After last year’s all-out celebration for Fairport’s 50th birthday, the programming this year needed at least one act that was well out of the ordinary. Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds band as Thursday headliners certainly met that requirement. Perhaps not the most obvious act to receive the Folk Radio review treatment but the sight and sound of thousands of the Cropredy faithful, a good number in Hawaiian shirts, singing along to the extended medleys of Beach Boys hits that bookended the Pet Sounds tracks, ticked all the boxes for memorable.
Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds
Tradition dictates the weekend kicks off on Thursday afternoon with a short acoustic set from Fairport, this year joined by former member Maart Allcock (main image), his first of several appearances over the weekend. A weekend that, he’d already announced, would be his last live performance following the diagnosis of terminal liver cancer. Maart has been a favourite of the Cropredy faithful from his time with Fairport,1985-96, so this was the perfect setting for him to say his farewells. In public, he’s been unerringly upbeat since the diagnosis and remained so through the weekend, but, inevitably, this was the start of an emotionally charged weekend for his many fans.
Fairport Acoustic Set
A regular delight for me at Cropredy is to listen to, and then chat with, the current recipient of the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award. This year’s winner, Mera Royle, is a harpist and fiddle player from the Isle of Man. Now, when a solo performer wins the award they’re likely to gather a band around them before facing the assembled multitude on Cropredy field. No such safety net for Mera, for her opening tune she played solo harp. And, before plucking a note, she impressed, delivering an introductory chat that many an experienced performer would have envied. Her well-founded self-confidence also led her to rip away another safety net, not for her a well-known trad. tune, her opener was a blues piece by American jazz composer Deborah Henson-Conant. Her own compositions followed, including pieces she’d performed on the Folk Award judging weekend. Her solo credentials thoroughly established, she then brought on stage the band she plays with at home on the island, Scran. For the remainder of the set, Mera plus six other, equally young and talented, Manx musicians (Raygie Dolloso, Owen Williams, James McNulty, Calum and Fraser Rowe, Jack McLean) gave a practical demonstration of just how lively the Manx trad music scene has become. Two albums from Barrule over the past five years introduced us to the Manx strain of Celtic music, Mera and her band show that a younger generation is ready, willing and more than capable of building on that start.
It’s a sign of the times, and hopefully, of the future, that on consecutive weekends this summer, I was introduced to new, UK-based, all-female bands. Midnight Skyracer are a 5-piece playing bluegrass, both traditional material and their own compositions. They only teamed up early last year but have had a fabulously successful time since. One of their first gigs last year was Cambridge Festival, they’ve toured in the UK, Germany and Switzerland and released a CD (reviewed here). This summer has been packed with festival appearances and just before the Cropredy gig they learned they’d been nominated for International Bluegrass Music Association’s Momentum Awards, awarded by the IBMA to emerging talent. The band, collectively, has been nominated and banjo player and vocalist Tabitha Agnew is also shortlisted in the Instrumentalist category. In addition to Tabitha, the band comprises the Carrivick sisters, Laura on fiddle and dobro, Charlotte on guitar, Leanne Thorose on mandolin and vocals and Eleanor Wilke on upright acoustic bass. Their performance early on Friday afternoon had to contend with some of the more serious rain of the weekend. With their excellent instrumental arrangements, the vocal variety provided by Tabitha and Leanne and with backing vocal harmonies from Laura and Charlotte, the crowd needed no persuasion to ignore the weather and bask in some bluegrass sunshine.
Not quite so freshly minted as Midnight Skyracer but still new enough to raise an expectant buzz, Sam Kelly and the Lost Boys stormed the Cropredy stage with a blistering set, including plenty of material from last year’s album, Pretty Peggy. As a seven-piece band, they can make a big and varied sound but their performances also owe a lot to their interactions on stage. Sam’s band started life as a trio with Jamie Francis’s banjo and Evan Carson’s percussion but as it’s grown to a five- and now seven-piece outfit it’s kept the feel of friends playing together and having a thoroughly good time. The banter between Sam and Ciaran Algar, in particular, ensures that the between song chats can be as entertaining as the music. Just to help them stay friends, I’d better name check the remaining three, Graham Coe on cello, Toby Shaer on flutes and whistles and Archie Churchill-Moss on melodeon.
Cropredy has long been about concocting a bill that mixes old friends with new discoveries and the old friends this year included The Levellers who headlined Friday and Oysterband, taking the slot before Brian Wilson on Thursday, 14 years after their last Cropredy appearance. It was an opportunity to catch up with John Jones to check out how the Oyster’s 40th anniversary was progressing. 2017 was the year of their anniversary tour but in John’s words, “we were humbled to still be able to perform our music and for people to still be so appreciative” and so their fortieth year has been extended and November will see them perform another dozen UK dates. Before then they have a quick trip to Spain and a month’s tour of Canada whilst the New Year will see them in Denmark and Germany. John was quick to stress the importance the band attaches to strengthening these European connections. Our conversation inevitably turned to future projects, the success of the Oysters3 gigs this year means an album will likely materialise and a third solo album from John is in prospect, he’s currently collecting material. Bringing the focus back to Cropredy, there was a personnel change to consider. For a while, after Ray Cooper left in 2013, the band was without a permanent cellist, Adrian Oxaal playing some 2013 gigs, eventually becoming more of a fixture. However, he has an alternative persona as guitarist with rock outfit James, and a James tour clashed with Cropredy. Step up Rachael McShane to cover, joining fellow, former Bellowhead, Pete Flood, who took over the Oysterband drum kit last year. John’s smiles confirmed his words, yes, the new members are bedding in very well. The band’s set that evening added further proof, the mix of material spanning a fair range of the 40 years giving the crowd just what they wanted.
Oysterband
It seems unbelievable that this year was the first time Afro Celt Sound System had played Cropredy. As they operate as a collective, you can never know in advance just who will be in the line-up, but, as the primary instigator, Simon Emmerson is a fairly safe bet. In our pre-gig chat, though, he confirmed that kora player and vocalist N’Faly Kouyaté, normally an equal certainty, is away from the band at present. He’s involved with The Head and the Load, a play/opera that is finally giving full recognition to the rôle played by Africans in World War One. It’s in the nature of the band that there wasn’t a direct replacement, a modest amount of shape-shifting and we were presented with Afro Celt Sound System, Saturday August 11th iteration. Their set mixed plenty of the old, tracks from Volumes 1 – 5, with the new, tracks from Flight to be released later this year (read more about the album and hear new tunes here). The album features a significant new collaboration with the Manchester-based Amani Choir led by Emmanuela Yogoela, five members of which were on stage at Cropredy. Emmanuela is a Democratic Republic of Congo refugee and along with flautist Riognach Connolly works with the refugee community in Manchester. With this background Flight promises to be a more overtly political album and a celebration of multi-culturalism, something that has always been at the heart of the Afrocelts and which Simon, not unreasonably, feels is currently threatened on many fronts. Their rousing Cropredy performance was as entertaining an advertisement for a multi-cultural society as you could wish for.
Also on their Cropredy debut, and making their own multi-cultural statement, was Québécois band, Le Vent du Nord. They’ve been a firm favourite on the UK festival circuit for several years with their mix of tunes and songs largely drawn from the traditional material of their homeland along with their own compositions. True to form, their intensely rhythmic tunes soon had many of the crowd out of their seats and the mosh pit jumping. This year has seen a major change for a band whose line-up has been stable for 10 years, they have added a fifth member. Fiddler André Brunet, having guested on a couple of the band’s albums, started full-time at the beginning of 2018, teaming up with his brother Réjean (button accordion and acoustic bass guitar). André’s previous band, De Temps Antan, has continued as a trio. Having a second fiddle player joining Olivier Demers has made a significant difference to the band’s sound, they each play solos but the real power comes from passages when they’re both playing. The subtle differences introduced by each player’s individual style add a new fascination to the music. A new album, the first with André as a full member is in preparation.
Le Vent du Nord
I started this piece with words about Maart Allcock, knowing he would also figure prominently in the closing paragraph but I didn’t know then it would be his eulogy. He was clear in all his public statements that there would be no respite from the cancer. But his leaving us, barely a month later, is hard to reconcile with the enthusiasm, skill and energy that he was able to bring to his Cropredy performances. So, Fairport’s Saturday night set from this year will forever belong to Maart and the stand out track Matty Groves. In the late 80s when Maart was a member of Fairport, Matty Groves had already been in their repertoire for nearly 20 years. But Maart used his electric guitar wizardry to give it new life, the Metal Matty version. Hearing that again this year is a memory that will never fade. The traditional closing song at Cropredy, Richard Thompson’s Meet on the Ledge, is always an emotional 5 minutes, but with Maart on stage those lyrics had a painful immediacy. So long Maart, your music will live long, thank you.
http://www.fairportconvention.com/
http://www.maartinallcock.com/