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.

New Music 2015 - Part 9 - 'L' is for live music and also these artists...

Both these artists start their moniker with 'L' and both have connections to the forthcoming Behind The Castle Festival 2015. Of these two, one has just been announced as a headline act and the other is already announced for BTCF 2015. Lizzyspit playing live is a treat that I have had the good fortune to witness twice.

Tonight Lizzyspit is playing at the launch of her début album 'Villains'.

This is happening at Kings Place in London and is also the formal launch of music consultancy and label Upturned Pebble, which is the power behind Marnhull Acoustic Sessions and, of course, Behind The Castle Festival. There is a theme here.

Today Behind The Castle announced one, but only one, of the two remaining headline acts. It is Georgia, USA based Larkin Poe who I have never seen live. Larkin Poe is touring in the wake of the well regarded LP 'Kin' (2014) and a raft of EPs before that. I can hardly wait.
The announcement of the final act is eagerly awaited and it won't be long in coming.
Lizzyspit will be playing Behind The Castle again but, I predict, to a much larger crowd this time.
It is not going to be winter forever even though at the moment it might just seem like that.

North Dorset Folk Festival 2014

I'm back home from the above mentioned. Was it good? Don't even get me started!

This was the third edition and the second at its current venue of Marnhull Village Hall. I think I have said each time that the latest will be hard to better. Take it as read that it applies here too.
The word bijou applies to this festival more than any other that I can think of. A jewel is usually very small but perfect and, for some reason, in English we borrowed the French word when used as an adjective. As a demonstration of the intimacy of the setting I took this picture from the back row of the seating and without zoom of any kind. The sound desk was perhaps 2 metres behind me and the back wall of the hall immediately behind that.

This is headline artists Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin and I shall return to them.

I'm a big fan of seeing opening acts and as it happens in this case he was the only one on the bill that I had never seen live before. This just shows the strength-in-depth on offer here. 

It was Gavin Davenport and he is hardly unknown, as the link will attest. He played a variety of instruments of which the concertina is a favourite of mine.

The next artist to play may not be known to you unless you were at Behind The Castle Festival in 2014, which is where I first saw her live. That should change very soon and I'm interested to hear how she sounds with backing musicians. Why so? See here.

Lizzyspit releases her first full length recording 'Villains' in January 2015.

I remember the next act, Tinderbox, from my visit to the first North Dorset Folk Festival (NDFF) in 2012. Totally new to me then, seeing them play again yesterday was quite the nostalgia thing.

They were, as in 2012, joined by Bob Burke (right) and he is now the only artist to have played all three editions of NDFF, where he played solo in 2013. Tinderbox release a live album 'Live! At The Cottage' shortly. Indeed, and thanks for the link information, you can now pre-order it here.  I have to say that, while you can take Monique Houraghan out of Dublin you can't take Dublin out of her. Later we were treated, by Hannah Martin, to an apposite Oscar Wilde quote! And that is not to mention the fact that Tinderbox challenged Ninebarrow (see below) to a cover 'duel' - and it seems that both parties freely accepted.

Next was the UK based but bluegrass-influenced and all-round inventiveness of three-piece Jaywalkers - from left to right: Mike, Lucy and Jay. They are working on their third LP.

The old-time Appalachian style, whether the tracks are new or traditional, was just the ticket at this point in the day.

After these four acts there was a longer interval before the next three sets. This was to allow for food, drink and also reconfiguring the stage set-up for what was to come. On the subject of food I'll say only this: Cake was clearly pretty much the only food that the artists coveted.

The music resumed with Dorset duo Ninebarrow that also play a mixture of traditional and new compositions, the latter mostly inspired by history and landscape.

I think that perhaps the most incisive comment in the link above is provided by the duo that were headlining. There is something about their take on music that really matters. They played some new songs and that really mattered too. This was taken during one of those new songs. It is astonishing to remember that their first released recording, 'Kingdom EP', was released in 2013 and début LP 'While The Blackthorn Burns' as recently as April 2014.

First support was an artist who played at the first NDFF in 2012 and that was also the first time I saw Megan Henwood play live although I was well aware of the 2011 album 'Making Waves' before that. I have seen her play solo, as a four-piece and, as here, a three-piece.

Any which way it is an experience.

The vicissitudes on the path of a musician are many and as such have delayed the release of her second LP 'Head Heart Hand'. It is now happening in March 2015 and all the omens are good.

That only leaves me to mention the headline artists - Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin. To be honest they did exactly that which I have come to expect.
They came, they played, they conquered but they are no conquistadors for they do it with guileless style rather than with fire and sword. If there were any present that hadn't seen this live and remain unconverted then I have to say its a bit like cooking mussels - if they haven't opened up after a few minutes then they were probably already dead.

Their latest studio LP 'Mynd' (2013) is excellent but, and it is relevant here, equally so is their 2014 release 'Live In Calstock' and it was recorded at another venue about as small as this. One of the best live acts in the UK today; it is as simple as that.

One more thing is that you can see another of the very best at the same venue on 9 November! Marnhull Acoustic Sessions presents The Moulettes. All six of them accompanied by even more instruments, often large ones, on that same small stage. You can see them supporting Bellowhead too, and you should do that, but I guarantee that it won't be an atmosphere quite like this and you may never be able to see them in a venue as small as this again. Tickets are £11 (including £1 booking fee).

Behind The Castle Festival 2014 - Part 3 - and on it goes

That I can fill three posts with the result of ten-and-a-half hours live music says a great deal about what was on offer at Behind The Castle 2014 (BTC). There are a couple of acts that I don't mention and simply because I didn't get to listen to, see and photograph everything!
One case in point was Steve Knightly on Stage 2, which was the busiest that venue was all day. That said I saw him recently on his on-going tour of village halls and covered that here. I headed to the MAS stage to catch Dorset duo Ninebarrow instead.

I have seen Ninebarrow live before but could listen all day.

The album 'While The Blackthorn Burns' was released in April 2014.

The same ability to listen also applies to the next artist, also on the MAS stage, who I have never seen live before. Indeed, before the BTC line-up was revealed I was quite unaware of Lizzyspit. This is another fine example of why I like festivals so much.

Arresting original songs and a fine interpreter of others' songs.

If I had to choose just one highlight, and I strongly think that many others shared my opinion here, it would be Megan Henwood and her band on Stage 2 in the early evening. The new songs, from the forthcoming album 'Head, Heart, Hand', are so good and the whole set was a delight.  I couldn't tear myself away and this is why I didn't get to see any of the set by Tinderbox. I'll just have to wait until North Dorset Folk Festival on October 25, 2014.

I haven't even mentioned Rodney Branigan yet...

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: