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Homegrown + English Folk Expo

Venue: Various
Town: Bury
Date: 16-18/10/14
Website: http://themet.biz/homegrown/

Although the Summer festival season has ended, there's always one more event on the calendar to which folk fans can look forward. And what an event the Homegrown weekend has started to become. The event is now in its third year and an already stellar bill continues to get better and better, with The Met attracting an established audience from the local area and beyond with a varied programme across three venues in the centre of town, often leaving the public spoilt for choice and reflecting the very best in English folk music. Thirteen different shows utilising the 2 performance spaces in The Met itself, plus the larger capacity Drill Hall and the recently opened Clarence pub, a staggering total of thirty acts scheduled for public performances across the Thursday and Friday evenings plus a full day on Saturday.

Hand in hand with the musical events is the English Folk Expo music industry gathering, which allows The Met and the musical performances across town to showcase the best and exciting new talents of the genre which go some way to spreading the word on what English music has to offer. Whilst being offered the full programme of events which make up the Homegrown part of the weekend, the delegates who attend the English Folk Expo can add a whole host of their own events which make the most of marketing the artists and the music. The main mover behind English Folk Expo is Terry O'Brien of Playpen Music Management & Agency who took some time at the end of the festival to chat about her tireless work to promote traditional English music - more of that can be found here.

Thursday Friday Saturday Interview Gallery

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Dateline : Saturday

Anyone up bright and early would have been able to have a splendid time with the Megson Family Folk Show, recalling the heady days of Saturday morning kid's clubs. As well as appearing as a duo on the folk circuit, Stu and Debbie Hanna's adaptations of folk based song material for the younger audience is a creative and original way of catching them young and encouraging youngsters in the delights of song. Plus they have a fantastic bubble machine! A full on interactive experience with audience participation obligatory and expected, the Hannas are the perfect couple to carry off the venture with aplomb. For something a little more lighthearted where the children are as much the stars, highly recommended, and don't forget your 'I danced at Megson's Family Folk Show' sticker after showing your banjo wiggle.

Anyone missing an early start might be forgiven for saving themselves for a full programme which saw another 16 acts performing on the final day. On a sneak attack from Devon and starting off the afternoon on a high were Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman who thoughtfully had a stack of freshly delivered new CDs available for lucky attendees despite not being on general release until the new year; lucky being the operative word as in 'Tomorrow Will Follow Today', they've created a superb collection again which was showcased in stunning fashion in their teasingly short early afternoon set. Contenders for the jewels in the collection already were 'A Song To Live By' - written by Kathryn for her two twins giving them an ideal for living and for guiding them through the turbulent waters of childhood and beyond. Recorded live at home it will become one of those songs like 'The Ballad Of Georgia Lee' into which she pours her heart and only the emotionally bereft and stony hearted will fail to have been moved by what may well have been the stand out performance of the whole weekend. On a different tack is 'Child Owlet', a traditional Child ballad with the gratifyingly gruesome topics of incest, betrayal and murder, accompanied by Sean's driven guitar and apparently accompanied by a music video created by the young Lakeman/Roberts twins . Whether the latter will ever make the public domain remains to be seen (a new youtube viral phenomenon maybe?), but for any English Folk Expo delegates looking for a class album and act can't fail to have been mesmerised.

As he mentioned early in his set, Luke Daniels has been on the circuit as a squeezebox player for some time, most notably and most recently with Irish songstress Cara Dillon. Although he's been releasing recorded material under various guises from some time, as a solo performer he's relatively fresh to the fold with his current band. Another artist returning to the area after gigging at the Ramsbottom Festival, the trio of himself , Ian Stephenson and Julian Sutton are as classy and accomplished a folk trio as you can imagine. He has been quoted as seeing folk music "as a sleeping dragon that we need to wake up to help us reimagine who we are and the institutions that support us." His new album, 'What's Here What's Gone' of which the title track is a bleak and sparse piece, and which is sometimes more lyrically dark than pleasantly folky, allowed him to focus on his surprisingly dextrous guitar playing. With songs like 'Don't Be Afraid' he comments on his worldly views, and accompanied by a fine picking style although taking the opportunity to adopt his familiar pose and sit cross legged squeezing his box. There was a combination of folk and Americana feel to his a professionally played set and was an indication that Saturday afternoon at The Met was going to turn out to be one of the highlights of the weekend with some real pros at work.

The Melrose Quartet, made up of regular partners Nancy Kerr and James Fagan along with their friends literally from down the road, Jess and Richard Arrowsmith, provided a rich variety of musical and unaccompanied highlights. The two sets of partners have been playing as duos form some years now - maybe more than they care to remember, while chance circumstances have led them to come together as an inspiring new band. The rich sound of Jess and Nancy's fiddles combining with James 8 string playing and Richard's melodeon reflected the quartet 's airy freshness and saw them sparking off each other and providing possibly the most unexpected highlight of the weekend. They excel in their singing of four part harmonies unaccompanied in songs like 'Santa Georgia' and 'Wedding Bells' but come into their own when their instrumental virtuosity accompanies their well matched voices exemplified by the truly excellent 'Fifty Verses'. Not only an album but a live experience to savour.

Over in the Drill Hall, the afternoon session began with a solo set from John Spiers, one of theose musicians who you can genuinely say needs very little if any introduction. Expanding on the type of solo slot he used to do (how sad to actually write that) with the Spiers and Boden duo, it seemed a little odd seeing him perform a fuller solo set rather than be joined by his old sparring buddy. Crow barred into a small gap amongst the set up for the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, it was the ideal place for a solo performer who needs a modicum of space - not that the programming would have dictated that necessarily, yet it was a perfect opportunity to showcase his musicianship for those more used to seeing him play as part of other acts.

The variety of this year's Homegrown programme was demonstrated by the addition of the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. Perhaps the most English ness of a brass band, who better to choose than one which has such a high profile and also a track record of performing with folk artist - most notably The Unthanks. This time, their own set was punctuated with Lucy Ward appearing for three songs, of which Bill Caddick's 'Cloud Factory' was truly magnificent and a contender along with Kathryn Roberts, for the single most impressive performance of Homegrown. Any fans of Dylan who will have seen his astonishing performance of 'A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall' with an orchestra in Japan in 1994 will appreciate how playing with such a backing can lift a performance. So it was with Lucy Ward. Already a performer who puts heart and soul into her work, she really matched the warm richness of the band bringing out a heartfelt vocal which dripped with nuance and emotion.

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