Follow the Passengers in Time blog for more of my ‘alternative Grammy’ recommendations!
Passengers in Time
...Adventures with books, music and time travel
Friday 9 February 2024
Accordions, self-made men and cloudheads
Thursday 28 December 2023
Four seasons in one blog post
I seem to have neglected my blog since the spring and now it’s nearly the end of the year. It’s not because I’ve had nothing to report. On the contrary, I’ve been busy taking in lots of good music, doing lots of writing and travelling quite a bit - but the poor old blog has, like my garden, been left to lie fallow. Let’s hope the quality of the soil will have improved in the interim and the yield will be increased in the coming year.
My latest album, released in June 2023 |
But life has a way of getting in the way of our plans, and so it was that throughout May, the house demanded attention in the form of some significant cracks in the ceilings of the living room and the landing. For days on end my home was taken over by plasterers - and then carpet fitters - so the concentration needed for writing was hard to find. I did manage to attend a Writing West Midlands Regional Writers’ Meet-up in Stratford, which only made me feel more guilty for not devoting more time to writing fiction. Having said that, over the course of 2023, I’ve been more active on the journalistic front, and have had twenty pieces published in a variety of magazines including Songlines and Resurgence so, with hindsight, I can see my writing energies, rather than lying dormant, have simply been redirected into journalism.
In May I also attended the Dulcimers at Halsway weekend, (an annual event I’ve written about in the past on this blog,) but this was the first
time I’d spent the Halsway week sleeping in my microcamper, which made the
event feel more ‘outdoorsy’ (as well as making the trip more economical.) As always, I learnt a
lot from the visiting mountain dulcimer tutors who, this year, were the
wonderful Erin Mae Lewis from Kansas and Thomasina Levy from Connecticut.
June finally saw the release of my album with a launch gig
at the Swan Theatre’s Culture Café in Worcester as well as a radio ‘appearance’
on Black Country Radio (with their incomparable presenter, Billy Spakemon.)
One of the best open mic nights in Cumbria |
Damian Clarke - hurdy-gurdy man - in Worcester |
My August was, like the previous year, largely taken up with the Purbeck
Valley Folk Festival followed swiftly by Shrewsbury Folk Festival. In between
these two festivals there was more drama on the domestic front as my washing
machine gave up the ghost and needed replacing.
So, first, Purbeck...
There can’t be many other festivals where, from the
campsite, you can catch a glimpse of a steam train and have a clear view of a
thousand-year-old castle. Nearby Corfe Castle stands sentinel, guarding the
route through the Purbeck Hills that leads to this gem of a musical gathering.
This year’s headline attractions included English
alt-rockers The Magic Numbers, electro-acoustic whizz-kid Newton Faulkner (who
also shared insights in a guitarists’ workshop) and the ever-popular Seth
Lakeman.
Alongside these big names, Purbeck excels at supporting
emerging artists such as multi-instrumental songwriter Den Miller, a finalist
of last year’s Purbeck Rising Showcase. Miller’s performance, switching
effortlessly from ingenious parody to thought-provoking meditations on modern
life, was testament to Purbeck’s nurturing spirit.
One of the more innovative acts was Mishra (more of which later,) who transfixed
the audience – despite a brief rain shower – with their fusion of UK folk and
Indian classical music. Accompanying themselves with foot percussion and bass
pedals, the duo played banjo, low flute, bombarde and drums – and sang! On
Sunday they reemerged as a full band to satisfy the audience in the Big Barn.
The kora was well-represented by both Senegalese/American duo Touki and by Sousou and Maher Cissoko (Senegal/Sweden) but the festival’s secret weapon came from Brittany in the form of Plantec whose electro-Breton sound had the euphoric crowds bouncing as if spellbound by the unlikely, high-energy combination of bombarde, guitar and laptop-generated beats.
Breabach at Shrewsbury Folk Festival |
Red Guitars in Birmingham |
Mishra at Shrewsbury Coffee House |
November saw, on the domestic front, a major operation involving
thinning out and lopping several overgrown trees in my garden. But I also got
to see Mishra live for the fifth time this year – this time at Shrewsbury
Coffee House with my brother Phil, who took a picture of me with Kate and Ford.
Kate & Ford from Mishra, with your humble blogger |
And then Christmas arrived and I got into my usual flap, writing Christmas cards, buying presents, and trying not to be grumpy. My next blog post will share with you some of the great albums I’ve
discovered in 2023 …and I'll try not to leave it so long between posting. That almost sounds like a resolution. Happy New Year!
Saturday 29 April 2023
Graeme Armstrong, John Blek and Plu - new music from Scotland, Ireland and Wales
First, to Graeme Armstrong’s stunning You Are
Free. Graeme takes traditional songs like ‘Isle of France,’ ‘Fine
Flowers in the Valley’ and ‘My Son David’ and presents them in fresh
arrangements with nice touches of synth and electric guitar, without losing the
deep roots of these songs. Alongside the traditional – and songs by writers
like Dick Gaughan and Karine Polwart – Graeme includes some moving original songs
of his own such as the title track, ‘William’s Song’ and ‘Sit Alone’ (which
features a hip guitar sound reminiscent of the American band Beach House.) But
it’s Graeme’s sensitive version of Karine Polwart’s ‘Waterlily’ that stopped me
in my tracks. The original is moving enough but Graeme’s version seems even
more poignant.
The songwriting could come from an earlier era – the days of Clifford T Ward or Mike Hugg or even Dan Fogelberg – strong, unfussy, 'hooky', perfect. I love John's effortless vocals, the varied arrangements and the instrumentation. The opening track ‘St John’s Eve’ should – in any normal world – be a number-one hit with its luscious string arrangement and baritone guitar sound. ‘Lovelorn’ (and the title track) are beautiful melodies that could have been Gene Pitney hits in a parallel universe. If, like me, you were unaware of John Blek, it’s time you caught up with him.
Links:
Graeme Armstrong You Are Free (Graeme
Armstrong Records)
Sunday 29 January 2023
The joys and perils of solo festival-going
Regular readers of my blogs may be aware that, halfway
through last year, I acquired a micro-camper which opened up new possibilities
for the summer. You can read more about the story (and back-story) to my
micro-camping escapades in my slowly unfolding companion blog Travels with my Dulcimer - Micro-adventures in a micro-camper …with a dulcimer. After a
‘maiden voyage’ to Ross on Wye in early August to test out van-life I travelled
down to the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset for the Purbeck Valley Folk Festival.
The next day, it’s Purbeck Rising – a showcase of emerging
artists and outstanding among these is Den Miller, a singer-songwriter from
Keighley in Yorkshire. Not only does he perform a powerful song on the autoharp
but Den also wows the audience with his satirical ‘Right-Winger Folk
Singer’. The second evening draws to an end with Show of Hands.
Despite having had fairly major dental surgery just days
before I decide to put myself down for a half-hour slot on the open mic stage.
This seems to go okay but it’s only later, when I catch my reflection in the
mirror, that I realise my face is so swollen and bruised from the dentistry the
audience must have thought I’d been in a bar-room brawl.
Making hay while the festival season sun shone, I headed
home from Purbeck only to set off a few days later for Shrewsbury Folk
Festival. As I mentioned earlier, Shrewsbury is my hometown but, in many ways,
spending three or four days at Shrewsbury Folk Festival is a very different experience
to spending a few days in Shrewsbury. Several dulcimer friends were at the
festival, providing introductory workshops to the instrument and – though I hadn’t
planned to – I helped them in a small way with some of their dulcimer activities.
On my first day I catch Scottish folk trio Talisk, (including guitarist Graeme Armstrong, whose debut solo album ‘You Are Free’ was another one of the best folk albums of 2022.) Whether I’m soaking up the music and the sunshine or playing a bit of dulcimer, the weekend goes well until the Saturday evening when someone steals my folding camping chair. One of the hazards of being a solo festival-goer is that there’s no one to watch over your chair while you head to the beer tent for a refill. Having left my chair a couple of times at Purbeck it never occurred to me that anyone in Shrewsbury would steal it! Luckily I’ve got a back-up picnic blanket but, at my age, a man likes to sit in a chair (albeit one that is collapsible) while watching the acts.
The loss of my chair is disproportionality shocking to me. I'm angry and shocked because I feel sure nobody from Shrewsbury would be so wicked as to steal a camping chair and I'm also upset because they have taken advantage of the fact that my
late wife is no longer able to keep an eye on it for me (as, of course, she is no longer sat
in the camping chair next to me!) It's not just a chair I'm missing. I try to convey some of my dismay to the
stewards who are all lovely and kind but can do nothing to remedy the theft. Still, I’ve
learnt my lesson. Next time, I’ll have
to risk appearing weird by making friends with the audience members sitting next to me – or else take my chair
with me and risk losing my carefully chosen spot.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an unusually immersive experience. Camping areas are interspersed within the festival site and, in the bars, the impromptu sound of English and Irish music is omnipresent. There’s a strong emphasis on dance, too, from Morris dancing and frenetic late-night ceilidhs to a French dance workshop with the Rheingans Sisters. Workshops and activities form an essential element, giving children and adults the opportunity to try out unfamiliar instruments and learn new skills.
Monday 5 December 2022
John Buchan and a different pair of shoes
Buchan (1875-1940) had a remarkable life as a novelist, historian
and diplomat who ended up as Governor General of Canada. His literary speciality
was writing what he called ‘shockers’, by which he meant an adventure story that
combined personal and political dramas, where the events were pretty implausible
but the reader is just able to believe in them. If you can disregard the casual,
unselfconscious racism and misogyny that was characteristic of early 21st
century writing Buchan’s adventure stories are still great fun. Part of the fun
for me is his use of curious contemporary words and phrases which have since become
anachronisms - but are surely worth reviving.
For example, in ‘Mr Standfast’ there’s the use of the phrase
“a different pair of shoes” where, nowadays, we’d be more likely to refer (with
no greater logic) to “a different kettle of fish”: “Letchford was a
different pair of shoes. He was some kind of a man, to begin with, and had an
excellent brain and the worst manners conceivable...”
And do you know what it is to feel ‘hipped’? In ‘The Power-House’
the protagonist Leithen admits: “I had had a bad reaction from the
excitements of the summer, and in these days I was feeling pretty well hipped
and overdone...” In US English ‘feeling hipped’ seems to mean being excessively
interested or preoccupied with something, (which could the case here,) but
there is an old-fashioned use in British English of ‘hipped’ meaning depressed
or melancholy. This seems to fit better with the feeling of being “pretty well hipped
and overdone.”
Apart from these linguistic curiosities, Buchan could make
some serious and prescient observations through the vehicle of his ‘shockers’. In
‘The Power-House’, Leithen meets Lumley - a man who inhabits a world “without
the ring of civilisation”, a man of “pure intelligence … stripped of
every shred of humanity”. In a chilling exchange Lumley says:
“Did you ever reflect, Mr. Leithen, how precarious is the
tenure of the civilisation we boast about?"
"I should have thought it fairly substantial,"
I said, "and the foundations grow daily firmer."
He laughed. "That is the lawyer's view, but believe me you are wrong. Reflect, and you will find that the foundations are sand. You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn..."
We have only to think of President Trump’s supporters
storming Congress in January 2021 or Putin’s forces directly targeting a
children's hospital and a maternity ward in Mariupol in March 2022 to see how thin
is the line between civilisation and barbarism.
‘The Power-House’ was published in 1916 but what Lumley
tells Leithen about our politicians could have been inspired by the pandemic’s
PPE scandal or the financial instability caused by Liz Truss’s brief tenure as
Prime Minister: “Take the business of Government. When all is said, we are
ruled by the amateurs and the second-rate. The methods of our departments would
bring any private firm to bankruptcy. The methods of Parliament—pardon me—would
disgrace any board of directors...”
It wasn’t just George Orwell who predicted the state in
which we would find ourselves.
Wednesday 26 October 2022
Some Hauntological Musical Curiosities for Halloween
If you’re looking for some fresh music to add to your Halloween playlists here’s a few spooky selections from the world of slightly strange folk music, to make a change from I Put a Spell On You and The Monster Mash.
First up, is the eponymous debut album by The Witching Tale. What could be more appropriate for Halloween? I’m afraid, on first encounter, I was all too ready to dismiss this as just so much airy-fairy hokum. The purple prose of the press release didn’t help to dispel this impression, describing The Witching Tale as “a black celebration of the magical power of eroticism.” And yet, listening to these ten tracks in the days leading up to Halloween last year, two thoughts occurred to me. First, this is the perfect soundtrack for an All Hallows’ Eve gathering. Second, the music is intriguing and – dare I say – enchanting.
The Witching Tale are Michael J York (synthesisers,
bagpipes, piano, hurdy-gurdy and a host of other instruments) and Katharine
Blake (vocals and recorders.) Blake is best known as a founding member of Mediaeval
Baebes. The blend of multi-layered analogue synths, traditional instruments and
Blake’s flawless voice creates a powerful atmosphere redolent of folk horror.
Tracks like ‘The Falling Garden,’ with its off-kilter harmonies and straggling recorders,
could be music from ‘The Wicker Man’ or ‘Children of the Stones.’ If
hauntological curiosities are your thing, you too may fall under The Witching Tale’s spell.
My second offering is another debut album, Ingen Mere Gråter by Ævestaden. There’s a subgenre called ‘dream pop’ that includes bands from Cocteau Twins to Beach House – Ævestaden’s music could be described as ‘dream folk.’ This Norwegian/Swedish trio’s debut is a little, enigmatic gem – and I’m completely captivated by it.
Ævestaden are Eir Vatn Strøm, Levina Storåkern
and Kenneth Lien, all fine multi-instrumentalists and singers. They describe
their songs as being about the conscious and the subconscious, the secular and
the sacred, life and death. They combine traditional instrumentation – lyre,
fiddle, mouth harp, langeleik and kantele – with a subtle use of
electronics, creating a bewitching sonic backdrop to their melodically
adventurous vocals. It’s hard to find comparisons but, at times, Ævestaden’s
music reminded me of English psychedelic folk duo The Left Outsides.
Ingen Mere Gråter is made up of three traditional songs and
three original songs, the finale being ‘Flytta’ where, the music is gradually
joined by the sound of a rainstorm which ends abruptly before the final track
‘Heilo’ – thirty-seven seconds of birdsong fading into the distance – as if to
suggest, where human words and music cease, nature endures. There’s a definite
other-worldliness to Ævestaden’s music, which lends itself perfectly to this
season of liminality.
Finally, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Anna Tam’s album Hatching Hares. As well as playing cello and piano, Anna uses more historic folk instruments like nyckelharpa, viola da gamba and hurdy gurdy to accompany her singing. As it happens, Anna (like Katharine Blake of The Witching Tale) is a former member of Medieval Baebes.
Hatching Hares includes ten songs and five instrumentals (most of the latter being traditional tunes.) There’s a lot of variety on the album but I’m including it in my spooky Halloween selection here because there’s something a little eerie, to my ears, about tunes like ‘St Martin’s Waltz’ and the song ‘The Snow It Melts the Soonest.’ What’s more, Anna includes a proper ghost story, enhanced by creepy electronic effects, in the form of ‘Holland Handkerchief.’ So, whether it’s The Witching Tale’s spellbinding soundscapes, Ævestaden’s Scandinavian dream-folk or the ghostly singing and playing of Anna Tam, why not try out these spine-chilling selections this Halloween?
Wednesday 3 August 2022
Gabriel Moreno, origami rats and sellotaped hearts
Even before considering the lyrics, I was intrigued by some
of the songs titles – ‘Dance in an Empty Field,’ ‘Sellotape My Heart.’ But the
lyrics are remarkable; they’re full of delightful surprises but are never
awkward or overblown. There is a danger – with poets who are also songwriters –
that their song lyrics are no more than poems set to redundant music, that the
words have more weight than the music, as if the text could do its job on its
own without the need for a musical accompaniment. Ideally, the music should be
integral to the lyrics, and vice versa – otherwise it’s not songwriting but mere
words-set-to-music. Moreno understand this. Being both a poet and a songwriter,
he makes the words and music work perfectly together.
There’s great humour too. ‘Solitude’ addresses Solitude personified:
“...Solitude, I am sick and tired of being alone with
you, surely things must change...” and “...O solitude you charlatan, you
made porridge with our brains...”
‘Feel Like Dancing’ is an alternative take on the countless
pop songs that express the desire to get on the dance floor; Moreno’s is a
tribute to the introvert’s joy in dancing alone at home:
“I feel like dancing, alone in my room, / here I am the
genius of mirrors and cells, / I am building a dance floor with my favourite
books, / I am closing the window to my worldly concerns...” while ‘Everyday
News’ is a beautiful, piano-based song, which has the lullaby-quality of some
of Tom Waits’ early heart-breaking songs. Moreno’s music, though, has an unmistakably European
feel, with its lyrics referencing Baudelaire and Yeats and a musical landscape
that reminds me of the best of Peter Sarstedt.
About me
- Tony Gillam
- Tony Gillam is a writer, musician and blogger based in Worcestershire, UK. For many years he worked in mental health and has published over 100 articles and two non-fiction books. Tony now writes on topics ranging from children's literature to world music and is a regular contributor to Songlines magazine.