The Demon Barber Roadshow provide an incredible extravaganza at Cheltenham Folk Festival
Cheltenham Folk Festival 2010 review
Wednesday 3rd March 2010
Saturday morning's events start before 11am with singarounds at the YMCA, acoustic sessions at The Music Library and a series of 'Hour or So' sessions in the Club Room from Life & Times, Niamh Parsons, and Mawkin:Causley. The Main Hall doors open for a Lunchtime Concert with Barron Brady and singers Grace Notes followed by Maz O'Connor and then Heretique.
After the Lunchtime Concert the Saturday Showcase is a two hour historical tableau 'The Navvy's Wife' by The Company based around the lives of the women who accompanied the two hundred thousand English, Irish and Scots working men who dug the canals and railways.
The subject provides a rich seam of source material for some of folk music's great concepts; hard labour, tragedy and the struggle against authority. The songs and stories focus on religious conflict, mob violence, drinking, poverty and sexual immorality in the Navvy's itinerant camps. Jackie Oates plays one of the female characters taking part in a dialogue with the male Navvies, missionaries, priests and bosses. There are many choice lines such as
"death waits like a spider for all" which leads into a musichall song "So many ways to die". The sad conclusion of the story is that the Navvy's part in building a foundation for commercial Imperial Britain is all but forgotten, we take digging ditches and tunnels for granted.
Working class women is the theme for Saturday afternoon as in the Club Room Grace Notes sing women's working song drawn from sources such as Sheffield cutlery polishers and 'Maidens of the Sea'. The afternoon's showcases really bring out the importance of folk and traditional music in passing on the shared oral history of ordinary people.
The Festival's Main Concert on Saturday night provides much lighter hearted entertainment. The Hall is full to capacity as Heretique make their third appearance at this year's event to begin the evening. For this show Jon is wearing an Alien Sex Fiend T-Shirt, perhaps a first for a hurdy gurdy player! The audience are enthralled, the dull throb of a thousand feet keeps the beat and raucous cheers greet each song’s climax. The band tells us their rider for the gig was a lettuce and an electric pineapple, which amazingly they have been provided with and proudly show off. Hopefully their songs, like their demands, will remain ridiculous.
Mawkin:Causley are straight on after Heretique and continue the upbeat atmosphere. Jim Causley entertains the crowd with arm waving and questions like which is better, a checked or a striped shirt? He observes the Main Hall is just like being inside a 'Big Birthday Cake'. It's all quite camp, but that is his style. The band, Mawkin, look a little less amused but deliver excellent support and stirring renditions of songs gleamed from all manner of historical and contemporary sources. Ashley Hutchings & Ken Nicol offer a deviation from the historical stuff that as preceded them, which is slightly odd as they are the folk veterans of the weekend. Their songs are based around everyday subjects including bowling with the grandchildren.
In the Club Room next door the atmosphere has none of the levity of the Main Hall but the appreciative crowd have been treated to a thoughtful set from Ashley's son Blair Dunlop followed by Grace Notes, Trio Threlfall and Niamh Parsons with the Tom McConville Trio still to come. Back in the Main Hall the Concert comes to a dramatic finale with The Demon Barber Roadshow. This band are a firm favourite whose spectacular show is a packed full of action, it's the first concert, which actually fills the stage. The band performs modern folk songs about diverse subjects such as speed cameras and magpies. The attraction of the Roadshow is not so much the music as their dancers. Many times members of their the five girl clog dancing team are brought out to perform impressive leg shaking feats. A pair of Morris dancers energetically performs during a fiddle solo. Most striking is five-man rapper team including several members of the band using glowing 'swords' to pivot and somersault around the stage. The Barber's lightshow even extends to the chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. To top it all they bring on a beatboxer who accompanies the clogdancers to the show's climax. An incredible extravaganza to complete a lively and entertaining concert.
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