Morning dips backdropped by the Jurassic coast, concertina creeping around every corner, more collective Morris dancers than you’ve likely seen in your entire life – it can only be Sidmouth Folk Festival. Finding ourselves in South Devon for the first week of August, it seems only obvious to fit our plans around the panoply of sights and sounds the festival has to offer. For their 67th year, the summer spectacle returns to its full week’s schedule after 2021’s understandably pared-back event, boasting the formidable talents of Spiers & Boden, Fara, Sheelanagig, Daoiri Farrell, Granny’s Attic, Chris Wood and many more. What follows is our whistlestop account of the cornerstone of many traditional music fans’ calendars.
Our official introduction comes in the form of Queer Folk, a project led by Sophie Crawford & George Sansome devised “to amplify the voices of LGBTQIA+ performers, foster collaborations, and encourage the building of LGBTQIA+ community within the folk, roots, and traditional music scene.” Drawing on a mostly traditional repertoire, the audience are asked to revisit the songs they know so well with a “switch flipped in (their) heads,” exploring the possibility that I Am A Gay Fellow, for example, might be about more than just drink and debauchery. Unmiked and uninhibited, it doesn’t take long until their easy humour and stellar musicianship win us over.
During a stunning rendition of Willie o’ Winsbury, Crawford scans the audience as she sings, triggering a deep-felt response from anyone her eyes fall upon. Short Jacket & White Trousers and Jack Went A-Sailing both lean into the common nautical cross-dressing troupe of trad songs, although the latter (which features exceptional playing from the Granny’s Attic guitarist) goes further than most with the heroine saving the day. It also poses the powerful question, as Sampson highlights: “This couple they got married, so well they did agree; This couple they got married so why not you and me?” Further into the set, he refers to how occasionally, after singing songs specifically about men at folk clubs, he is often met with, “it’s so nice to hear one from a woman’s perspective.” “It’s not from a woman’s perspective,” he grins, shaking his head. Charming, curious and progressive, Queer Folk is a breath of fresh air.
With our ears primed for the reconsideration of folk song, our next stop is Melbourne’s Bush Gothic. Since her first performance at Sidmouth twenty years ago, the band’s singer and multi-instrumentalist Jenny M. Thomas continues to keep fans gripped and guessing. The sinister groove of their set slips between the ethereal and the jazz-inflected as the trio pays homage to both first nation Australians and the criminals of yesteryear, caught in an “era of transportation, adventure and gold.” Originally written as part of a musical, Botany Bay’s backstory and sparse blues swoon captivates before a gloriously gothic take on Black Velvet Band sneaks up on us, many not twigging what it is until the chorus.
“Same time as the Beatles. Same importance too,” smiles Yves Lambert in his homage to Norma Waterson. The audience applauds in wholehearted agreement, all having been moved in some way by Norma’s music and immense contribution to the folk scene over the years. According to the Sidmouth regulars we speak to, this is the busiest they’ve witnessed The Ham as we wait in anticipation of A True-hearted Girl – A Tribute To Norma Waterson. “We’ve lost some very special people in the last two years,” acknowledge MCs Jo Freya & Fi Fraser, “however, this is going to be a celebration of Norma’s life.” What follows is exactly that. For despite the tears, there is no stopping the mighty river of song, the humour, history, and power always finds its way through.
Close friends of the family, Dani & Rod and Jim & Leaneatte Eldon, offer tender tributes, the latter displaying her impressive North of England clog style dancing alongside her husband’s fiddle accompaniment. Jim Causley (one of Norma’s favourite voices and with good reason) has the tent singing in no time, his spirited take of West Country song ‘Twas on One April’s Morning an endearing nod to Norma’s rendition on her third solo album, Bright Shiny Morning. Elsewhere, Martin Simpson’s blues slide on Under the Leaves conjures up a sense of lonesome, open plain ambience. Two other matriarchs of the British folk scene, Sandra Kerr & Frankie Armstrong, both recall their time with Norma, Armstrong performing her tragic Lament for the Hull Trawlers and Kerr taking us through every emotion with the fearful My Daughter, My Son and the sharp-witted Five Lives of a Tin Bucket.
Martin Carthy & John Kirkpatrick open the second half with a pair of tunes from their time spent with Brass Monkey, the band that paved the way for the likes of Bellowhead through their unorthodox use of brass. After Kirkpatrick’s rich-voiced Riding Down to Portsmouth, Simpson returns alongside melodeon player Saul Rose, and they masterfully work the melody of The Maid of Australia. Soon after, Eliza Carthy and multi-instrumentalist David Delarre take the stage, Eliza recounts that during their rehearsal for this performance, she had got halfway through the first number and couldn’t do it. “We’ve got eleven of them to do now,” she jokes with a look of disbelief. Yet somehow, after all their recent hardships and having only just recovered from covid, the Carthys push on in tremendous fashion, the audience rallying around them at every turn.
Eliza leads us through the slow banjo saunter of Prairie Lullaby, which Norma used to sing to her as a baby. “You’re never going to sing a baby to sleep with a song that complicated,” quips Martin, Eliza retorting that when they recorded it on 2010’s Gift, her firstborn was out for the count by the end of the session. Between recollections of fist fights between Anne Briggs and Luke Kelly, Norma’s thoughts on the pointlessness of encores and back-and-forth about what key to play songs in, one story, in particular, stands out, told by her husband and musical partner Martin Carthy: while working as a radio DJ in Montserrat one evening at a bar, Norma had entertained drinkers with a song. Afterwards, someone approached her, asking, “Where did you learn that? You must have learnt it off a Waterson’s record. That’s Norma Waterson!” to which she turned and replied casually, “how do you do?”
The North Country Maid was the song in question from The Waterson’s classic 1965 documentary Travelling for a Living. The passion and commanding storytelling of Eliza’s rendition truly channels that of her mother, and when the crowd lift their voices for the last chorus, we’re left with chills. That feeling continues to sneak up on us. The brooding progression of Lowlands of Holland and an ‘encore’ of Ron Kavana’s Midnight on the Water find the Carthy’s playing facing one another, locked-in and listening intently, Eliza stepping away for breath-taking fiddle solos that press the songs deeper. Eliza’s voice breaks towards the end of the latter. “I didn’t think I’d get through that,” she confesses, wiping away the tears. It’s met by a rapturous standing ovation. As she sang earlier in the set during the closing moments of Grace Darling: “Go tell the wide world over what English hearts can do.”
Huddersfield’s Jack Rutter has apparently been here since the Thursday before the start of the festival, swimming the coast and evidently chomping at the bit for his first performance of the week. Launching into nonsense song Lancashire Liar, his acoustic resounds under the effects of his octave pedal. The audience proves to be in fine voice too. Whether they’re familiar with it from Moore, Moss, Rutter’s debut or his first solo outing, his storming take on The Dalesman’s Litany receives a hearty reception, Rutter laughing, “you know you’re at Sidmouth when you get a massive chorus singalong.” Over ten years on from winning the BBC Young Folk Award and after his time spent playing with both Seth Lakeman and Jackie Oates, Rutter has become a seasoned performer whose interpretation of traditional song remains as inspired and dynamic as ever, as displayed on the cinematic slow build of Fair Janet and Young James and crowd favourite Hey John Barleycorn.
On Wednesday night, Celtic fusion heavyweights Peatbog Faeries show us an entirely different side of the festival. Looking out over the town down below, The Bulverton is bustling as fans get in one last dram before the Scots take the stage. “Let’s see your armpits,” cries Innes Watson minutes into their set, the crowd already onside, hundreds of arms outstretched. The all-out disco of The Jesster is followed by the joyous jangle of Room 215 before the ensemble lean harder into 90s EDM, sounding like a cross between Underworld and the Battlefield Band. A broken string doesn’t even stall Ross Couper long, the tantalising trade-off of his fiddle and Peter Morrison’s highland pipes on the sprawling The Humours Of Ardnamurchan for example, prove an indisputable standout of our week.
Another act that seems in contrast to the other performers we see this week is Elspeth Anne. For all the bleak balladry we hear, hers feels the most distinctly uneasy. What’s more, the honesty in her stage presence, patter and lyrics is refreshing. Behind that minor key quiver sits an inspiring fearlessness. She tells us that after submitting With The Thaw I Am Renewed to BBC Introducing Hereford & Worcester, they emailed her back saying it was hate incitement. “I was worried about playing it at gigs,” she admits, “I mean it does mention killing some men. Maybe they thought I meant #allmen… It’s more than a handful, but a relatively small percentage.” It’s clear why Lankum’s Ian Lynch has endorsed her on his Fire Draw Near podcast, the drone of her shruti box and her raw, twisted take on traditional music making her an exciting outlier within the genre.
When we interviewed Angeline Morrison, we discussed other acts playing Sidmouth, and she spoke of how marvellous Nick Hart was, describing him as a natural descendent of Martin Carthy, always in service of the song. After witnessing his Folkedelia headline slot, it’s certainly a sentiment we can get behind. Appearing without his host of unusual instruments that add such colour to his recordings, Hart performs unaccompanied and with an acoustic. Much like Carthy, Simpson and Chris Wood, his open-tuned playing appears utterly effortless, every hammer-on and decorative run impressively paired with his broad, deft vocals. Opting for longer, knottier narratives, the body count soon tots up on John Riley (Lord Randall) and Lucy Wan, with the sweet-sounding, fateful broadside Jack Hall and carol Dives and Lazarus particular set highlights.
Sadly, we have to bolt before his encore to catch a series of trains and buses back up North. Yet, despite how we may look (one festivalgoer calls us beasts of burden, eyeing us over with our backpacks and tattered totes), our spirits are high after our first Sidmouth experience. That said, it still feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface. Next time round, we might have to take the Rutter approach and arrive a week earlier.
Website: https://sidmouthfolkfestival.co.uk/