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Purbeck Folk Festival

Venue: Wilkswood Farm
Town: Isle Of Purbeck
Date: 24th to 26th August
Website: http://purbeckfolk.co.uk

Saturday 25th

Polly Barrett takes up the mantle next. Normally based in Cork, Polly is over here to tour her album, "Mr Bookshop" which has finally got distribution over here, but has been available with the usual suspects since its release last October.

The title track, about an imagined affair with the owner of a bookshop she frequented back home, seems to take on an additional poignancy when performed live. Like Krista before her, Polly also spends a fair amount of time busking and you could feel that in the flow of her set. She engages with her audience well and the upbeat nature of her material combined with the positive feeling of an audience that are definitely in a festival mood comes together well.

There's a good, almost homely, feel to Polly's set, you get the idea that people and places are important to her and though you may not know those specific ones in the songs, you know them well enough. I think Polly ended her slot with more friends than she started it with. This was the right act for the right occasion.

Whilst Gilmore Roberts can do bright and breezy, they are much better known for the songs that explore the darker side of folk music, murders, ghost stories and hard knocks. The duo are going to be touring their new album, "The Innocent Left" during the Autumn so in some ways this was also a bit of a last hurrah for the previous album, "Up From The Deep".

The songs from the new album indicate it's going to be a cracker, Gilmore Roberts provide a real diversity of sound. It's possible because both members of the duo are more than capable singers both at lead vocals and working in harmony. Jamie brings both lap and conventional guitar playing to the mix, whilst Kat adds fiddle or mandolin, it allows them to mix in the musical styles and to do it in a way that has a natural progression rather than here's a bluegrass tune and here's a folk tune.

They've always impressed with their performance and today is no exception, this was a set that had plenty of shades to it, maybe as many as fifty, maybe not. It also shows that Gilmore Roberts are a duo that will continue to push sound and subject forward. On this performance, all bodes well for the new album, if they're playing near you, I can highly recommend them.

I nip across to the Long Barn for one of folk music's older guard and troubadour stalwart, Rory McLeod, normally my encounters with Rory have been with him performing in a solo capacity, but today, he's got his backing band, The Familiar Strangers along. Whilst I've heard him perform with a group, this is the first time I've seen him perform with one. I was worried that it might make the performance seem a little disjointed, I need not have worried.

Rory was very much as Rory is, predominantly performing on guitar, but occasionally reaching into his box of tricks to bring out something new, albeit spoons, harmonica, whatever happened to be needed for that song, the band providing the perfect support and the freedom for him to integrate it without there needing to be a gap in the music for instrument change.

The lay out in the Long Barn showed good thought, with the venue being naturally split into three, the two outer thirds being used for chairs, whilst the centre section was for people that more enjoy their music in the upright position. For the evening the right hand section would also become a standing area to let more people in as it became too dark for some of the outdoor activities.

It's still light enough now as I cut my time with Rory McLeod short in order to go back to the High Barn and catch up with a band that I'd last seen when they played Cambridge Folk Festival last year, Harpeth Rising.

I'd played a track from the band's new album, "The End Of The World", on my radio show the night before. The album was recorded with David Greenberg, the father of Harpeth Rising's Jordana Greenberg, but he was not with the band on the tour.

I knew this was going to be good Americana and was not disappointed. They played one of my favourite songs of theirs, "Tough As Nails (Love Song For A Toyota Corolla)", early in the set as they retold the story of the debt they owed that particular car.

The band play across a range of the Americana spectrum, fiddle and banjo providing the main instrumental focus, more than amply supported by cello and percussion allowing for the easy movement from bluegrass and old timey to more folk and country sounds.

Harpeth Rising have developed their own sound, there is something about their songs and performance that make the material theirs, something identifiable that gives them their own space as a band. I liked this a lot, they've got a breezy freshness about them and this is a performance that will live in the mind for a while.

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