Beverley Folk Festival
Beverley Folk Festival 2011
Friday June 17th - Sunday June 19th
Multiple Venues
Beverley Yorkshire
Friday - Saturday - Sunday - Gallery
Beverley Folk Festival - Friday
This was the first year I'd been to Beverley Folk Festival. Fatea has covered the event in the past, but this was the first time I'd chosen to do the several hundred mile round trip from Dorset and pretty much from the off it looked like a cracking decision, the only slight downside being the weather. Not that that was particularly bad, mainly showers, and anyway the site is pretty self-contained so dodging the raindrops wasn't too much of a problem.Whilst a number of venues are used throughout Beverley, mainly pubs for sessions and halls for arts events, the festival its self is focused on the sports centre complex and the fields surrounding it. It's well organised, the campsite is really close to where the action is and near enough to the car for you to be able to nip back if you've forgotten anything.
On the main site, the venues are split between those inside the sports centre and those in marquees outside. The external venues are well positioned and I didn't detect any sound bleed between them. Most of the venues have their own bars, normally tucked away unobtrusively at the back. The Festival Village also contains the various food, craft and music stalls associated with the festival atmosphere.
I met up with a couple of friends , and old Beverley hands, Allan and Liam, who over the course of a couple of pints, gave me the run down on how the festival worked and how to get the best out of it. Then after something to eat, we met up with Phil, Fatea's other team member and it was time to think about heading in the main hall for the start of the festival proper.
There's two real choices there's a dance/acoustic session going on in the dance/concert marquee, but I've decided on starting in the main hall where the opening act is the Jess Gardham Band, a four piece, Jess providing vocals and guitar, with the band playing bass, keyboards and cajon, though, this is normally full kit drums.
As with a lot of festivals, the meaning of the word folk, which always meant different things to different people, depending on which part of the country you hail from, becomes further blurred as they incorporate a wider range of music across the acoustic spectrum. Jess has definitely got a soul almost funk thing that slides effortlessly into her more singer/songwriter core.
Using Tracy Chapman as a reference point almost seems like cliché and lazy journalism, but it's also a very apt reference point, particularly as Jess has absolutely no qualms about slipping political issues into her repertoire of songs. It came as no surprise to discover that Jess made the list of finalists in the BBC2 New Talent Songwriting Academy.
It was a performance well worthy of starting any festival, she would be performing a couple of times later in the festival and is an artist well worth checking out if she plays in a venue near you.
Another artist well worth checking out is up next and one which we at Fatea have featured quite a bit, Sean Taylor. I guess in terms of volume, this is the biggest venue I've seen Sean play at. It's of a size that I would imagine might start to feel intimidating to a solo artist on a big stage in front of a large audience, but if that was the case, it certainly didn't come across in his playing or singing.
Sean is an amiable, laid back sort of guy and it very quickly became apparent that some of the audience weren't expecting the deep and dirty blues that came pouring from the stage, but they warmed to him immediately.
As a solo performer with no fall back, you need the sound to be spot on and I was concerned that a large sports hall may have lacked the acoustics for Sean to be heard at his best. Far from it, and credit to the sound guys, he sounded clear and sharp, the parachutes hanging from the ceiling doing there job at managing the echo.
There was a look of bemusement on the face of one of the audience when Sean double capoed his guitar and then a smile of admiration as he realised exactly what was going on. From the side of the hall is was noticeable how the levels and length of applause increased as Sean's set progressed. By the time he finished with his cover of Richie Haven's "Freedom", he pretty much had a mesmerised hall right behind him.
I guess an independent measure of his success would be the number of people that came up to him in the bar later asking him to sign recently purchased cds.