Beverley Folk Festival - Friday
To a full festival ticket holder, the Beverley and East Riding Folk Festival offers both comfort and convenience with the thoughtful provision of car parking right next to your tent, hot showers and ample amenities a mere stones throw away, early morning wake up calls courtesy of the Minster bells, which is not a cheer leader troupe but celestial chimes of course, and the centre of a beautiful market town lined with pubs, cafes and shops just a short walk away.
The festival has grown during its twenty-five year existence but it's still possible to find a decent camping spot and see just about everything on the bill with relative ease. Yes, one or two concerts clash and you have to make that all important decision about which venue you would most like to visit, but Beverley makes this easy by applying logic to their diverse programming. Mike McGoldrick and Buzzcocks for example. By providing such a contrasting Friday evening programme, Beverley managed to please just about everybody. Those who wanted to kick their weekend off with a taste of Celtic music courtesy of Mike McGoldrick and Friends had to take a short walk over to the Memorial Hall, where they would also have been entertained by upcoming Wheeler Street and established songsmith Eleanor McEvoy. Those who had a taste for the louder end of Manchester's music scene congregated en masse for a hot and sweaty shoulder-to-shoulder belter of a night, as the volume grew steadily and climaxed with the much-anticipated Buzzcocks set. Isn't it nice when a festival team doesn't automatically assume that all folkies are musically tunnel-visioned?
Bravely kicking off the festival was Like A Thief's Holly Jazz Lowe, who provided a handful of songs accompanying herself on piano and guitar. She seemed to be relaxed but one guesses she might have been bricking it all the same, as this very contemporary songwriter faced what could have been a traditional folk audience with furrowed brows. Starting with "Dilemma Dilemma" and culminating in a pretty faithful reading of Gershwin's "Summertime", Scarborough based Lowe did a grand job of getting the audience warmed up for the fun and games that followed.
Hull-based band The Favours successfully bridged the sonic gap between Holly's lightness of touch and the Buzzcocks' unbridled rampage that followed. Fronted by the Debbie Harry-esque Sara Sanchez, The Favours provided the festival's Silver Anniversary celebrations with its first taste of rock n roll of the weekend.
During the short interval between The Favours and Buzzcocks, someone cheekily fiddled with the dial and boosted the volume up to eleven, which soon sorted the Minster's bells out and indeed the wind in the trees. I dare say even Mike McGoldrick's gentler numbers may possibly have been hindered by Steve Diggle's guitar licks as he leaped around the stage whilst a bemused Pete Shelley looked on from centre stage. If there was any confusion on Friday evening as to whether this was a folk festival or not, the half attempted act of crowd surfing probably provided the pinnacle of that doubt.
After the main sets on both stages at the Leisure Complex and the Memorial Hall across town, things began to liven up in the Wold Top Marquee, presided over by Miles Cain, who ushered artists on and off stage at frequent intervals, providing an eclectic mixture of both established names and newcomers alike. Roy Bailey popped along to support the sessions, as did Wheeler Street, Rachel Unthank and the Winterset and many more during the weekend.