Friday
I hear a rumour that the Co-operative Group Central
& Eastern region are giving out festival dog tags. I immediately head for
their stall to discover that it's true.
It's a great way of promoting both
their cause and the festival. Massive kudos to the person that came up with the
idea. There's a lot of good work done by the co-operative movement so best of
luck to them.
It's time to wander across to the Club Tent, I do so much
walking one year I must bring a pedometer, to catch the third annual Mojo
Interview.
This year the subject of the interview is Richard Thompson. Not
only is he a consummate performer, he's also a premier league
raconteur.
Mojo's Phil Sutcliffe lead the interview, but Richard goes off at
so many tangents that it's hard to keep up.
The chat is interrupted by
frequent songs; often the audience is given a choice of a couple of numbers.
Richard was in Dublin last night and apparently set off at 5 in the morning to
be here, but there's no sign of tiredness.
Richard is in his element. He has
so many stories and so many songs he can just pull in so much from his past and
he's willing to give it all up. Without question it's the best Mojo Interview to
date.
The Anna Massie Band gets the honour of opening Stage One this year.
They are every bit as good as they were in the more intimate setting of the Club
Tent.
The girls take to the stage with beaming smiles, though Jenn
Butterworth tries hiding it beneath her flowing locks.
The set is a stunning
mix of songs and tunes, with more of the latter. The band has great voices and
it's a shame we don't get to hear them more often.
That said when the tunes
are this good you can forgive them that.
Back at the media caravan I bump
into Anna and Cormac from Uiscedwr. We have a little banter and set up an
interview for later.
It's going to be a busy day for Cormac. As well as
playing with Uiscedwr at the Club Tent later and busking at the Mojo Signing
area, he's also playing with Seth Lakeman.
A huge round of applause goes up
for The Anna Massie Band. There are a few minutes to grab a quick drink whist
the stage crew go through their paces clearing the stage and setting it up for
Swap.
Having seen three quarters of Swap doing the workshop earlier I was
concerned that their set might be a little dour. Far from it. The performance
started with light and vitality.
The band is all dressed in white and the set
is well lit. There's plenty of positive reaction. They sing a song about a civil
engineer in Swedish. It's not anything I've heard before and possibly never
heard again.
The set intersperses slower more soulful numbers with energy
tunes and seems to strike the right balance.
It's different. I find myself
really enjoying it, but it's not a sound I'm really going to crave. As well as
the songs there's some good banter. Needless to say there was a contrast between
a Swedish winter and the unexpectedly hot English summer.
It's a complete
change of direction next. It's time to switch to a country bent in the shape of
singer songwriter Tift Merritt.