New Music - Part 19 - Sunrise Festival 2013 - Part 1

No. I haven't vanished; I have just been busy and, in part, that has involved working through the photographs, memories and musings of that which was Sunrise Festival 2013 last weekend.
I didn't think that I had taken photos prolifically. The reality proved to be slightly different - exactly four-hundred of them as it transpired! It is therefore time to dive in - to define what it was that made an impression and why.
I am, indeed still unsure of the subject of this one that I took on Saturday afternoon. Neville Staple, the other photographers, or merely just the fact that I could? I really can't say because I didn't think about it in that way at the time. 

More likely, I didn't really think about it at all and often that is the best way.

It probably hardly needs to be said that much of my time was focussed on the artists and acts less well known, though perhaps that is less obvious at a smaller festival such as Sunrise but I shall start with one that I have seen live and mentioned here before and one of several who stick resolutely to playing their own material.

Frome's Molly Ross - Spit & Sawdust stage - Friday.

This next is of an artist I first heard of, live, on the small Sunrise Stage at Latitude Festival 2009. To see that she was on the roster for Sunrise Festival 2013 was one of the things that made me get a ticket forthwith.

Tallulah Rendall, Main Stage Sunset 2013, Saturday afternoon.

The first time I saw her she was playing with a band - this time she was solo but that bass guitar is a clue. She played several songs from her forthcoming album 'The Banshee and The Moon', which involved live sampling of both guitars and vocals as loops that she then played and sang over. The multi-layered result was very special and the aforementioned album is on my wants-list already. It will be good any-which-way, I'm sure of that, but how about 180gm vinyl...

A band gloriously unpredictable and liable to appear in almost any situation was Calico Jack. They played live several times and also danced with the little kids at others...

Calico Jack live on the Spit and Sawdust stage, late Saturday evening. Here is a taste of that.
  
'Blue Shoes' is a track from the band's début CD Holdfast (2012).

While most pirates and privateers are usually assumed to hunt the oceans far and wide this bunch, although boat-dwelling, are pirates of the inland waterways and have the Kennet & Avon Canal as their home patch.

Free Music Player for Myspace at ReverbNation.com

Live Music 2012 - A Weekend in Frome (Part 2)

This may seem illogical to you but not to me. I decided to divide the six acts that I saw over Friday and Saturday evenings into two groups of three. For a reason I have decided to do this - the result is that, having counted Acoustic+ backwards in order of appearance, it was time to do the remaining three in running order. That the first was on a different stage fully 24 hours before the others is merely a spatial and temporal quirk of fate.

I shall start with the first artist to appear at Acoustic+ on Friday evening. I have always felt for anyone who opens a show and I'm sure that it can never be more nerve-racking than when performing solo.  This may have been the Cheese and Grain but rather larger stages beckon (sooner rather than later)...

Molly Ross solo and performing her self-written songs.
  

I started with that for a very good reason. TV talent shows do turn up talented artists and the key to lasting success is quite possibly not winning. Think about it. 

Sam Kelly didn't win 'Britain's Got Talent 2012' but in the process he earned himself a solid support base and, judging from his performance with a band at Rook Lane Chapel yesterday evening, it is very well deserved. The combination of traditional, covers and self-penned songs was very well judged and, best of all, they looked like they were really enjoying themselves.

  

And it was quite handy for my meagre photography too.

The next photo is from towards the end of yesterday evening's performance. 

Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman - a duo recently short-listed for BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2013 but certainly no newcomers to the performance scene - a 'cello, three fiddles, a flute, two guitars and a keyboard liberally plastered in kids' stickers, with Patsy Reid joining them on fiddle and 'cello...  and have them play in a Grade 1 listed building that is currently also home to the 155th Royal Photographic Society Exhibition of Prints.

That pretty much sums up Frome.

Live Music 2012 - A Weekend in Frome (Part 1)

When I decided to live in Frome, back in 1995, I can't honestly say that the town's music scene was one of the factors involved. More likely the considerations that made the town so appeal to me are in some intangible way connected with those that have led to the enviable situation we currently enjoy. Long may it thrive.
Here is a glimpse of the six live acts that I have seen this weekend, all within fifteen minutes walk of home.
Friday evening at the Cheese and Grain saw the latest edition of Acoustic+. This is an event that takes place approximately 8 times each year.
The final act of the evening was Gren Bartley and one who, although he had appeared at the first Frome Folk Festival back in February, I had not actually seen because of the inevitable clashes across three main venues.

Back then (1995 and some time thereafter) goodness knows; you might have tried to persuade me about some of what has now become Americana but anything that approached country influences... NO!  How times and I have changed.

Griff Daniels (R) and Richard Kennedy (L) took the Americana-influenced road but with new songs and Richard's style of guitar playing, of which I am a big fan.

I find it hard to describe adequately - there is just something gritty and authentic to it.

    

While I don't think that I had ever seen Griff Daniels live before that was not true of Richard Kennedy. Neither is it true of Kimwei, who hails from Exminster, Devon and whom I saw playing as part of Acoustic+ at the Frome Festival Food Feast in 2010.

Her song-writing and playing style is no less unusual; but convention changes nothing.