Thursday

It was another good choice. The trio of Chip Taylor with Carrie Rodriguez and John Platanias have everything you could want in a band. A brilliant songwriter, great musicians, great voices and a whole that was even greater than it's remarkable parts.
Chip is a great vocalists, but when he was joined on vocals by fiddle player Rodriguez it was literally one of those spine chilling, hair on end moments.
Chip and Carrie's vocal dynamics had come about by chance. He's hired her as a fiddle player for his last European tour and happened to overhear her singing to herself. From that he asked if she'd ever sung up front before and then more or less told her that she did now.
Like most serendipity the results have been outstanding. Initially Carrie was joining Chip on some of his older songs, but now he's written an album for the two of them and they took the opportunity to showcase a few of the new numbers. It's an album that I'm definitely going to be looking out for.
The third member of the trio, John Platanias, is a long time contributor of Chip's and has worked with the likes of Van Morrison in the past. He's a superb instrumentalist, who brought an interesting counterpoint to the sound.
Whilst the stage was being changed for Eliza Carthy and Martin Green I bumped into some old friends and paused for a chat. It meant that I missed the start of the set, but that's part of what festivals are about. It's not just the music, it's the whole atmosphere and an important part of that is the craic. Catching up on events with people that you might not see from one year to the next.
It also emphasised another aspect of the festival. Martin and Eliza would be playing again later in the festival so there would be a chance to see them then. Different stage, different set, but Martin and Eliza none-the-less.
I was going to try and catch Filska, but unfortunately left it a bit too late to cut across the site, so I comforted myself by staying at the Radio Two Stage and listening to Billy Bragg. This was one of those occasions where artists that were only playing once were on at the same time so one of them was going to miss out.
Billy played last year with his band the Blokes, but this year he was playing solo. Like myself he'd made the trip up from Dorset, where he's now based. Solo male singer/songwriters are still a rarity in the folk world and most of those that do appear come from that slightly older generation. It may seem that he's become more radical in his old age, but it's more that the likes of the Labour party have moved further to the right.
It was refreshing to hear songs about issues, rather than about emotion and how life's been a bitch. Politics has always been an important part of folk music, but the opportunities to hear that aspect of the tradition seem to have become fewer and fewer and it's a feather in Cambridge's cap that it remains a place where it can be heard.
Musically that was it for the night, but there was still a few hours left to have a couple of pints and one of those long rambling conversations into the night before heading back to base camp to prepare for the Friday.