Beverley Folk Festival - Saturday
There's not much in the way of hanging around too much at this festival as things get off to an early start on Saturday morning with various workshops and special events on offer. I meandered in and out of various venues during the morning starting with the Wold Top Marquee, where Tasmin Little was providing handy tips, hints and guidance to our young budding violinists of the future. As indicated in a recent South Bank Show special, the acclaimed concert violinist is indeed campaigning to bring classical music to the masses, and where better to start than with our youth.
If scraping the horse's hair over the cat's gut is a bit un-vegan friendly around the festival village, then a lesson in the wonderful art of song writing might easily have been up your street instead. Eleanor McEvoy equipped herself with ghetto blaster and flip chart in order to explain the ins and outs of putting your ditties together with favourable results. Using Dylan, Springsteen and Marshall Bruce Mathers III of all people as examples, to name but a few, Eleanor attempted to simplify the various forms of song writing technique and enlightened her audience of budding song writers on how to break the rules 'as long as you know why you are breaking them'.
My final workshop of the morning was over in one of the two Priory rooms, adjacent to the Minster, where Zak Borden(above) was going through the rudiments of bluegrass mandolin. With the help of his partner Rachel Harrington, Zak demonstrated how just eight short strings helped to change the course of country folk music and subsequently opened the doors to clever pickers worldwide, courtesy of Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs and the Bonnie and Clyde soundtrack.
The Saturday afternoon 'A Northern Gathering' concert in the Main Hall got underway with local singer songwriter Edwina Hayes, whose country inflected songs and thoughtful covers brought a taste of Americana to the afternoon. She opened the show with the aptly titled "Open The Show For You" and brought to new ears some older songs as well as brand new ones from her latest album 'Pour Me A Drink'.
The Hut People are the unusual combination of Sam Pirt on accordion and Gary Hammond on various assorted percussion including pots and pans from the scullery. In a broad Johnny Vegas-esque brogue, Sam Pirt delighted the audience with everything from jigs, reels and schottisches to French Canadian romper stompers.
Over at the Memorial Hall, Eleanor McEvoy was headlining an afternoon concert under the banner of 'From the West of the Pennines', where each of the acts were indeed from that side of the world with varying degrees of distance. Bernard Wrigley probably felt comfortably at home (being a Bolton boy), McEvoy from slightly further over the rainy moors and an entire Irish sea and then there's Oregon based Rachel Harrington and Zak Borden feeling positively homesick. Rachel's much anticipated set coincided with the delivery of her second album 'City of Refuge' fresh from the press, which was made available to buy at the festival, a couple of months prior to it's general release.
Headlining the Saturday afternoon Main Stage concert was the ever-delightful Rachel Unthank and the Winterset. Performing lots of goodies from their much admired second album 'The Bairns' as well as "On A Monday Morning" from their first offering and opening with the traditional "Sandgate Dandling Song". Their first appearance of the weekend culminated in the exquisite "Unst Boat Song", the only song that could possibly follow their regular finisher "Fareweel Regality".
After their recent tour took them half way around the world with various appearances at festivals and clubs both folk and non-folk related, the quartet have now settled into some tight arrangements and their experience is showing in the clarity of their harmony singing and general performance. Becky Unthank's sublime reading of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song" was once again a high point of their set.