Truck Festival - Part 2 - The Saloon Bar Beckons

It is with sadness that I must mention that Truck Festival's bigger companion, Y Not Festival, was terminated this weekend not long after it had started due to both the mud and, perhaps more importantly, the dangerous electrical problems that the rain caused on the various stages. I'll say something that is actually very important. The festival support staff at Truck Festival last weekend went beyond what might reasonably have been expected in order to mitigate the problems and so did so many others on the campsite. Awesome is not an inappropriate word in the circumstances and yet I suspect that they didn't really get the credit that was due to them.
Thank-you!
We must regard ourselves fortunate for what we were able to see and hear last weekend.
Here then is some stuff from that most important of stages. Of course it is almost all about the music but without the audience festivals would be nothing. The vitality of this interaction is so very important; a challenge to all. Keeping an exact count of the artists that played supporting roles throughout the whole weekend certainly got the better of me. You'll probably start to see familiar faces however.

There is no better place to start than with a stalwart of The Saloon Bar stage in recent years; Paul McClure promoting his latest EP 'Paul McClure and The Local Heroes'.

The Saloon Bar stage, Saturday afternoon, 22 July 2017.

Included in this photo, along with Paul, is another of the many heroes of this stage last weekend - Tom Collison on keyboards.
No better way to continue with, all the way from St. Antonio, Texas and a second year on this stage, Rachel Laven.

Saloon Bar stage, Saturday 22 July, with Simon Kelly and Rebecca Rosewell.

Also returning to this stage, and I have to say that I much admire this sense of continuity, was Hannah Rose Platt with new songs.

Lunchtime, Saturday 22 July 2017.

There is of course an element of competition in all of this and I suspect that I'm mostly on the losing side, but the challenge is good.

The Saloon stage - Truck Festival 2016

I've been here before. You might already know about my liking for the Saloon Bar stage at Truck Festival...
Yet again I failed to see every act on that stage over (this year for the first time in the stage's existence) three days. On the other hand I came far closer than I have ever done before over just two days. Here is some of what I saw, heard and pointed my camera at.  It is not in chronological order, because over three days that makes no real sense anyway. There are also a few things that belong in that world which, at festivals in particular, is largely forgotten or used for trips to the facilities or for food: the hiatus between acts can also be an interesting time for people-watching and photography.

Multi-cultural Oxfordshire, complete with cider-drinking rancheros. What was that stuff about Brexit all about?

This was his first ever UK performance and the start of his tour to promote recently released LP 'Silver Line'.

All the way from Austin, Texas came Chuck Hawthorne. A man, his guitar and some very fine songs.

Headlining on Friday was a trio that I have mentioned before - Applewood Road. It is trio formed of UK-based Australian Emily Barker and US artists Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace. (R - L, below).

Three-part close harmony acapella in a corrugated metal agricultural shed.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the self-titled album 'Applewood Road' will appear in a number of year-end best-of lists. The Telegraph, which has recently been one of the most reliable reviewers in this regard, gave it the accolade of a full five stars. I'm not minded to argue with that.

Another coup for the organisers of this small stage was someone who is better known as the front man of American Aquarium. This was Saturday evening.

BJ Barham was however sans band and over in the UK (also for the first time) a week before the release of his début LP 'Rockingham'.

On Saturday the stage was opened at 12:15 by Hannah Rose Platt, whom I posted about last year and who is the creator of 'Portraits', one of the best début albums of 2015, and already a brilliant storytelling songwriter.

Another artist, whose début LP 'Cracked Picture Frames' I reviewed here last year but had previously failed to see live, played early Friday evening. More storytelling... welcome to the often rather dark world of Robert Chaney.

Because of the prevalence of children in the audience he refrained from playing 'The Ballad of Edward and Lisa' and it was as well; it makes most murder ballads sound reasonably humane. Astonishing though it is I was fairly pleased not to hear it again myself, if I'm quite honest.

Returning after a very solid set on the same stage last year, shortly before the release of début LP 'Bow out of the Fading Light', this is Brighton-based The Delta Bell.

The second full-length comes soon and we got to hear a couple of tracks that might be on that. Suffice to say it's sounding rather good. It's not possible to cover everything I saw on this one stage in a single post. I have already written about Rachel Laven here.

This however cannot go without a further mention. I was looking forward to seeing Speedbuggy USA live from the moment I discovered the band was playing. To say that I was not disappointed would be misdemeanour by litotes.

Never mind the fact that this is an original 1930s 'National Resophonic' resonator mandolin.

To finish here are two more photos that don't directly involve the music. The first is that it is wonderful to see so many kids getting involved. Even if they fall asleep...

... and when the adult audience doesn't even notice that the camera is pointed towards them.

Now we are back to that hiatus-between-acts thing; when the all cowboys have left the saloon...

My Music in 2015 - Albums - Part 3

Right! Here we go again and for the last time specifically concerning 2015.
This is not a list of odds-and-ends, far from it. Two of the LPs in this list have appeared near the top of many lists, proffered by major news outlets and suchlike, that are supposedly arranged in some order of merit. That consensus approach is not the way I work. All these lists are about what I liked and in particularly the impact that it had on me.

• 9 Bach - Tincian
• Emily Barker - The Toerag Sessions
• Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
• Hannah Rose Platt - Portraits
• Jess and The Bandits - Here We Go Again
• Lanterns On The Lake - Beings
• Mandolin Orange - Such Jubilee
• Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space
• Robert Chaney - Cracked Picture Frames
• Samantha Fish - Wild Heart

There is so much more that I have liked and listened-to-death that isn't included yet still some say that there is a shortage of new music. This, even were it to be true, is a symptom of the malaise that has beset the industry and the majority of consumers for a long time. It was geared to prescribing to listeners what it wanted them to listen to and for the most part the consumer was compliant.
My introduction to two of the acts in this list goes back a long while - I saw them live for the first time at End Of The Road Festival 2009 and 2010 until which point I was completely unaware of both!
I could never have imagined what I suspect, for I do not count listens, would become my most listened-to music of 2015. This is a case of not being led by the nose but blind-sided, in a good way, instead.This third selection of LPs also includes one of the most harrowing songs that I have ever heard. It is not about some industrial accident or natural disaster. It is about the peculiar failings of humankind and is a rather sad place to end this post.



Robert Chaney is the author of The Ballad of Edward and Lisa.

New Music 2015 - Part 25 - Hannah Rose Platt - Portraits

Can a reason be divined for the mutual issues of mistrust that exist between enemies to be overcome? Possibly not, but we must hope so. I was listening to the news today and while it is not directly about that it made me wonder...
Cut to a longer standing situation, albeit less threatening by a million miles; that is the relationship between US country music, the UK and the rest of Europe and the omens now look pretty promising.
It occurred to me whilst I was listening to this LP. I have decided not to write a post about the album and then another about the ideas that it inspired. It seemed better done as a tract, one non-religious though rather less apolitical.

To an extent I think that that without the former my inspiration for lateral thinking about the other matters might not have happened quite as it did. I shall return to the album at the end, but suffice it to say that I had also been thinking about mathematics and statistics, in a somewhat abstract sense, for a completely different reason in any case.
What then happened is that I started thinking about how all this might apply to the relations between music labels, artists and the consumers over the last twenty-five years or so. I haven't worked this through fully, even in my mind, as yet but I like the idea of doing so. I suspect that this is an interesting case of playing a zero-sum game, initially between the major labels and nowhere more so than in their hegemony of the (and therefore almost entirely US) market for 'country music'. Not only could they control the market they could shape it as they saw fit...  contracts, and failing that sheer dollars, could take care of that. In that model there is an island of stability, within which all participants stand to lose more than they would gain by disrupting the status quo. That is not to say that is a cartel, as such, but it is cozy. This is the zero-sum game by definition and it works until there is enough outside pressure, angst even, for sufficient nascent feelings of power for these people such that they start taking real risks; either by jumping off the gravy-train or simply attacking, guerilla style, from the frustration of not being able to see a way of getting aboard. That includes all people involved in the chain - from artists, engineers, producers and studios to independent labels and distributors and stores.
There becomes a point at which the zero-sum game breaks down. This failure is then liable to destroy the tenets of Nash Equilibrium; this predicts that producers [in the sense of those that bring any product to market and not the more specific 'music producer' sense] will control supply (in whatever way is appropriate to that industry or market) to maximise the profits for all (major) players.  It is a cartel, by any other name, but is not necessarily illegal. The recent collapse in the price of oil is a good example of that unravelling. The various threads of the music industry seem to be making good progress putting that kind of nonsense to bed and it is about time too. 
To get back to where I started...
Portraits is a stunning listen and, whilst it was recorded in Nashville with a phalanx of country music greats in support, Hannah Rose Platt is from Liverpool and now based in London. The album is self-released and all but two songs are her own, the other two are co-writes. The Nashville equilibrium is being well and truly perturbed, from within the US and without, and we will all benefit from that.
Here is a taster of the album.