There is more to a gig than listening to the music. Ach, the logistics: the calculation of best fit venue – the nearest? The best for atmosphere (York? Do I like York? Settle? Too far. Can I get to Sale? Where is Sale, exactly?)? The questions: ‘how many of us are going to go?’’ -‘Do you want to go see Kris Drever?’ ‘No, saw him in Sheffield the last time’ – the humming and hawing. Then finally, the buying of the tickets. Come the day its the looking at the map, the finding out about timings, the ‘when are we going to eat?’, ‘when shall we leave? Where is bloody Biddulph, exactly?’; The fuel check, the weather check, the parking strategy. Then the getting in the car without forgetting your phone and your wallet. Then off you go negotiating hammering October rain on dark, narrow lanes never encountered before and ‘shall I pass that tractor?’ and ‘Why is this idiot driving at 20 miles an hour?’ Oh to be 18 again when none of this would enter my head for a second.
But it came to pass that at 7.33 pm on a mercifully drying Friday evening; there is the venue just after this right turn. And there is a berth on the road right outside the church near the Potteries where in 27 minutes a tall, lean Scottish folk singer of about 40 is going to entertain. (Hah! Take that you Gods of Misery who would blight my life daily given a sliver of a chance!)
I nearly wrote “genius” there. I am a slave to Kris Drever, and I exist in a state of adoration when I listen to Lau. This began in 2017 when, in Berlin for a month, my head was turned by a small poster outside a suburban community hall advertising “Kris Drever”, the very same bloke I’d seen playing stand-up bass in Kate Rusby’s band over a decade ago and soon after that opening the launch of a record label singing Fairwell To Fuineray where hipster backing singer for Rufus Wainwright-turned solo artist Joan Wasser was the headliner. In Derby, of all places. For all its gritty midland charms, 52nd Street it is not. With Ian Carr for company, Drever absolutely blew me away with 16 songs from a solo career I had no idea existed. In an evening of revelatory highlights, his Scapa Flow 1919 provided the most enduring of memories, musically narrating the defeat of the German nation in the Great War to an audience of Berliners. Introducing the song in careful English prefaced three and a half minutes which seemed to consist of two blokes on trial for their lives in a foreign country, bodies sweating and faces contorted with effort. The audience liked it very much.
Twenty-five months later, Scapa Flow 1919 has become quite a thing: a nomination for Folk Song of the Year, 2019, a website release with professional artwork in tow and you can even buy the t-shirt (if you’re a medium or small, L & XL currently sold out). But this evening in a beautifully lit church in central, post-industrial England, the song took its place in a two-part, 100-minute presentation of unassuming, understated artistic talent that made two key arguments. 1. That for all its blighted and precarious existence, Britain is still a place worth living in. 2. That whatever your troubles, if you have music like this to actually come out to and experience, you’ve at least something incredible to hold on to.
What with being commissioned to write this and that, invited to take part in projects like a song-written extension of the book The Lost Words (2019); a seemingly insatiable appetite for mining and examining the history of the folk song, particularly those from Scotland and his native Orkney and – until very recently – his place of residence, Shetland, and a dedication to the hard work that produces a startlingly high level of skill in playing the guitar and singing the song, you can all too easily get sentences as long as this when you try to describe him. Kris Drever also possesses two other priceless qualities: talent and a unique voice. Rare to me is a gift for transforming someone else’s original invention into a piece of art that is unquestionably different and indisputably Drever. To hear him mediate Hewerdine’s Harvest Gypsies, Colclough’s Call and the Answer (which here included a tribute to the recently deceased songwriter), Gaston’s Navigator or indeed, absolutely anything he takes on is to receive something truly Drevered. I just love it.
A feature of this tour is a seeming desire to take one or two chances. Like last time (Spring 2019) he deploys a Fender Telecaster much of the time, excusing it slightly abashed with a reference to Dylan’s alleged betrayal of the history of folk in ’66 and the shouts of “Judas!” in ’66 at Manchester Free Trade Hall. The clash of ancient and modern as he knocks out a traditional instrumental (he played two of these, both from the fine Hill & Shore last tour CD).
But this time he attaches looped drones and inserts to three songs, adding richness to the dish and freshness to the ear of the regular KD tour attendee. The addition of a re-worked Shady Grove and the Ken Graham/Robert Burns song, Now Westlin Winds, with an introductory autobiographical tribute to Dick Gaughan are further cases in point. The latter particularly was a testament to arguments made above re. Drever’s unique gifts, Dreverisation, etc. Add fragments from his original contributions to Lau albums to this evolving mix – from Midnight & Closedown – and you have an artist with some store from which to pick goodies out and put on display to his public. Individuals have their own favourites. Mine, I think, was his Scatterseed from The Lost Words album, a delectable meditation in sound with lyrics which, while reminding you of childhood, appropriately trip across the lines of melody and the map of chords like the movement of small angels in summertime.
Being folk in 2019, this public was small but appreciative. It is also, like me, getting old. And while this ensures an evening free of drunk, annoying punters and the thoughtless talking in all the wrong places, it can be somewhat atmosphere deadening. In England, anyway. On this night there were a couple of “whoopers” at the back to remind us this wasn’t Sunday service, but considering the quality of the music it did seem at times that the bulk of the audience were worried that if they applauded too enthusiastically they might need to be at the doctor’s surgery come Monday morning. However, the accumulated effect of being Drevered for two sessions and the passion the artist put into an ironic, final Didn’t Try Hard Enough roused the faithful to make a noise that produced another piece of chance-taking, an unscheduled reappearance for an encore, saying, “I don’t know what to do!” A whooper’s cried request for “Navigator!”, accepted by the singer, saw Drever leaving the microphones, the Tele and the amp behind him and coming among us for the coda, leading us in this tremendous sad song which some of us sang too in the choruses. For one to whom such experiences are all too rare, this was an event in itself, and a very special one, not least for my son singing tunefully beside me.
2019 will probably not be remembered as a good year for England or Britain, or indeed, for almost anywhere. In terrible times, though, music always survives. Kris Drever, Biddulph October 2019 shone light into this present darkness, and memories of it will endure through months and years. Thanks be to whoever or whatever makes such things possible.
For details of Kris’s upcoming dates visit: http://krisdrever.com/