Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Tom Clements and Annabelle Chvostek

Sunday just gone was the last Marnhull Acoustic Session before the summer recess for festivals and suchlike. The opening artist was Tom Clements and he could hardly be more local to the venue.  The use of live self-sampling is amazing to watch as are the sounds that he can make with that guitar. You won't need telling that one of his influences is Mark Knopfler but this is more than imitation, or indeed flattery.

His LP 'Roots, Morals and Other Life Choices' is released on 15 May.

Not so many have come to Marnhull from as far away as Annabelle Chvostek: as she put it, while the consonants in her surname give away her Slovak roots, she is in fact third-generation Canadian.  Some may know her through her stint with Canadian trio The Wailin' Jennys, which she left in 2007, but there is a whole lot more territory that she covers. At times her mandolin playing is replete with eastern European influences but, when it comes to her forthcoming LP 'Be The Media' it isn't the star of the show and neither is her acoustic guitar. In this sense it was one of the least acoustic sets I have seen at Marnhull, but no matter.

Her "new toy" is new to her but not actually new at all. To quote:

"A 1969 Fender Mustang, with a racing stripe and matching machine head."

'Be The Media' is a fine album too and is officially released in July (well, probably it is).

There is a certain, somewhat retro, groove to it as I suggest that the cover artwork implies. It is that good.

Live and local - Hannah Robinson and Megan Henwood

To spend a Sunday evening at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions is always a pleasure. To spend two there in a row is probably a sign of greed. Oh never mind, I did it anyway.
There were changes - a new, eleventh-hour support artist  - Hannah Robinson, replacing Lizzyspit as a result of her loss-of-voice, and I had never seen her play live before.

Here she is, playing 'Starts A Whisper' from her 2015 EP 'Water, Carry Me'.

Headlining was Megan Henwood, playing solo this time. I have seen her play live several times before but not recently without a band. Her much anticipated second LP, and I mean that in the best possible way, is ·Head·Heart·Hand·.

It is released on 6 July 2015 and it is with full band, strings and all.
Some of the album is even a little bit electric. It is certainly thought-provoking.

Behind The Castle Festival 2015

It is almost 13 April as I write and Behind the Castle Festival is therefore just two short months away.

Get your tickets here and especially if you wish for camping on Saturday for these are very limited and will all be gone soon. The line-up is of course stunning from start to finish. There is nothing not to cherish, which it just as it should be. With three stages there will be some agonising choices to make; I have been promised that. Bring it on, this as a festival compact enough to see part of one set and then part of another without missing much whilst between them.
I'm not saying, because I won't decide until the very moment, what I want to see most.  Here is a Spotify playlist including some, but not all, of the artists that will be there on the day. It is entirely my own choice of songs, of course, but hopefully provides some idea of what is on offer. 
There will almost certainly be additions and updates. I just needed to post something at the point that I had got to. It might just help fend off some of that the Monday feeling too - it is nearly 100 minutes long.
The Spiral Earth Awards 2015 have now been announced and two of the winners, both for albums, are playing BTCF 2015:
Moulettes - best album - Constellations
Larkin Poe - best Americana album - Kin
If that weren't enough another  of the winners -  Blair Dunlop , best solo artist, is playing Marnhull Acoustic sessions this coming Sunday (19 April) and that is not all; Emma Stevens is supporting.

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - Pete Robson & Rodney Branigan

I have just returned from another excellent evening at Marnhull Acoustic Sessions that was arguable made even more special as a result of a minor electrical hitch, of which more later. As I have mentioned before I count myself as truly lucky to live within easy reach of so much good live music of all kinds. For anyone within reasonable travelling distance, if you have been wondering whether to give it a try then I strongly recommend that you do. You get to see and hear artists of national stature, at the very least, in an intimate venue. To whet your appetite Marnhull Acoustic sessions return on 22 February 2015 with Miranda Sykes and Rex Preston headlining with, no doubt, some cracking support.

Support artist this evening was Pete Robson whom I had never seen live before. This saw things get under way with a distinctive acoustic blues slant and a melange of covers and his own compositions. I listen to quite a bit of blues inflected music, although more often of the electric and rock-blues persuasion, so this made an interesting and very welcome change.

Rodney Branigan does things with guitars (or occasionally a mandolin and hand drum) that Health and Safety would advise that you never try at home. He hails from Texas and so, although now resident in Somerset, the rules don't apply in his case. Some of them are not actually dangerous; just both hands to the fret.

During the first half-hour or so of the set there was an intermittent issue with the sound and this resulted in a brief pause to investigate the problem. It was swiftly resolved: the performance would continue front of stage. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for.

We got to hear a couple of OutKast songs played in a folk-roots style unplugged, interspersed with his own compilations, some of which are very much blues influenced and all punctuated with the tricks that he does (only video could really do this justice - the point when he swaps them over without ceasing to play either, in particular).

WTF live - this went from the amazing to the quite astonishing almost by accident.

Behind The Castle Festival 2014 - Part 4

I can't remember when I last wrote six posts in the space of a week.
That it has been dominated by coverage of Behind The Castle Festival, which I was attending this time last week, finds me quite unapologetic; it only goes to show the impression that it made on me. I am not unused to festivals either and, judging from what I saw and heard, Behind The Castle made a far more important and favourable impression on those who clearly were.
It was, for many I suspect, their first taste of the arena-action of a multi-day festival but one that just happened to all take place within the space of twelve hours. The setting was exquisite, of course - this was taken from next to the main stage during Newton Faulkner's set.

The Castle Behind.

The setting is not enough a successful festival for to make. I heard nothing but praise for the toilets - and that always seems to be one of the worries most exercising festival newbies.
So the bar was busy, and was later drunk dry, but that only serves to to show that it was offering drinks that folks wanted at prices that they were willing to pay. The only problem was it became a victim of its own success...

This was taken towards the end of the Boat To Row set on Stage 2.

Later in the afternoon, when the weather threatened a shower that never materialised, I returned to Stage 2.

Cara Dillon

The final artist on the MAS stage was another that I had never seen live before. This is despite the fact that originally from Amarillo, TX he now lives in Frome, Somerset as do I.

It was a great set but the tricks came at the end and it did sound good. Here are two versions of it.

Rodney Branigan plays two guitars at once.

Hello summer - well sort of...

In the US at least Memorial Day seems to be regarded as the start of the summer season.
In the UK June 1st is the start of the Meteorological Summer and as the Festival Season starts so does the 'European Monsoon', which is not generally drastic but can, and often does, play havoc with festivals and particularly those that take place in June.
There is nothing we can do about it - this is simply the result of living on the windward edge of an ocean that has a vast continent to the east of it.
That said the UK hosts an astonishing number of festivals of all shapes, sizes and influences; the most famous is, of course, Glastonbury. I am not going to that, although it is just over a dozen miles away as the crow flies, and indeed I never even applied for a ticket. On the other hand I completed my festival bookings yesterday by adding one that, although now well established, I have never attended before.
Each year I aim to choose one that is new to me and last year that was Sunrise Festival, which was all of five miles away from home. There is a real frisson to attending a particular festival for the first time and that comes from not knowing the dynamic, be it the layout of the site, the audience or the presentation.
It is most pronounced whilst travelling there or that is how it seems to me. When I was driving to Latitude 2007 I was half-convinced that I would look at it and simply turn round and drive back home again. I guess that the price of the ticket and the length of the drive conspired against that. Once there it seemed exciting. Once I had pitched my tent, and I'm no stranger to camping, it started to seem more like a slightly strange version of normality.

In the meanwhile listen to this - the album streaming in toto - that I mentioned here, whilst you can.

It is available to download, in almost any file format you might wish for from Bandcamp, for £3.50, here.  That might lead you to suspect that this is just an EP or mini-album but, at twelve tracks not including Intro, this is almost 55 minutes long. There is also a very limited CD digipack available.

With the framework of my summer festivals booked I'm now starting to think about the acts at them that are my priorities, especially those that I am well aware of but have never seen live; Stornoway and Blood Red Shoes are two that both come to mind here.
The next task is to try and find out something about all the artists about which I know (next to) nothing. I always try to do this and as sure as hell I will change my plans once at the festival most often by word of mouth recommendations. This does not in itself render the endeavour invalid as it has great value when deciding what to do in the unenviable situation of not being able to be in two places at the same time. Other times I just decide to see something completely on a whim and that has led to some great discoveries too.

Before all that comes the first Behind The Castle Music Festival, a one-day festival that takes place on 14 June at Sherborne Castle, Dorset. Many of the artists on the programme I have seen live before and of those that I haven't I was well aware of. One that fell into neither category, but whom I have been listening to since, was Australian Lizzyspit. Her own songs are really strong but, more than that, she has the confidence to cover a song that is so well known in its original as to be a minefield:

Marnhull Acoustic Session - Tom James & Pip Mountjoy

The new season of Marnhull Acoustic Sessions kicked of this evening in fine style with a double headline bill of Pip Mountjoy and Tom James. I have quite literally just returned home and downloaded my pictures and there seemed no reason not to write while it is still fresh on my mind.
Both artists indicated that new releases are in the pipeline - a third EP from Pip and Tom's first album and the follow up to his Green + White EP (2011).
Both artists played solo sets and then collaborated busking-style for a few tracks to finish off the evening in an interesting and very successful fashion so I shall start with that.

Oh Carolina.

The contrast in their respective song writing and acoustic styles was fascinating and just the kind of thing that an intimate gig  such as this shows to best effect.
   

    

Whilst Tom laid aside his acoustic for electric guitar on a number of songs Pip down-sized to ukelele, something that I do not recall from the time that I saw her at Deer Shed Festival 2012.

    

Marnhull Acoustic Sessions returns on 23 February with a celebration of its first anniversary. Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin will be headlining with Dorset-based Ninebarrow as support. The former are nominated for 'best duo' at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2014, that take place earlier the same week and so a double celebration is to be hoped for.