The Jacket On Cherry Hinton

The downpour meant some rescheduling of my Sunday afternoon. Plans for wandering between Ruthie Foster and Anais Mitchell were shelved as we were in the dry. Not seeing Anais is my big regret of the weekend. I have loved her music since Hymns for the Exiled and Young Man in America is a seriously good album. I have seen her many times and what I really wanted was to see the looks on people's faces when they see and hear her for the first time. There are worse things to do when it is pouring than to see Seth Lakeman. He is no way near the top of my list of favourite artists but he never disappoints. My experiment last year with staying in one place for a whole day meant seeing Femi Kuti and the rain this year meant seeing another African superstar - Angelique Kidjo. Both immensely entertaining I think that Cambridge is telling me to expand my musical horizons.

One thing about this year's festival was that I had a very definitive list of bands to see - mainly Americana due to my radio show but also Four Men and A Dog and June Tabor and Oysterband. Fortunate scheduling meant that I did not have to miss either The Pine Leaf Boys or Gretchen Peters as they both played Friday and Saturday and my narrow view meant that I did not suffer from the clashes that my friends did. Some were torn between seeing The Unthanks with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass and Phantom Limb - southern soul easily trumped northern brass for me. The one conflict I had was between Nic Jones and Lera Lynn.

For most people that is a non-contest: a new country singer with one album or a great of English folk music whose career was halted thirty years ago due to a serious car crash? There were raised eyebrows and more than one "really?" when I announced my choice. I was not even a teenager at the time of this accident and my exposure to folk music was limited to a track by Steeleye Span and a track by Fiddler Dram (and I'm sure that I don't need to name them). By the time I had developed an interest in folk music his name, to me, seemed to be nowhere and it was not until the announcement of this festival that I read about him. I really was not sure that I wanted to see him as I had seen Edwyn Collins a couple of years ago and the crowd's reaction was not good and I wondered if he wanted to there or if he needed to.

Lera Lynn's performance was good; good songs, good voice and a healthy stage presence. I was surprised that she only had a single slot in the club tent over the weekend and would have expected her to have played both the main stages in the same slots that Hayes Carll, Joe Pug and Abigail Washburn have filled in recent years. The conditions in the club tent were not good. Directly in front of the bar was a couple of inches of water, the sides of the tent were closed and the front of the stage was packed. My position, outside and at the back left me open to the sounds of Loreena Mckennitt wafting in from main stage one and a horrible stench wafting from what I imagine was a mixture of mud and beer.

I made my way over to stage 2 to catch the last twenty minutes of so of Nic Jones' set. I'm glad I did and I wish that I had seen it all as my fears were unfounded. Jones seemed to have something of a twinkle in his eye, his son Joe (guitar) and Belinda O'Tooley (piano and accordian) played with pride and it wasn't long into 'Little Pot Stove' that I had a dodgy contact lens.

So I am thankful for an almighty thunderstorm as without it I would have missed the most touching part of the festival: I really should listen to those whose opinions I trust.

John 'The Jacket' Hawes