim Mageean, and channelling the spirit of the late Johnny Collins.
Come Saturday, the assortment of invited dance sides arrive from far and wide and begin displays of their own speciality, be it Morris, Rapper, Appalachian or Belly dance. There are workshops a- plenty, should you want to have a go, and if not, there are concerts throughout the day too. And, as the festival fills up, it overflows into the nearby town, with busking dancers in every available square or yard, and morris tunes drifting from pubs and bars on the town’s main street, when rain or thirst drove folk inside.
Besides the usual facilities, the town also boasts some smaller venues, and it’s here that some of the most splendid and intimate festival moments happen. Among these venues, the Falcon Mews is by far the best acoustically, and ideal for hosting unamplified concerts featuring both emerging and established artists at their best. Cardiff newcomers Barlow Cree opened proceedings with their take on some traditional songs, followed by Hannah James clogging to Sam Sweeney’s accompaniment. Walsh and Pound’s stunning performances of blistering banjo and breakneck harmonica show they’re destined for greater things, and over in the Public Hall, Glastonbury-based Seize The Day stole the show when they abandoned some unruly amplification for their charged-up set of tribal protest songs.
In contrast, events at the main site were on a grander scale. As you can only be in one place at a time, I was lucky to catch a sublime and humorous set from Jez Lowe & the Bad Pennies, followed after midnight by Keith Donnelly, where his comedic monster was allowed to run rampant... For the insomniacs there were sessions going on well into the small hours (and beyond my stamina), with one held in the crisp acoustics of the club-house shower and, more traditionally, several supported by the Morris sides in and around the beer tent.
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