Cambridge Folk Festival 2015 - Part 4 - all sorts of folk

This post doesn't have a specific theme, in part simply because I can't think of one, other than to add how good it all was in its variety. There is however a mild sense of urgency I suppose: I was at Cambridge a fortnight ago and I am still processing that; this time next week I shall be in Wales and about half way through experiencing Green Man 2015.

It is right, particularly in these politically heightened times, to start with a legend. She played the first ever Cambridge Folk Festival in 1965 (the year that I was born, I was about seven weeks old then). Here she is performing solo again fifty years to the day later. And also being nothing if not political...

Peggy Seeger, Stage 2, Friday evening.

She was an artist that I had never seen live before. The next two I have, the former more recently than the latter. The word iconic is possibly over-used but this is one time that I feel it is totally justified.

Show of Hands - Stage 1 - early Saturday afternoon.

As they often are, Steve Knightley and Phil Beer were accompanied by Miranda Sykes on double bass for a romp through their observations on the eccentricities of England and Englishness.
In some ways this artist does that too, but perhaps less stridently. It is over three years, and therefore far too long, since I have seen her play live. Three years in which she has produced so much music too.

Bella Hardy - Stage 1 - early Sunday afternoon.

The emphasis is less on her amazing fiddle playing, and when she does it is often finger-picked, because it really doesn't have to be. She chose to play songs from her latest LP 'With The Dawn'. She played a new song too - she is nothing if not prolific, even excluding collaborations. It does however appear that the forthcoming, second Carthy Farrell Hardy Young LP and the follow-up to Laylam (2013), will be without Bella Hardy. On the other hand, not all news is bad; I believe that Jackie Oates is to take her place. To be honest this is about as amazing as discovering that a square can have five corners, despite all you had been taught.
I shall end this with an Old Etonian, but not one that turned out quite like the current Mayor of London, or indeed the current Prime Minister.
After a degree at LSE (History) he was with punk band Million Dead for a few years. When that dissolved, rather than a career in merchant banking, he took the acoustic route to fame, if not so much fortune. We can be very thankful for that.

Frank Turner - Stage 1 - Friday evening.

This, of course, included songs from his newly released album 'Positive Songs for Negative People'. He had us round his little finger, but he was very nice about it.

When all else fails...

I apologise for attempting to provide a positive note concerning the current economic situation. Banks may fail, and some more probably will, but even if all four remaining 'major recording labels' were also to do so (which I suspect will not happen), while it would have a major effect on the music industry in the short term, it would not be the end of the world.

The world will still need music, just as surely it will still need banking services, but if the current modus operandi is no longer appropriate then that needs to be addressed too. I can think of one thing that has survived, maybe even thrived, in previous times of trouble and that is music.
It matters not whether you want to enjoy it for escapism or wallow in its realism for, either way, there is plenty already available to draw upon and there is no sign of a supply shortage - far from it indeed.
The established music industry has been feeling the pinch for a few years now, and long before the current economic crisis, but I have no reason to believe that is in any way likely to change as the making of music is, as far as can be reliably surmised, a human trait that transcends almost everything else and possibly even language. The recorded music industry however, as we knew it until recently, was barely fifty years old and as such thus one of the youngest dinosaurs.
I never thought I'd write this but I wonder if, as although it belatedly realised the game was up a couple of years ago, in this situation it is actually slightly ahead of the others here!
The grim reality of the rust-belt matters again and so does - whilst maybe updated - the music of uncertainty and dislocation that goes with it.
This image is reminiscent of the track 'Dusty Boxcar Wall', which was written by Eric Anderson for his 1965 album 'Today Is The Highway' and if anyone is going to cover such downbeat Americana in 2008 why shouldn't it be a short, half-forgotten, tale of despondency reinterpreted by a female artist born in Boise, Idaho in 1979?

I for one can't see any problem with that.

This image, and the cover version of the song, come from the 2008 album 'Letters from Sinners and Strangers' by now Boston-based singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell. The rest of the album is a mixture of covers and self penned tracks that, unless you know better, are often indistinguishable - it is a wonderful album.She also plays harmonica, a long neglected instrument, to great effect on several tracks and no major label got a look-in here - it was released by Signature Sounds Recordings and all credit to them for doing that.