Beverley Folk Festival
Beverley Folk Festival 2011
Friday June 17th - Sunday June 19th
Multiple Venues
Beverley Yorkshire
Friday - Saturday - Sunday - Gallery
Beverley Folk Festival - Saturday
They'll be playing later, but first up an artist that I first met performing in an open mic session at the Moniaive Festival on the Scottish Borders a couple of years back. He opened that day with an unaccompanied version of "As She Roved Out" a song that featured on his own self released debut and one that he would let us use on a Showcase Session later in the year. Quite simply I was blown away by that and his subsequent guitar playing for his other songs.
A mere two years later and he's signed to a major folk label, is the current Radio Two Folk Award's Horizon Holder and is the current Fatea Male Vocalist of the year. The hall is full there are an awful lot of people that want to hear what the fuss is about.
Ewan has developed into a consummate performer he engages with the crowd, not only though his songs, but also with his banter. He seems very relaxed as he introduces his songs. His songs reflect both his Scottish home and his Yorkshire base, both self penned and selected traditional songs.
In many respects, Ewan is a very traditional folk singer, songs about the working man, places and hard times, but he mixes in the contemporary themes and social politics giving a lot of his own songs a very modern feeling core.
He's also an interesting guitarist, he may not have the dynamics of, say, a Richard Thompson, but he does have a real feel for the instrument and how it can star in its own right when it's not providing the framework for the voice. As importantly he knows when to let the voice just take care of the whole thing.
It's very easy to see why Ewan McLennan has come so far, seemingly very fast, he's got oodles of talent, but talent often isn't enough and that's when the work ethic kicks in and Ewan knows how to graft hard. Of course it's the talent that delivers such a fine set.
It must be tough being a young band comperes always seem to feel the need to remind you of it and often in less than flattering ways. To hear the introduction for Moore, Moss & Rutter from the wings was excruciating, to have actually been on stage and have to listen to it, must be extremely frustrating. Apart from not mentioning shaving the compeer pretty much did the whole cliché gamut.
Fortunately it didn't seem to dent the trio's confidence as they pretty much hit the ground running. Stepping into Martin Carthy's shoes would be tough for anyone, but then they didn't have to and credit to the organisers for not trying to replace like with like. There were a significant number of great folk singer-songwriters on site, but if any of them had got the gig, then I feel it would have been comparison city up there.
Moore, Moss & Rutter are all great instrumentalists, there's an interaction amongst them that gives one of them the chance to ease to the front of a tune, as the other two make room. It seems a very democratic outfit, the tunes are there to fit their music, this is not the pick a name trio, this is very much more of a band.
Coming from Somerset, Norfolk and Yorkshire has given the trio a wide exposure to traditional music and gives them plenty of scope for cross fertilisation on tunes adding in subtle key changes that take tunes off to somewhere else.
It would also be heard to miss the impact they were having on the audience. If there were doubters at the start about Moore, Moss & Rutter ability to replace Martin Carthy, there could have been few at the end left too disappointed.
Barbara Dickson was the headline act for the Saturday and to be honest, she didn't do as much for me as I thought she would and I lay the reason for that purely at the compere's door. I know Barbara Dickson has had a varied career covering a number of musical styles, but the compere continued to talk about a return to her folk roots so I was looking for her to deliver that.
What she delivered and delivered very well, was a set that was more folk influenced than with folk at its heart. I guess it was inevitable given the size and instrumentation of band that had joined her on stage.
The hits were carefully fed into the set and there was absolutely nothing to fault in her performance, it just wasn't the performance I wanted to see. Sort of reluctantly I head off to catch some of the late night atmosphere around the site, bump into some old friends and sink a pint or two and knock the writing on the head.