Trust - the mark of a true Festival

It is, more or less, the end of the outdoor festival season in northern Europe.
Here's a thought: such festivals are more about trust, in the organizers and their ability to select and book acts, than about the headline acts. 
This is why I already have a ticket for EOTR 2014 and why I'm going to mention anything other than the three headline acts.
You know me, maybe. I'll be heading off to see the first acts to perform at any opportunity and End of The Road provided five such on the Tipi Stage on Thursday afternoon and evening.
Annie Eve was one of those...  and I wonder how many of us were aware of her then because I certainly wasn't, but this only serves to underline my point, and I am now so here she is.

That scrap of paper, just beyond the bottles of water at the far right of the picture, is her set list. If you are wondering now, then a week ago so was I.
Here is that very same piece of paper.

You can just about see the imprint of her boot on it too!

End of The Road - A Festival Sunset

I'm just starting to get to grips with EOTR 2013 and I've caught up with some of the lost sleep too. So was it worth it?
You bet it was and then some. Indeed I have already booked my ticket for EOTR 2014, and the 'early-bird' ones are selling like hot cakes so I am told. I am not at all surprised.

This is what happens when taking photos, whilst wandering around between sets and maybe via the Somerset Cider Bus.

This next one is from the first act on Saturday - Brooklyn duo Widowspeak playing in the tented 'Big Top' stage.

New Music - Part 26 - Kevin Devine

Kevin Devine is probably little known, at least to most of us here in the UK. He has used crowd-funding to produce two albums, one acoustic and the other not, that will be released shortly and simultaneously (and that is an interesting concept in itself).
Here is a track, For Eugene, from one of them.
The oh-so-subtle, that you might hardly even notice, backing vocal is courtesy of Isobel Campbell. It is a far cry from her three albums (and an EP) with Mark Lanegan, but equally an extremely interesting call to arms.

I have only become to know of this in the last hour. I'm always really pleased to hear about things like this. 

New Music - Part 25 - Nepenthe - Julianna Barwick

Well, you can say what you want but UK festivals will always bring surprises! Here is another artist who is to play at End of the Road Festival and, at the moment of writing and in my local time, Julianna Barwick's LP 'Nepenthe' was released in the UK today and will be released in the US tomorrow!
Born in Louisiana, raised in Missouri and now resident in Brooklyn, the album was in large part recorded in Iceland with Alex Somers - Sigur Rós and others - on production duties.
This, I think, says a great deal about the new order in music marketing - and it certainly is not a major label release. Independent US label Dead Oceans is responsible for this and good for them.

The album is available on vinyl of course. If you can wait then you can stream it here.

  

She is performing at End of The Road too, on the Tipi Stage on Friday evening. This is something that I'm not planning to miss.

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.

OMG --- End Of The Road 2013

The scale of this challenge, both on decision making when it comes to clashes and also stamina, is only just dawning on me.
The problem is not "Who do I want to see?" but neither is it "Who do I care not to see?". The additional problem is all the acts /artists that I simply don't know if I want to see or not. The default position, which is listening to all of them, is simply not an option.
It is true that I have seen both Sigur Rós and Belle and Sebastian live before but that is not to say that I don't want to see them again.
Oh dear!

More from Truck Festival 2013 - Part 1

After a week of cogitation my thoughts about Truck Festival 2013 have started to gel somewhat. Finding myself in The Wheatsheaf, Oxford on Friday evening and listening to one of the acts that I saw at Truck, Swindlestock, helped to further refine that thought process.
Whilst I always try and ensure that I see the support act(s) at a concert I hold even more store in the idea that some of the best discoveries are to be made by catching the opening acts on festival stages. It doesn't matter, in fact it is more revealing, if one has not even heard of the act or artist, let alone in what style they perform!

The band to open Truck Festival 2013, on the Market Stage at noon on Friday, was Candy Says. They describce their music as lo-fi chic pop and I wouldn't argue with that. It reminded me at first of a slightly less numerous ¿Los Campesinos?, which having seen the latter at Deer Shed Festival last summer is certainly no bad thing. The lo-fi ethic extends to their liking for Farfisa electronic organs, releasing their music, physically at least, only on cassette tape and making videos on a Spectrum 64 . Here they are, live at Truck 2013.

Now, as a lover of vinyl, I can't complain of their choice of cassette except to say that, unlike the former, I currently have no reliable means of playing such things! They can be found and streamed/purchased on-line: Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Amazing Tunes and elsewhere.



For my money the song 'Kiss Kill' sums up what they do very well indeed. It certainly served to get the festival off to a fine start as far as I was concerned. First impressions matter; I think part of my enduring love for End of The Road Festival was that the first band I ever saw there, back in 2009, was Canada's Ohbijou, of which I was completely unaware until the moment they appeared on stage.
  
Opening the main stage on Saturday at 12:30 pm was another artist about whom I have to admit I knew very little - Candice Gordon. Here she is performing 'Before The Sunset Ends' last weekend.

This is the title track from her début EP, which was recorded with Pogues front-man Shane MacGowan.
It is of course impossible for one person to see the opening act on every stage at a festival with multiple stages but here is another one that opened the Market Stage at midday on Saturday. Oxford-based six-piece Marvellous Medicine.

Two of the tented stages at Truck were interestingly coloured. This is the Market Stage, the larger of the two, and gives some impression of the ambience that the venue creates. One slightly unusual aspect of reggae and rap infused Marvellous Medicine is that its sole female member is the band's regular drummer. That is except for one song in this set when she handed the sticks to the bassist/rapper Rob Yates and Holly Manners took over lead vocals instead.

Truck Festival 2013 - The Saloon

Until last weekend I had only been to Truck Festival once before, in 2011. I had a good time there then but this time I fell in love with it. This is one of the reasons why.
  
Most festivals lack a venue quite as fit-for-purpose as the 'Great Western Whisky Saloon and Soul Blues Kitchen', otherwise known as 'The Saloon', and I know I am not the only one to feel this way. I know that I will not finish this post this evening... It will have to await my return to blogging sometime on Saturday afternoon after venturing to see one of the acts, which I saw there last Saturday, tomorrow evening!
It was always intimate, sometimes it was packed to bursting point, but it was always worth the effort to be there and it was underwritten by independent label Clubhouse Records. Here are a few pictures that might explain why that is so:

Pete Greenwood (early on Saturday evening).

  

Troubadour Rose, late Saturday afternoon.

Don't even dare bet against the forthcoming album - Find An Arrow (2 September).

Swindlestock, live in 'The Saloon' @ Truck Festival 2013. You need 'Pilgrim Blues'. Really.
Probably these too.

Stevie Ray Latham, same stage but on Friday afternoon.

  

This one, however, pretty much sums it all up...

Redlands Palomino Company and ad hoc guests performing on Saturday evening.

Truck Festival 2013 - the indefinable aspect...

It has been three weeks and more since I last posted but that is not to say that I have vanished!
Far from it in fact and I have been listening to more, both recorded and live, then ever before (well, probably that is actually true).
More to follow very soon, but let's just start with this one photo from Truck Festival 2013, last weekend.

This is not the most obvious place to start, but then Truck is not the most obvious of festivals. It is all the better for that. This is London-based five-piece Arrows of Love on the main stage early on Saturday afternoon. Their début album is well in the works and its current working title is 'Everything's F****d'. That is not to say that Truck is anything other than a polite, well-behaved festival, for it is. It is however not entirely conventionally so. It isn't like Latitude and it isn't like End of The Road either. I can't yet quite say exactly why that is or how it manifests itself. On the other hand it is all the better for that indefinable distinction.

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).

New Music - Part 23 - Canadian Electronica

It seems to have been a while since I have written much about my ongoing fascination with music from Canada. What jolted me into action is the recent release of Olympia, the second album by Katie Stelmanis and her band Austra. It was with some trepidation too...

Feel It Break (2011) was almost too good to be true, until that is I saw them touring it live, twice, at festivals; End of The Road 2011 and No Direction Home 2012. Things have, quite naturally and rightly so, moved on but from initial impressions I think that Olympia is a worthy successor. I can't wait to see Austra live once again to hear the new music but it doesn't seem that I'll get that opportunity in 2013.
What it did do however, and why I don't know for it only happened this evening, is  serve to remind me about Canadian duo Purity Ring (Corin Roddick and Megan James) and their 2012 début album Shrines. I think it is fair to say that it is rather more oblique and obscure, yet ultimately just as beautiful.

The thing is that it may require some effort to come to appreciate and is disorientating.

I rarely say this but its appeal is not immediate and possibly too much effort or trouble for some. I was tempted by the tag Eclectronica for a while. You can either be bothered or you simply don't get it. I understand that.

New Music - Part 22 - a long awaited return...

Back in 2008, my first year of properly planned festival and live music attendance, one of the new acts that I saw at Latitude and then also live at Bristol Harbour Festival a few weeks later was a singer called Beth Rowley. She is from Bristol, which in part explains her appearance at the latter where she blew away the audience in Queen Square Gardens on a sunny summer afternoon. That year also saw the release of her début album Little Dreamer by Universal. If it had a systemic fault it is that it was too timidly produced, tending towards the Radio 2 end of the market if you will.
After that she seemed to fade away but it is all about to change...

This coincides with a set of three EPs; the first of which, 'Wretched Body', is released on July 8 and here is the title track from it.
It is rather a promising direction I think and, reading between the lines, I suspect that Universal is no longer involved. This is the track listing of what appears to be a digital-only release:

• Wretched Body
• Can't Stop Tomorrow
• Steal Away
• Princess

New Music - Part 21 - Up-coming UK folk

To be quite honest my in-box is overflowing with new things that I want to mention, hence two posts in successive days and the likelihood of several more to come before the end of this coming weekend. In contrast to yesterday's post these are all forthcoming albums and are not the début ones from the artists concerned.

This first, Over the Edge - The Carrivick Sisters, is not actually released until October 4, 2013 (physically on CD as a six-panel cardboard digi-file with lyric booklet).

If you can't wait until the release date then I suggest you check out its predecessor, From the Fields (2011), which I mentioned specifically for the song 'Charlotte Dymond'. While that one is essentially in the UK folk tradition much of this album, and I strongly suspect the new one too, happily borrows from other roots music in particular that of Appalachian and bluegrass.
Over the Edge consists of nine original songs, two original instrumentals and one traditional song. The track listing is below:

• Over the Edge
• If You Asked Me
• The Moon
• I Know You
• Making Horses
• Outside Time
• Lady Howard
• Pretty Fair Damsel
• Man in the Corner
• Old Friend
• Slap on Eleven
• Bird

If you sign up to their e-newsletter here then you can grab yourself a very good deal pre-ordering the album on CD [4 July - this offer has now ended]. Recording and releasing an album doesn't come cheap and many of the costs come up front.

The next two releases come courtesy of Navigator Records; the first is the second LP by Derbyshire singer-songwriter Lucy Ward. Her first LP, Adelphi Has To Fly, was released by Navigator Records on June 13, 2011. The next, Single Flame, is released on August 19, 2013.

Once again it combines the new and traditional, but...

If there is one single thing that makes me regret the cancellation of Frome Folk Festival 2013 it is that she was one of the confirmed artists for it. No artist wants seemingly confirmed bookings cancelled, for that matter, and I hope Frome can make it up to her in due course.

This next is from Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker; new to the Navigator Records fold with their album Fire & Fortune that is scheduled for release on July 22, 2013.

That said, if you haven't experienced the delights of their previous releases such as the Homemade Heartache EP (2012) or the albums, The Seas Are Deep and One Light Is Gone, then you already have a whole new world to discover.

New Music - Part 20 - And why EPs really matter...

This was originally started as a follow-up to my previous post about new (to me) music that I saw at Sunrise Festival 2013. On the other hand things change and, at least in the case of this blog, I have the absolute freedom to follow my whim: Yesterday I filed that half-written post in 'Drafts' and started over with this one instead.
It is still about new music and three acts/artists as was its predecessor. On the other hand the only one of these three that I have seen live is the first and all three have only released EPs thus far in their respective careers. The importance of the EP (digital or otherwise) is something that I mentioned at the end of last year when compiling my 'best of 2012' lists.
Most recently that was at Sunrise 2013 but, despite being the youngest, we have crossed paths on several previous occasions. This is Ned The Kids Dylan.

In the 'Groovy Movie' film tent at Sunrise 2013 on Saturday evening.
There is not a cover version to be heard here --- of Dylan or anybody else.
  

That said, and it says a great deal I think, here he is closing End of The Road 2012 (at 3:15 on Monday morning) with Brittany Howard (Alabama Shakes), and Hurray For The Riff Raff.

That is also true of the 'My Life EP', released in May 2013. If the quotes and comments in the link above seem rather surprising then all I can say is if you have a chat with Ned about music you will very likely find that you end up changing your mind! If you are still wondering what the fuss is about, and particularly if you are going to Glastonbury, then here you go:
http://www.virtualfestivals.com/latest/news/14019

Next up, and the longest established, is Oxford-based Swindlestock. I had never heard, or heard of, of them let alone seen them live until this week. It now looks good - live in Oxford and then live at Truck Festival 2013. They are in the throes of recording a new EP. This is the previous one - 'The Flood' - and it is a fine piece of cross-genre Anglo-Americana if ever there were one. (I just made that genre up, although I'm almost certainly not the first to do so.)

 A new EP is in the works. I wanna hear that live.

If you want a bit of 'The Flood' then here it is:

Free EPK from ReverbNation.com

So that brings us to the last of the three; North Somerset based Wolfhound. Now a trio with the addition of Anja Quinn in late 2012, sisters Sally and Natalie Joiner have been playing since 2010.
This is their début EP - 'Empty Lighthouse (2011). The second is imminent. Sometimes they also have a guest - a fourth player live - Bashema Hall on keys.

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

Lyrics again - Wine and Roses

It is ages since I have done any lyrics, which once was a regular event. Thank-you to whoever has just asked me for those for 'Wine and Roses', a song from Heidi Talbot's latest album 'Angels Without Wings' (2013), released by Navigator Records. They will be posted here tomorrow, once I have checked them against the aforementioned original recording.
Indeed this is likely to become a post featuring at least one other artist to release on this label in 2013.

Wine and Roses

I see the young ones slowly strolling
On the Friday Promenade.
The sun is low, their faces glowing
Hopeful hearts out on display.

In their dreams are wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I was much the same in my day
All impatient and unsure.
But alone I soon surrendered
Pledged my soul, so young and pure.

For he gave me wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Held my hand and we rubbed noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I see the young ones slowly strolling
On the Friday Promenade.
The sun is low, their faces glowing
Hopeful hearts out on display.

I'd never trade our life together
Though we had our rocky times.
My heart it rose and fell so often
Like the constant shifting tides.

It wasn't all just wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I am old and all alone now
My children gone and far away.
They used to ask what lovers are
I never knew just how to say.

But love is more than wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

If you have never seen Heidi Talbot live then really you owe it to yourself to do so. I had the wonderful fortune, at Truck Festival 2011, to do exactly that. It was a tiny stage and she was part of a trio with John McCusker and Kris Drever. To be quite honest, in the UK folk world at least, things don't come much better than that.  This fuzzy photograph is the best that I could muster in the circumstances...

Even a folk trio should not have four members! Roddy Woomble was a surprise guest here.

New Music - Part 18 - PJP Band - ...and so it goes

I can honestly say that, whilst most of my family live there, in the more than six years of writing this blog I have never once mentioned a band that is based in Plymouth.
Until today...
... and so it goes - PJP Band. I certainly didn't see this coming, so thanks to Amazing Radio for alerting me this evening. It is a fine album, indeed I have since spent too much time listening to it streamed. Better still it is available now either as download or as 2 x 12" LP contained in a gate-fold sleeve (limited to 250 copies).
It is not cheap but their bargaining chip is good...
"This is a deluxe run, and a beautiful product to own, even if you don't have a record player... yet." 
Well, at least that is not a problem for me and both have very recently been treated to a new stylus too. It is, as far as I can tell, the first release by Plymouth-based independent label OUF Records.
I hope to hear more music out of Plymouth, in any genre, sooner rather than later. To state it another way - Plymouth has a population broadly similar to the whole of Iceland...

New Music - Part 17 - The Graphite Set - These Streets EP

This is a rare case indeed.

I know I want this on vinyl, because I can and therefore it is already on pre-order, but that is not just because I want the music with the tone that 12" vinyl affords. I want it as much for the artwork that the 12" EP has and the download will either not have or will at best only have bundled as a pale imitation. That is not, however, to slight the music for a single moment. One of the best things that happened yesterday is that, as part of the final artist announcements for End of The Road Festival 2013, The Graphite Set was amongst them. The release date is June 3 (vinyl) or, if you can't wait, June 2 on download.
To help you wait, here is 'In Your Eyes' from said EP.

Live in Frome - Chantel McGregor

It is now much tidier and no longer weed-overgrown as it appears in this picture, which is obviously a good thing, but would you have suspected that it is as well as a Grade 1 listed building and after 251 years in use as a non-conformist chapel, and subsequently the better part of fifty years quietly decaying, now an arts venue, including live music whilst also home to a thriving architectural practice?

It is a bit much to ask, I know, but it is true. Maybe it was meant to be slightly forbidding.

Whether that is true I can't say but it is still formidable, not least because it is a very intimate venue indeed. There are no corners in which to hide and that applies as much to the audience as to the artists. I still wonder, however what the founders and subscribers for the building, when Frome was a town very rich indeed on the wool trade, would make of it all now. I'd like to think, as in their time they were forward-looking and sometimes almost to the point of revolution, they could see the positive side of it all. It might have been a challenge...

Rock four-piece Albany Down kicked things off with a solid set only marginally disrupted by some issues with the lead vocalist's mike and associated lead that were soon sorted out. Two albums, 'South of The City' and 'Not Over Yet' notwithstanding, these things can happen to anyone at any time and so here is Albany Down, live at Rook Lane Chapel Frome.

A great deal of stuff on one of the shallowest stages, which is why the monitors are actually placed on chairs in front of the stage and barely out of the way of the legs of those in the front row of the audience. Sometimes the publicity says "intimate gig" and this was that and then some.  There were a number of memorable tracks, all their own, and some fine guitar moments too.

On another day they could have been headlining and almost everyone, myself included, would have gone home happy but it was not to be one of those days.
This is where I started to wonder really what those wealthy subscribers, who paid for the building of this edifice over three centuries ago, might be thinking.
Not only is it being used for wicked enjoyment. This happened: Chantel McGregor...

"Tis a Wednesday evening; you should be a-busy weaving."

It only got better after that: this is after all an artist who only the previous day (and the first day of this tour) had not only been nominated in the short-list for 'Best Female Vocalist' by The British Blues Awards 2013 (an award she won in 2012) but also in the short-list for 'Best Guitarist' and the first time a female artist has ever been nominated in the category.

You might even have got the impression that she was thoroughly enjoying herself and, with music and the faultless backing of Richard Ritchie (bass) and Keith McPartlin (percussion), who can blame her.

Towards the middle of the set she played and sang three songs, all cover versions, solo:

• Rhiannon ( Stevie Nicks)
• I Can't Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt)
• Nothing Else Matters (Metallica)

That is not to say that the many tracks from the album 'Like No Other' were not equally noteworthy, the album opener 'Fabulous' particularly so, or indeed the new track 'Disco Lover Suicide', for they were. I think, however, that the final straw for the luminaries behind the founding of Rook Lane Chapel came with the sudden revelation. They had been changing the playlist throughout and she had to tell her band-mates, there and then, that the penultimate track of the main set would be a cover and here they are playing it:

Jimi Hendrix' 'Voodoo Child'.

New Music - Part 16 - Americana Both Sides of the Atlantic

This is about two albums that I have come to my attention in the last couple of days. One has been released only recently and the other is due in six weeks or so: both incorporate several trends in the way new music, and the music industry in general, is changing shape in an almost organic way.
I'm actually going to start with the one that has not yet been released for, without it, I would very likely not have discovered the one that has.

This is the début album from the Brighton/London based singer-songwriter. Crowd-funded, it is self-released on June 30, 2013. This is not to say for a minute that it is going to be some parochial take on Americana.
It was recorded in East Nashville under the guidance of Chris Donohue (Emmylou Harris and, more recently, The Civil Wars) with many well known roots musicians playing parts. Neither is it an album of covers and standards for, with one exception she has written or co-written all but one of the songs in this collection. For a more extensive biography see here.
  

The second album is this - the history behind it is even more complicated than at first it might seem.

This is their latest studio album and a 2013 release by, as were the forgoing ones, Chicago-based independent label Bloodshot Records. At the heart of the band are two natives of Detroit, MI who some while back decided to reverse the migration that led to the explosion of blues and rock, and relocate to Tennessee: Kurt Marschke (lyric, guitar vocals)  and JD Mack (drums), not brothers as it might seem, and the line-up had already been prone to evolution as is so often the case. The fact is that then it did include brothers from London: Spencer Cullum (guitar, lap-steel and pedal steel) and Jeff Cullum (bass). Then the dynamic changed again.
These two albums serve to define, to an extent, just where things are now and how much has changed; much of it for the better I believe.

Or perhaps some East Coast singer-songwriters...

This is an idea that only really crystallized for me today. In truth it has roots that go back much further. Consider this a start - a declaration of my intent to do something. In a strange way the catalyst was reading the Latitude 2013 line-up. I had so many good times there in 2007-2011 but I really don't regret the fact that I'm not attending in 2013. There are of course many acts/artists that I'd like to see - some of which I already have seen and others that, at the festivals that I am attending this summer, I will have the chance to see in smaller surroundings. Aside from that, Latitude in east Suffolk is a long way from home - a round trip of almost 500 miles - and that costs in both time and fuel. I suspect that, sooner or later, the lure of Latitude will tempt me back.
All I need to do now is work out what it is that I want to write.
In some ways the hardest part is now done - for me the hardest part of any project is getting started and this entire blog is a fine example of that!

Samantha Twigg Johnson performing with 10-string cuatro at Folk Weekend Oxford 2013.

Studio stage, Old Fire Station. In this instance the artist, originally from Illinois but now based in Oxford, UK, and album 'Organ of Habit' (2007) were unknown to me up until this point.

This is not however the case with the following. The 2011 album 'Strangers Who Knew Each Other's Names', by New Yorker Annie Dressner, has been known to me for a while.

Further to that she has been on my list (albeit a rather lengthy one) of artists that I wish to see live. That particular issue has been neatly resolved as she too has moved this side of the pond and, even better still, is one of the artists at Frome's Acoustic+ on May 24. 

Anyone for a little West Coast pop?

This will not be to everyone's taste. I know that but if you fancy an early summer dose of West Coast pop, and obviously I do and that is why I am mentioning it, how about this from Seattle-based Seapony?

It won't change the world - it doesn't need to.

Why opportunity can be everything and budget nothing.

Given a suitably massive budget, and the access to resources that it brings, then surely commercial musical success will be assured? Well, for some decades that was very much the modus operandi of the major labels and for a long while it worked, in so far as the successes were more than able to bank-roll the flops as well as the often ridiculously wasteful corporate processes, functionaries and flunkies that the industry acquired along the way.
It has been seen before, and indubitably it will be seen again, in a great variety of industries... The idea that something is 'too big, for which read too self-important, to fail'.
Trains it has repeatedly been discovered do not actually run at all well when fuelled by gravy and, as any fireman will tell you, the best strategy is almost always to keep the fire even, lean and hot: The costs, both pecuniary and physical, within proportion to expectation and yet the ambition beyond both. This is a fact that the legion of independent record labels have long been acquainted with and this is a 'taster CD' from just one of them that arrived here with me today.

Owlet Music is based in beautiful, rural mid-Wales, very far from the centres of the UK music industry. That doesn't matter one bit - they have both the talent and the opportunity available to them but without the commotion and distraction of the cities. I suspect that I shall be writing much more on this and related themes in the coming months but, in the meantime, Owlet has just delivered one of the finest LPs of 2013 so far. It is hardly shaping up as a barren year and neither does it look like changing in that respect in the coming months.
That is Trwbador - Trwbador, the début album from the duo that I have mentioned before. Another one to watch, by the way, is Casi Wyn from Bangor and her EP1 (Recordiau IKaChing).