Green Man 2014 (again) and an End Of The Road preview...

Right. Just over 36 hours until it is time to head out again for another long weekend of festival fun at End of The Road 2014. At the moment the weather is looking reasonable, and importantly the remnants of Hurricane Cristobel shouldn't play a part in the proceedings. I'm hoping for more of the same meteorological good fortune that accompanied my trip to Green Man 2014 the weekend before last. We shall see.
I shall start with a picture of the band that were first support on the Mountain Stage on Friday evening and that I first saw live on the Garden Stage at EOTR 2013.

Daughter, or here just Elena Tonra thereof, Mountain Stage, Green Man Festival 2014.

So then, what's cooking at End of The Road 2014 and what do I particularly want to see?

Let's start with just eight of them that I want to see live for the very first time. Here listed alphabetically:

• Arc Iris
• Jenny Lewis
• Lau
• Lily and Madeleine
• Marissa Nadler
• Pink Mountaintops
• Richard Thompson
• Stealing Sheep

I chose the particular links to each above based on those that I feel best explain my reason for wanting to see the act or artist live.

There are plenty that I would be delighted to hear again, including two or three from just two weeks back, and many more besides. As my recent post about First Aid Kit mentioned it is interesting to see just how artists develop of the space of a few years. This is another example of that. It is third time I have seen her live and while she was good then she has really grown in stature and confidence. I was blown away the second time, at EOTR .

Anna Calvi - Mountain Stage late Sunday afternoon, Green Man 2014.

Sometimes it takes a lot longer for me to to catch up live. Blue Roses - Blue Roses was one of my favourite albums of 2009. I even wrote about it in January of that year. It has taken more than five years to see her play live, now under her own name, Laura Groves. She played the Walled Garden Stage and it was a perfect foil on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Luck had it that conveniently scheduled not to clash with the above.

Laura Groves, Walled Garden Stage, Sunday, Green Man 2014.

Astonishing though the Mountain Stage is, the Walled Garden Stage is as good as any with the possible exception of The Garden Stage at EOTR. If you know me then you will realise that this is high praise indeed.
This consideration has made me decide that, if I get around to it [before this coming weekend], then the next post will be about Green Man other than the music - the ambience, facilities and all other things that make a festival more than just the line-up. If I don't write it before I return from End of The Road 2014 then maybe my detention homework will be a compare and contrast assignment!

2013 isn't over yet...

If you think that my last post, and the ensuing hiatus, signalled the end of my blogging in 2013 then think again:

The casual chemistry between Amy LaVere and John Paul Keith makes it seem like this happens all the time - boy meets girl, boy plays girl some songs, boy and girl form band.

“It’s not that we really decided to have a band” as Keith tells it.  

“It’s just that by the time we got done having coffee she’d decided we were a band and was already booking shows for us. By the time I got home, we were exchanging ideas for band names.”
   

If you want a cover version then try this. Eddie Berman, from southern California, and Laura Marling take a shot at Springsteen's 'Dancing in the Dark'.

   

To be fair that is only just a part of it, even as regards cover versions, but this is one I love.

I'm particularly interested to hear about your own favourite covered-songs this year, be they recorded, live or whatever. You are welcome to comment here or via Twitter @thoughtsonmusic.

EOTR 2013 - more from the Garden Stage - Part 1

The Garden Stage was, until 2011, the main stage at End of The Road Festival, by when its audience capacity was becoming a serious issue and therefore the larger and more open Woods Stage was added too. The Garden Stage however remains the most beautifully atmospheric stage, surrounded as it is by Victorian follies, one of the most remarkable of which is in fact almost invisible behind it.
This is a picture across the Garden Stage audience on Saturday evening.

   
On Friday afternoon I had the pleasure of watching Serafina Steer, who I had never seen live before, perform on the same stage.

The majority of this set was devoted to songs from her recent album The Moths Are Real.
Not before I saw Joanna Newsom live did I really consider the concert harp and its place in modern music but rather in the context of a sepia tinted throwback - more fool me!  As this was my first day using a new camera for music photography the fact that harpists can't move very far or fast was much appreciated! This evening I have been listing to the album Week of Pines by Georgia Ruth, and that is often led by her harp and vocals too.
   
Back then I never suspected how my liking of, and interest in, Americana and roots music would develop to parallel my long-standing liking of UK and Celtic folk music.
Earlier still, Friday lunch time, Diana Jones had performed solo and took the sun-drenched Garden Stage audience for a trip courtesy of much of her very recent LP Museum of Appalachia Recordings.

I was already aware that it is garnering excellent reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and here it was quite obvious to see why - you could have heard a pin drop during the quiet moments of her set.
   
This is indeed Part 1 - I shall return to the Garden Stage soon with amongst others, Ethan Johns and The Barr Brothers. In the meantime here is another from Daughter's set just after dark on Saturday evening.

Why wasn't If You Leave nominated for the Mercury Music Prize?

EOTR 2013 - acts to see live for the first time.

As ever EOTR for me was a mixture of acts and artists that were known to me and that I wished to see live for the first time, ones that I wanted to see again (and again in one of two cases) and the usual sprinkling of ones about which I was previously unaware. This last category is one on which I rate festivals very highly and EOTR has over the years been exemplary in this regard.

Taking the first category first as the subject of this post I shall start with London-based Daughter. On the basis of their 2013 début album 'If You Leave' and a couple of preceding EPs I had them in my sight and watching footage of their live performances at Glastonbury earlier in the summer only made the London three-piece an absolute must-see. They played the gloriously situated Garden Stage on Saturday evening and certainly didn't disappoint.

Daughter, Garden Stage, EOTR 2013, 31 August.

I was very fortunate to get as close to the front of this set to get such pictures as this. I had to hotfoot it from the main Woods Stage as soon as another of my must-see acts has finished their set. This is one of the great advantage of the compact but not cramped EOTR festival site.

This was one act where I struggled to take photos that captured the moment.

Emily Kokal of Los Angeles four-piece Warpaint on the Woods Stage.

The band performed a number of new songs strongly hinting that a follow up to 2010 LP The Fool and 2008 EP Exquisite Corpse is soon to be unleashed on a waiting world.

Surprise opener on the Big Top Stage on Friday, in place of the unavailable Four Mile House, was Widowspeak from Brooklyn. I'm really not sure how I became aware of them but I bought their 2011 début album very soon after it has appeared - in fact I think I had to import the vinyl version from the US so I had obviously convinced myself of its worth and, as it happens, I was right. Now a duo rather than a four-piece they have recently released their second album Almanac, which I do not have yet. On hearing them live that will very soon be remedied!

Robert Earl Thomas and Molly Hamilton, Big Top Stage, 30 September.

How I might choose to classify their music is open to debate, but then they don't seem to consider pigeon-holing it themselves a priority either. Indie guitar certainly but some of the flowing guitar parts and melodies are beguiling in the extreme and sound as if they come from an earlier time.

Summer madness - and why it makes sense.

So I haven't written much these last couple of months. That is true. What is certainly not true is that I haven't been both listening to and reading about music! Indeed the fact that I have been doing so is in part the reason for the lack of writing. That is likely to remain the case until early September but for a variety of reasons.
It is less than a fortnight until my last outdoor festival of this summer. It is going to take some planning to maximize those acts that I wish to see and hear. I wouldn't want it to be any other way...

  

I haven't really thought about the detail and, more than likely I will not do so until I am there on the Thursday afternoon: there is a distinct boundary between general preparation and detailed battle-planning.
Here, as a slant on my current thinking, is an (alphabetical) list of just five of the acts that I have never before seen live but really want to:

• Daughter
• Deptford Goth
• Golden Fable
• Warpaint
• Widowspeak

The other thing about this time of year is that I become focussed on the music, live and recorded, that I have already heard and that which I anticipate to do so during the next four months. More about that soon. I am also thinking about the many festivals that might warrant my attention in 2014...

EOTR (almost certainly), No Dirction Home (if it happens), Maverick, Wilderness, Truck... who knows?
I have a far better knowledge base on which to draw than I did when I first embarked on this in the early summer of 2007. This, most importantly, is not only based on the festivals that I have attended in the last six years but also those that I have been given first hand reviews of from others in the festival community which, although it sounds like some hippy cliché, is on occasion as blunt an object as it needs to be.

So eight months without live music, then?
Not likely! Here is an example...

• 25 September  ---  Acoustic+  (Cheese & Grain, Frome)
• 26 September  ---  North Dorset Folk Festival  (Marnhull Village Hall)
• 27 September  ---  Frome Blues Festival (Cheese & Grain, Frome)

The events at the Cheese & Grain, and many more too, are taking place while the venue is early in the throes of a £500k overhaul to make it not only more fit-for-current-purpose, with better public facilities - toilets, café, and box-office all included - but also the artist-facing facilities that are sorely needed in order to propel it to the status of a major player in the league of regional arts and community venues.

These are exciting times indeed.

New Music - Part 24 - festivals, oh festivals!

Not having been to Glastonbury Festival 2013 myself, I have been wading through some of the comment, review and footage that is freely available. This has already made me look ahead to the festivals that I am attending this summer.

When End Of The Road Festival booked London three-piece Daughter it was on the basis of a couple of EPs (those EPs again and why they matter). Since then they have released an album, 'If You Leave', and I think that the band's appearance at EOTR will be an absolute must for me. The album is certainly good, and they were already on my list of ones to see, but having seen their performance on The John Peel Stage at Glastonbury cemented this desire in my mind.

Other footage also reminded me of highlights of festivals that I have attended over the last couple of years.
I noticed that for the final song of their headline set on Sunday Mumford and Sons (Latitude 2008) were joined on stage by First Aid Kit (EOTR 2009 and 2012) as well as The Staves (Deershed Festival 2012 and EOTR 2013).
Otherwise, whilst navigating the cat's-cradle that is new music, I came across this collaboration, Sylvan Esso, and immediately thought that I recognized the vocalist as Amelia Randall Meath and one third of Mountain Man (EOTR 2012). I was right too, which pleases me as I never used to be able do this by ear. 
Her co-conspirator is Nick Sanborn and, on the face of it is an unlikely pairing but fear not. It is released in the US (Trekky Records, TRK043) on July 16 as double A-side 12" Hey Mami/Play It Right. Here is the track Hey Mami.

I don't think it means the demise of Mountain Man; this pleases me too as the 2010 album 'Made The Harbor' is excellent and reminds me rather of The Staves' album 'Dead & Born & Grown' (2013).