The challenge for this weekend.

Is to not see any live music at all.
I can do that, probably.
Also to listen, by any legal means, to as many of the albums of 2014 that I have intended to listen to but still haven't. My focus just now is those by artists that I have seen live in 2014. I think I'm going to keep Spotify busy...

Without rhyme or reason I started with The Voyager - Jenny Lewis. Here she is.
Woods Stage, End Of The Road Festival 2014.

I'm having my Saturday lunch while listening to Fear In Bliss - Horse Thief. Lead vocalist Cameron Neal chatting to fans after the set on the Tipi Stage, End Of The Road Festival 2014.

This next is a bit worse as admissions go. I saw Samantha Crain live twice this summer and I still don't have the album 'Kid Face' to call my own. This mistake will shortly be rectified.

Again this the Tipi Stage at End Of The Road Festival 2014. I promise to choose another location soon.

'The Hum', the third LP by O'Hooley and Tidow, is yet another case in point. Booked for the subsequently cancelled Frome Folk Festival 2013, this was another act that I had never seen live before. I was rushing between stages at this point, and so I didn't take as many pictures as I might have liked, but being there just to listen was very well worth the effort.

Walled Garden Stage, Green Man Festival 2014.

They have just finished a year also involved in supporting Lucy Ward as part of her touring band and are now focussing attention on their fourth album as O'Hooley and Tidow. Lucy Ward is another whom I have never yet seem live and, as it happens, she was also booked to appear at Frome Folk Festival 2013... I do however have both albums, 'Adelphi Has To Fly' (2011) and 'Single Flame' (2013) and I recommend both very highly. Seeing Lucy Ward play live is one of my ambitions for 2015.

You might gather that my thread here is that there is just so much available means just to keep abreast of it, treading water if you will, is quite some exercise in memory if nothing else.
Then I found something new - a 2014 album by a Canadian artist that I had never ever heard of before. This needs to have a new post of its own...
'New Music 2014 - Part 40 - ...'.
The last in this post therefore will, as promised, be from a different stage and indeed a different festival.  A different artist too; one that, particularly outside the UK, is far less well known than the above.

Mary Epworth. Veterans and Virgins Stage. Truck Festival 2014.

Three to see twice - Green Man and End Of The Road 2014

I mentioned this earlier in the week. Now, having caught up with sleep and the pictures, I'm no longer in la la land. Well mostly I'm not; to be quite honest a part of me is still at EOTR 2014!
I made a deliberate policy of seeing three acts that I saw at Green Man all over again, just a fortnight later, at EOTR. The three are Samantha Crain, The Rails and Alice Boman. The curious thing is that all appeared on the Walled Garden Stage at Green Man and on The Tipi Stage at EOTR but, in the latter case one each day. I intend to illustrate this post with pictures I took at both festivals.
When it comes to the stage the Walled Garden wins over the Tipi for its outdoor ambience, but when it comes down to the bottom line it is the band that really matters. I had high expectations of The Rails before I saw them live for the first time at Green Man. They blew me away then --- and then they did it all over again, only more so, last Sunday afternoon. 'Fair Warning' (2014) is the début album and it more than delivers on the promise.

'The Rails' Tipi stage, Sunday afternoon, End Of The Road 2014.

As regards photography, well for all that I am learning faster than I thought I might, it is very much a case of simply handling the cards one is dealt as best one can: everything changes, every time.
One thing that few people seemed to disagree about, at either festival, is the perfection of Alice Boman's vocals. She may not yet be an artist that people buy festival tickets on the strength of but either that time will come or perhaps equally importantly, the strength in depth of the offering will.

Alice Boman, Walled Garden Stage, Green Man 2014, Friday afternoon, squinting into the sun.

Alice Boman, Tipi Stage, EOTR 2014, 10:40 pm Friday.

Here she is selling and signing CDs thereafter. She got through most of that box come the end of the line.

Last but certainly not least, and with more released recordings than either of the aforementioned, this is Samantha Crain from Shawnee, Oklahoma.

Tipi Stage, End of The Road 2014, early Sunday evening.

Samantha Crain, Walled Garden Stage,  Sunday afternoon, Green Man 2014.

Three acts from different countries, UK, Sweden and the US respectively, that exemplify the increasing strength in depth of the folk-roots revival in recent times.