| BRIAN
PETERS: News What’s Afoot in 2012 The New Year kicks off (after a break from touring, for the expected but not necessarily happening January blizzards) with an engagement at the Glasgow Ballad Workshops, where I will attempt to convince an audience of expert Scots balladeers (and believe me, there are some formidable singers involved) that the English may actually have something to offer them. Then, after a few folk clubs and a melodeon workshop for the Folkus organisation up in Lancashire, I'll be welcoming Jeff Davis over from the USA and performing with him our new joint project, 'Sharp's Appalachian Harvest', which revolves around Cecil Sharp's incredible collection from the Appalachian Mountains, where he journeyed to seek old British ballads and songs in what Jeff would call "the Nineteen Teens". We've put a lot of work in to this and are really looking forward to it, and we're also teaming up for a couple of duo gigs on Jeff's February tour of England. I'll very probably be undertaking the duties of chauffeur and back-up musician at some of his Northern solo dates as well. At Easter time I'm off to the Australian National Folk Festival in Canberra - a stupendous festival I've played a couple of times before - and visiting family members who've found themselves Down Under for various reasons. There are also some English festivals coming along at Chippenham, Upton, Gower, Shrewsbury and Fylde, with more in the pipeline. Go to the Tour Dates Page to find out more. |
 Onstage at Seattle Folklore Society, February 2011 |
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Review
of 2011
Began the year by playing a couple of clubs run by people I’ve known a long time. First the Potteries FC near Stoke, fronted these days by Annie Morris, who ran the club at White Swan in Manchester, where I was both resident and guest back in the 1980s. Nice club, in the station building of a small steam railway. Next, the Robber’s Dog Folk Club in Sheffield, opened by my old friend and editor of the South Yorkshire folk mag Stirrings (one of the best folk music reads to be had, by the way) in a city centre pub. A matter of policy, that last detail, since so many clubs these days have fled the urban nightscape for the safety of country pubs and leafy suburbs. Another good club, with quality floor performers. |
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February brought me to the West Coast of the USA, starting up North with concerts in Seattle (see above) and Bainbridge Island (where I had a great time staying and jamming with Carter Bannerman, who plays a fine mandolin), before a flight down the coast to California, to play in Sebastopol, Berkeley and Anaheim. Seattle was great – the hilly location makes for interesting geography, the place hosts thriving commercial and fishing ports, and the land-based side seems lively, too. A proper city. Seattle also contains the ‘funky neighbourhood’ (as they say over there) of Fremont: the kind of place where you might meet Vladimir Ilyich himself striding towards you – not a common sight in the US of A, I have to admit. The kind of place where shops have banjo necks for door handles (a very good use for a banjo, I have to say). The fancy handles were spotted at the Dusty Strings music store, where they kindly allowed me to give concertina and guitar workshops. |  |
| Before departing Seattle, I got the chance to witness one of the wonders of the natural world: finding myself in town in February 14th, I was tipped off that on Valentine’s Day every year, the city aquarium’s male and female specimens of the Pacific giant octopus are allowed the chance to mate. In a bizarre ceremony accompanied by the sound of romantic Barry White recordings, a gate closing off an aquatic bridge between the two tanks is lifted, and the two happy cephalods are allowed to get it on. There’s even a bouquet of plastic roses in the lady octopus’s tank to get her in the mood. Some years, I’m told, molluscan lust fails to materialize, and the only chemistry between the squidgy suitors is the cloud of ink they project at one another. 2011, however, was the year that true love ran smoothly, the pair hurled themselves into each others’ arms, and round about now the patter of tiny tentacles can no doubt be heard just off Seattle pier. Two octopuses enjoying coitus turns out to be a rather dull spectacle, something like a motionless pile of tripe, but I did get a nice shot of herself going through some warm-ups prior to the main event. |
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That was the first of five trips to the USA this year, which I know is a bit crazy, but when you’ve got the elusive US work permit signed and sealed, you might as well milk it. I was on staff for the Northeast Concertina Workshop run by the Button Box in Massachusetts in April, which gave me my first opportunity to hear Mary MacNamara, the great anglo player from East Clare, play live – and what a treat that was. She has such a lovely, unfussy, lyrical style that’s full of subtlety. A couple of moths later I was back again for the maritime festival at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut and, amongst many meetings that weekend, got to spend some time with my old friend John Roberts and my new friend, the hot Irish-style anglo player Ben Gaglairdi. |
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There was also someone on hand
with a camera (thank you ‘seachanteyfan’) to take a video
of a rather vigorously-paced rendition of the Yorkstone Flags set
at the squeezebox session in the Greenmanville Church, which is part
of the restored town at Mystic. That’s another old mate, Bob
Walser of Minneapolis, on my right |
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| Now here’s something
that got me a bit excited. Perusing the rather wonderful collection
of musical instruments at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I came
upon this tiny but, to a freed reed enthusiast, significant exhibit.
It’s one of the few remaining examples of Charles Wheatstone’s
Symphonium, the immediate predecessor of the concertina that Wheatstone
was developing during the late 1820s. It has the reeds and button action
of the concertina, but is mouth-blown. Being a bit of an ignoramus about
the history of the instrument that I’ve played for thirty years,
I’d never heard of the Symphonium, so it was a thrill to come
upon such a neat little button box unexpectedly, and I tried to get
the best shot I could of it. It’s only a couple of inches across
and I apologise for the slightly blurred photo - but it’s my photo
so it’s getting pride of place here. If you want to see a decent
one there are plenty on Google Images. |
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So to my third visit to Lunenburg, and this time an additional engagement at the Traditional Music Symposium preceding the festival, where I got the chance rabbit on about the way the old songs developed as they were passed on, and to hear the great Scots ballad singer Norman Kennedy sing rivetingly, and talk very engagingly about his memories of growing up in Aberdeen with Jeannie Robertson for a neighbour; also about his knowledge of traditional textile arts (on which he’s an international expert), including the ‘waulking songs’ that accompanied the communal beating of woollen cloth. The festival itself was as much fun as ever, and is there a more pleasant location for a folk festival than this historic fishing town? Sheesham, Lotus & Son were really good fun with their quirky but authentic renditions of 1920s hokum, blues and fiddle tunes. Nice people to jam with. |
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| As for me, I found myself
back on the wharf stage where I first played in 1998, a beautiful sunny
afternoon this year just as it was back then. |
Back home in England in August there was a busy round of festivals, with Saltburn, Whitby, Towersey and Bromyard arriving in quick succession, and three more opportunities to go Ballad Bonkers in the Songs of Trial & Triumph show. Over a hundred in the room for it at Towersey! The next Grand Project, which I’m working on at the moment in collaboration with Jeff Davis (who should need no introduction here), is on Cecil Sharp’s Appalachian collection, which is packed with terrific songs. We’ll be presenting it for the first time at Cheltenham Folk Festival in February 2012.
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Coming up before then is yet another US tour - East Coast again - in October, a performance of the Kipling / Bellamy Barrack Room Ballad show The Road to Mandalay with Dave and Anni (we had some fun with that at Bromyard with all three voices knackered from a weekend’s hard work!), Bedworth Festival in the Midlands, and dates down South at Byfleet, Horsham, and the wonderfully quirky club ‘Elsie’s’ near Tonbridge. The redoubtable Elsie is still in charge at the Queen’s Arms in Cowden Pound, which has changed scarcely a jot since Scan Tester played his concertina there in the 1950s – a pub where Elsie refuses to serve lager and herself tipped an entire barrel of keg beer the brewery had attempted to foist on her into the horse trough outside (“Even the horse wouldn’t drink it!”). For lovers of a proper, old-fashioned English pub there’s no better to be found anywhere; take a mini-tour here.‘Elsie’s Band’ runs the folk club, and they’re great too. |
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