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Great British Folk Festival 2014

Venue: Butlins
Town: Skegness
Date: 5-7/12/14
Website: http://www.bigweekends.com/

Friday Saturday Sunday Gallery

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Give or take a significant delay on the M25 it was smooth driving all the way up to Butlins, Skegness and the Great British Folk Festival. Arrived in bright sunshine, though, to use local parlance, the air was bracing moving towards damned bracing by the time darkness had set in.

A meet up with the rest of the team and old friends, in the conveniently located The Sun And The Moon, pretty quickly brought about a sense of anticipation in what was to come, including the addition of the Introducing Stage in the Skyline Pavilion and it was there that the 2015 version of the season closing Great British Folk Festival(GBFF) kicked off.

Amy Naylor had the honour of kicking the whole thing off, stepping in as a last minute replacement for Ashley James and it has to be said the first thing that hit home was the quality of the sound, not just for such a cavernous space, The Skyline Pavilion being the hub around which the site rotates, but good sound period.

With the two main venues, Reds and Centre Stage, not kicking off until the evening, The introducing stage was definitely the place to be. It was a good mix of acts two solo artists, aforementioned Amy Naylor and Lotte Mullan, interspersed by Americana influenced duo Rita Payne, with rising stars of alt.pop folk world Coco And The Butterfields rounding off the showcases.

On this performance, Coco And The Butterfields are a band that could very easily grace bigger stages and even competing against people trying to get into Reds to try and make sure that they could get a seat for Bellowhead later as well as having Steve Craddock's set starting midway through their set, they retained their audience an even got some dancers into an area that had previously been about as popular as a shark infested reef at a surf convention.

The band, who include a beat boxer, together with their blend of easy going and occasionally reggae influenced, acoustic folk, have a real rapport with the audience, one which I'm sure will serve them well both in the live and recorded spaces and I think we'll see that there is more to come from this combo.

Coco And The Butterfield closed the introducing stage for the day, though real audience rapport was something they very much shared with Merrymouth, who closed Centre Stage in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Featuring Simon Fowler and Dan Sealey from Ocean Colour Scene and including John McCusker as an unexpected guest, Merrymouth are a great band to use to emphasise the musical diversity at this year's GBFF and who rounded off an evening that for me included Wolfscote Feat. Cathy Lesurf and Altan plus a little bit of Ross Ainslie and Jarleth Henderson thrown in for good measure, more of which later.

The real emphasis of Merrymouth was songs, well that and an occasional discussion with the lighting engineer so that they could see their audience. There was a warmth that flowed off the band into the crowd that brought the two aspects together that made for one of those sets that just worked. An audience that recognised a great narrative and gave the songs the space they needed combined with a band that were totally at one with what they were doing, a sublime end to the night on Centre Stage.

The gap between Coco & The Butterfields and Merrymouth was unusually for me at a festival watching complete sets, rather than smaller bits of a lot of sets. The two bands that I missed being, Steve Craddock Band, whose start clashed with Coco And The Butterfields and then with Wolfscote, who were featuring Cathy Lesurf and Bellowhead who I've seen relatively recently, unlike Altan, where it's been a while.

It was definitely a night for The Great British Folk Festival to live up to its name with songs and performances from all parts of these Sceptred Isles. Across Wolfscote, Altan, Merrymouth and Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson there really was a good portion of the acoustic spectrum covered, both in songs and tunes, much, though not all with a folk flavour that went across the traditions, through contemporary and rock variations and still finding time for something a bit more pop aligned.

Of course, this is a festival so there's the chance to catch up with friends and catch up on old times, make new acquaintances through chats at the bar, all of which lead to a really good atmosphere and a totally chilled out mood, one of those places where it just feels right and that feeling of chilled out and relaxed comes easily to hand and it's still only day one, well, looking at the time well into the start of day two, but there's not going to be anymore music for a few hours yet.

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