Moniaive Folk Festival It's A Long Way From Woodstock
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What do you do when your community festival outgrows its community? Moniaive's answer is to invite all and sundry. The persuasive Hugh Taylor is artistic director of the festival and so I found myself making a 900 mile round trip to catch the 8th Moniaive Folk Festival and my first.
Moniaive is a village with ambition. It supports more restaurants than any other comparable village I've come across. You can still buy petrol there; it's got a shop and post office and pubs. I book into Causies Cross B&B and set myself up for a weekend music. The Craigdarroch Arms Hotel.
The festival is multi-site, but most of the activity is focused on the obligatory marquee and the Memorial Hall. The rest are distributed across the pubs, hotels and front rooms across the village. Yes that is right front rooms. Moniaive has a focus not just on entertainment, but also on education. There's a series of workshops held in people's houses, further bringing the community into their festival. I'm beginning to understand the reason behind Moniaive's success.
All parts of the community get involved in the festival, there's organizing committees, stewards, campsites to cover, sound brought in, lighting comes via the school. In addition to the main music venues, the younger parts of the village get their own venue, "The But And Ben" where they can learn instruments, crafts or just chill out watching classic black and white films from the likes of Laurel & Hardy. In addition there's the Music Bus, a mobile recording studio/music complex that teaches what goes on the other side of the desk.
The community is further represented in the music programming of the festival. Opening the festival is a community choir, the Cairn Chorus. Consisting of approximately twenty people, male and female, they take to the stage in buoyant mood. I find myself in a state of trepidation; my experience of community choirs is, well, mixed. My fears are allayed as soon as they get into the first song. This is a choir that can definitely sing. The songs are a mix of traditional and contemporary, five hundred plus years of music into a single set. Most of the songs have a story behind them, this is not a randomly collected set list, it's been composed with a great deal of thought.
I was particularly impressed with the quality of the voices. I expected the songs to be delivered with passion, I don't know a community choir that doesn't sing with passion, it's the ability to hold a tune and the way they've arranged their material. Particularly impressive was the cover of the Boo Hewerdine standard, "The Patience Of Angels". If Last Choir Standing is looking for a real community choir, there's a village in the Scottish Borders where they might want to cast a glance. Fortunately the intermittent rain has stayed off during their set, but you can hear the pitter patter of water bouncing off canvas as the festival team start switching the stage ready for the next act, a local artist that is just starting to make her name on a wider world, Allison Cleland.
Allison is a singer/songwriter with the keyboard as her weapon of choice; she's joined on stage by fiddle singer Robyn Gray and Paul McKenna Band's bodhran player Ewan Baird. The numbers on stage vary during the course of the set, but the quality definitely doesn't. The keyboard is always a difficult instrument to play behind, it's quite restrictive. Unless you're Jerry Lee Lewis and able to kick the living daylights out of a piano, by and large all you can do is sit there. That means you have to find a different way to make sure you hold the audience's attention.
Allison's solution appears to be being a great singer and engaging the audience with a good bit of banter. It's easy to underestimate the importance of the gap between the songs. It's especially true when it's an artist that you've never seen before. It can help you warm towards the artist, understand where they're coming from. Songs do talk for themselves, or should do, but a bit of banter can give you the crowd. You get to understand the vulnerability of the artist. It becomes clear, that despite being a great singer, Allison has a nervous concern about her own songs. How do they compare against the singers she chooses to cover?
She sets herself hard comparator, Richard Thompson, by way of example is a tough act to follow, but follow she does. I'm impressed with her numbers; actually I'm impressed with her performance period. Allison Cleland looks like she's going places. Her songs contain a great deal of her personality, there's vulnerability in there, but rather than detracting, it pulls you in, warms you to both artist and songs. Definitely an artist to keep an eye on.