man in hat creates electric storm

Another album another tour. Richard Thompson is becoming the grand old man of folk-rock. Having been present at its birth with his pioneering work with Fairport Convention (a band he helped form and then left around ‘71) he has been solo – albeit with then-wife Linda for a few years – ever since. It is a reflection on the dearth of reasonable mid-size Bristol venues that, if RT (as us diehards know him) is coming to town then the Colston Hall is where you have to go. A hall of suspect acoustics and dire seating arrangements so that the experience is more akin to watching a works safety video and giving the performer some work to do to whip up an atmosphere. Still, the boy has played here often enough in the past so he knows what he has to do.
The show follows the usual pattern of his tours, some tracks from the new album – Sweet Warrior this time – followed by a rummage around his back catalogue. It has to be said that his new album sounds like a return to form – that much touted expression that often means at least it’s not as bad as their recent work (see Front Parlour Ballads – I just listened to it again, hmm) but in this case it definitely seems to stand up with some of the greater, earlier stuff.
You also get an acoustic section. So we were treated to a Sandy Denny vintage Fairport song (Who Knows Where the Time Goes – almost intact) together with a gripping Vincent Black Lightning. No Beeswing but in a way that was quite refreshing in itself. What you get most prominently, however, is some blistering electric guitar work. We were sufficiently close to notice that the finger work was looking increasingly like some crab addled on acid picking and clawing at all the strings in some frenzy. Yay! Whilst each song generally gives RT some range for soloing, this tour’s wig out song is Hard on Me taken from the Mock Tudor album and his guitar is given a serious mangling over about 10 minutes, reminiscent of the pounding that Calvary Cross used to get. Quality stuff indeed and verging on the transcendental. This is not just soloing because he’s a guitar god but seriously exorcising some angst in the way that Neil Young and, yes, old boy Hendrix are renowned for. And it’s fantastic to be a witness to it.
And an honourable mention for Michael Jerome on drums, Danny Thompson on double bass and Pete Zorn on pretty much everything. All had a fine evening with particular credit for their soloing on Al Bowley’s in Heaven. The scheduled support act passed us by – we forgot it was an old folk’s night which means it all starts on time. Hey ho.
So, you get a show that follows the format of pretty much all the shows he does on his tours but within that you get some stonkingly fine stuff that makes the experience new all over again. So I guess I now start the wait for the next tour.

Down in Bishopston, something stirs

The heart of alt.country Americana comes to a parish church hall in the backwoods of Bishopston. How do they do it? When I last went there was a crowd (crowd?) of around 10 for the wonderful Joe Henry. He deserved better – did anyone else know he was playing there? So imagine our surprise to discover what seemed a stadium-size crowd for Richmond Fontaine. A group who won the hearts of all the middle aged rock mags (Uncut, Mojo etc) in the UK a couple of years back, before being cast aside again which maybe explains why they now keep popping up in Bristol. There was some trepidation as to whether they would live up to my own fevered expectations – if they were that good what were they doing in a room previously occupied by so few people? Well not to worry. They appeared as a five piece – two fender telecasters, one pedal steel (alternated with trumpet), bass and drums. As they developed a groove on the first number the guitarist upped and legged it, the others carrying on and paying him no mind. In fact he only reappeared for the closing chords. An interesting start. However, as they got further into their act the better they got. Tracks from their recent albums intertwined with older ones back to Post to Wire – including the fabulously weird Willamette giving them a chance to freak out in a psychedelic style as they used to say. Not to everyone’s taste but definitely mine. In Willy Vlautin they have a songwriter who explores the darker side of life – again, not everyone’s choice but I love a bit of angst-riddled depression – whilst maintaining a relaxed repartee with the crowd. He announced that we’d be able to dance to the next one. We couldn’t and I’d claim no-one even tried. The rest of the band were on the mark too – fine lead guitar and fabulous pedal steel and much better than you’d think dollops of trumpet which really did work. And the bass player has his own solo album out which is some feat (although the track he played for one of the encores suggested his songwriting skills are not as well-honed as Willy’s. So a fine show to the truncated end – he announced they could only play one more and someone pointed out that there were still two listed on his set-list. Blame the cruel burghers of Bristol or something. He and the band were great.

Folk music - it's a young man's world

This item is dedicated to absent friends who were confounded by geography.
Following on from our trip to Frome and the acoustic dungeon it was reassuring to see on the Bristol Academy’s website an endorsement from the NUS that “sound quality is of a high standard”. Good start. It also claims that “the balconies and different levels are perfect for band watching”. Not normally an issue but don’t knock it. So it was with a cheerful step that we bounced out of Zero Degrees (mango beer again?!) along to the venue and into another bar. The reality of the balconies and different levels comment is that if you have got there early and bagged a space up against the railings then great, otherwise you’re worse off than normal. Hey ho.
So to Seth. He seems to be accelerating at a rate of knots having first seen him just under two years ago in the back room of a pub and then through a variety of venues, including the aforesaid Frome dungeon (actually it was bad then too) and, as others have also said, one of the finest performances at Glastonbury this summer and now here he is filling up 1,600 seater venues. Not bad for a folkie. But then he has adapted with the change. On first sighting as a duo with his mate Benji then appearing as the Seth Lakeman trio (there were four of them) and now what presumably is the Seth Lakeman quartet (there were five of them). So you get Seth on fiddle and various (deliberately) four string guitars and a bit of banjo, his brother Sean on acoustic guitar (all sx strings present and accounted for), a double bass player with a sideline in banjo and not one but two percussionists, sharing a full drum kit and bashing away at various bashable things. We have come some way from the traditional folk evening – there were no fingers in ears at this gig! Note for the ladies, yes one of the percussionists was indeed the one that caused such heart flutters and murmurs that time at the Bierkeller. His tub thumping is pretty good too.
Musically Seth covered off early stuff, new songs and everything in between with a solo tour de force on Kitty Jay with just his singing and storming, energised fiddle – no wonder he looks like he’s knicked one of Popeye’s spinach-enhanced arms. Meanwhile there were regular infusions of vast amounts of dry ice – this was either to compensate for the smoking ban or to recreate his Dartmoor home. This was matched with a light show that added to the rock n roll feel. All of which went down a storm with a varied crowd of old gits and student yoof.
Support was Teddy Thompson – who seems to be doomed to this role. Still at least he’s support on good bills (last saw him supporting Lucinda Williams and he was ace). Here he seemed slightly more subdued and the audience, whilst pretty much all in attendance (no mean feat for a support act), took longer to appreciate what he was up to. This may have been aggravated by his recent quest to show people that country & western is good – which it is but some folks just don’t like to be told that. Hah! More fool them I say. He deserves to go big. But Seth is getting bigger ahead of him. Good luck to them both and thanks for a great night.

Woke up this morning, well it's a start

Ah there you go, your expectations are high based on albums you know and love and a previous sighting of their live show. So you sign up for the new tour full of excitement and then what happens? The venue lets you down. Alabama 3 was hotly awaited – you know them, most famous for the Sopranos theme song, creators of some of the finest wordplay in songs and a range of musical styles – acid, country, house music is only the start. Normally fantastic – but no small part of it is that you need to hear what they’re saying/ singing. Sadly at the Cheese & Grain the booming acoustics turned the vocals to sludge. Larry Love’s suggestion that D Wayne Love’s mic should be switched off between songs to avoid offence (none taken) wasn’t necessary because the hall swallowed up all his words and rearranged them into soup. Still, I had heard Larry’s comments so it can’t have been all bad. This acoustic thing can get quite exciting – if you look at the Bellowhead tour blog you’ll see some scandalised comments about the St Albans (I think) show. At the time I just thought it couldn’t make that much difference, everyone can get the mix right and balance it to the hall’s natural acoustics. (For more information look up the Bear’s website [Google Owsley Stanley] which has lots of information on how he used to set up the sound for the Grateful Dead – and they were invariably completely off their faces and still had it sounding good. But I digress.)


Photo by Looby Loo
Anyway, musically the Alabama 3 put on a fine show and gradually cranked up the volume too – it’s been a while since I’ve stood in front of a speaker stack feeling a strong blast of air. Just like those old Maxell adverts they used to have in hi fi mags. Fantastic. All the band did their stuff and, if you knew the lyrics then you knew what was going on. Classics like Hypo Full of Love, U don’t dans 2 tekno, My name’s Johnny Cash (how great is that? Very great). Old stuff and new stuff but good stuff. The light show was clearly designed to flush out any latent epileptics in the crowd but they’re a hardy bunch in Frome so no obvious delirium occurred – or none that required the help of St John’s Ambulance. Thinking of which, why has no live music fan ever signed up for them and so get into every concert free – they never seem to have much to do. Instead it’s always people who are several centuries older than the crowd – although that’s getting harder the longer the old folk go on (ever noticed the fans at some of these things – Van Morrison's are archaic, Pink Floyd's were particularly wretched - and that was over 12 years ago).
And at this point it’s support act time. For this gig in Frome the support act was the Olive Tree just up the road and round the corner. Fine old pub, clean, serves a very nice pint of Courage and also has a good line in thai food. Some slightly wayward interaction with the staff could be put down to country ways – we don’t get down from the hills too often. All of which meant that the support act we were supposed to be seeing we didn’t. I wonder if the acoustics were any better for them.

We're going over the top - hold onto your hats.

So who would have thought, a band that wins the Radio 2 folk award for best live act (quite possibly twice) proves to be a worthy winner. Their show at the Trinity in Bristol was a blistering performance. From the moment they had all managed to get on stage – I counted 11 and there could have been others hidden about although there wasn’t space for them – they laid into a display of music that may loosely be described as folk but travelled all around Europe for its influences. Occasionally there were definitely nods to Three Mustaphas Three (what happened to them?) before veering off elsewhere. The line up comprised pretty much anything that hadn’t been designed to be electric with a strong brass section topped off with sousaphone occupying all the stage right area without falling down the steps – very adept, a selection of fiddles and cello, melodeon (looked like an accordion to me but I’m now wiser), bouzouki, guitar (hey, that’s a normal one), bagpipes, drum kit (another normal one) and endless more that you’ll have to check on their website if you want to know. And all played to great effect to produce a thunderingly good sound.
Anyway, with that line up and vast amounts of energy they stormed through a set of folk songs, dances, reels, probably some jigs and a shanty or two. Napoleon popped up at least once as did tales of hangmen and true love (though not necessarily for the hangman). Dancing was encouraged and led to some fairly deranged attempts – certainly at the back of the hall. Although to suggest that pogoing qualified as a traditional folk dance was possibly going a bit far – but then punk was a very long time ago so maybe it has now legitimately entered the realms of folklore.
If you want a thoroughly good night out whilst getting your exercise in then an evening dancing away to Bellowhead should feature very high on your list. Or to put it another way, my bet is that you won’t see a festival crowd sitting on their collapsible chairs and stuffing their faces whilst this band is onstage. And more good news – they seem to enjoy themselves too.
This place on the page is reserved for the support act and for Bellowhead on this tour you get Chris TT (let’s get the Audi thing out of the way now). Chris seems to take Robyn Hitchcock as his starting point and launches off into the blue yonder – songs featuring hedgehogs, talking trees and civil engineers and bankers. Clearly a man with a sense of outrage and fun (sometimes combined) and some talent too – but nothing you could dance to. That came later.