Saturday
On the non-music side, there are a number of new photographers to get to know alongside catching up with the long serving Pit Ponies always good to catch up with new faces, it's quite a group of us heading down for Steeleye.
Over the years, many musicians have passed through Steeleye Span, but a good number survive from the band's last appearance at the festival back in '94. Most recently the band have been working with Terry Pratchett on a project around his "Wintersmith" novel.
As Steeleye take to the stage, you immediately notice a tradition verses contemporary clash. Whilst a lot of musicians have adopted floor based electric fans to keep cool in high humidity, high temperatures, Maddy Prior still prefers the traditional hand fan that also serves as a useful prop whilst performing.
Whilst I duck out after only a couple of songs, I get the impression that Steeleye Span are going to be great value. They still very much have the passion for their music and it is one of those professions that makes it easy to enjoy your job, all the strength to them.
A quick dash through backstage shortens the journey to the Den and maximise the time I can spend in the presence of Ross Wilson, aka Blue Rose Code.
Edinburgh born and London based, Blue Rose Code appears to have taken some of the more positive aspects of both cities to come up with a sound that can probably be best described as Caledonian soul.
I unexpectedly find myself thinking about how the red hues of the Indian style marquee that is gthe den provide a colourful contrast to the slight blues tinge of the sound, particularly when accompanied by the fiddle of, I think, Lizzie Ogle, but I stand to be corrected. He also had a bass player with him, but whose name I definitely miss, though I know for sure, wasn't Danny Thompson, who played on the album.
I really liked the live sound. It very much has a relaxed vibe to it. I guess nice and chilled, but also very clear, one where you get a real definition in the sound.
This was my first experience of catching Blue Rose Code live, the same can't be said of the next act to grace the stage at The Den, Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker, one of the bands that I've seen most often in the last eighteen months and whose hard work has seen them come to the attention of Navigator records, from where they have just released their latest album, "Fire & Fortune" to universal acclaim.
Josienne Clarke has a voice that was built for folk music, clear and expressive, quite rightly she is being compared to the likes of Sandy Denny and Annie Briggs, but more often than not her voice is being mentioned in its own right, something that is very much of her and the songs it's used to carry.
For a lot of her songs, she also uses her hands to bring physical expression to them, as though she becomes an aspect of the song for that brief moment. Alongside her, guitarist Ben Walker provides the frames for the words to flow off, these are two musicians very much in tune with each other and the result is performance after performance where they hold audiences spell bound. If I were to suggest an act to follow the Staves from here to Stage 1 within a year, this would definitely be that act.
Still somewhat in awe I make my way back to Stage 1 for my first full blown blues of Cambridge Folk Festival, via the Heritage Blues Orchestra. The disingenuous might describe the nine piece combo as a blues tribute act and to a degree that's a fair description, but then the likes of Muddy Waters, Leadbelly and their ilk, nor the likes of Miles Davis are with us anymore and it really is good to hear bands not only playing their music, but experimenting with it.
A large band such as Heritage Blues Orchestra, has the range of instruments as well as the singers and musicians capable to doing those old songs justice, not just drawing on a single blues sound, but drawing on great blues songs from both sides of the Atlantic. I take the opportunity to ease up on the rushing around, to get myself a beer and a curry to just relax and hear all the underlying intricacies they have in their sound.
This was a performance with life, pizzazz and not a little soul, one of those performances that brings the whole audience into a little bit of a feel good time and ended up being an unexpected highlight of the festival for me.
Suitably fed and watered, well metaphorically at least, it was time to make the move back down to the front for the first solo act, I'd seen on Stage 1 this year, Tommy Emmanuel.