Got back to So’ton last night, after an excellent weekend. I arrived in Oxford in the late afternoon, and visited the coffee merchant’s in the covered market. I now had some coffee (Guatemalan fair-trade), and so it was worth bringing my coffee maker and coffee jar back with me. Now I can wake myself up with a nice cup of real coffee again!
I didn’t have time to go home, however, before the concert at the Zodiac. This, like Sunday’s gig, was a fundraising pre-event for OFF. First up was Luke Smith, a singer/pianist/songwriter from Canturbury. His singing was decent enough, but was more about transmitting his lyrics than making a beautiful sound with his voice. These lyrics were essentially a sort of quirky vernacular poetry, and very witty. He was also a very good pianist, a fact that was easy to overlook, as he wasn’t at all flashy or showy about it, instead using it merely to support the songs. Next on the bill were Tim Van Eyken and Robert Harbron. As well as forming half of the marvellous Dr. Faustus, they are an excellent act as a duo too, and put on a very good show.
Finally came the headline act, Fernhill. Fernhill have been producing some great material for about ten years now, and despite some lineup changes they are still a cracking band. Fernhill’s music has been rooted primarily (but certainly not exclusively) in the Welsh folk tradition. They have recently added a jazz-trumpeter to the lineup, along with the fantastic Tim Harries (ex Steelye Span, 1651) on double bass. This latter addition is a particularly good one, as the man is absolutely fantastic. I was impressed by his playing on 1651′s album, and on Fernhill’s latest CD, but live he was even more impressive. Plus Julie Murphy’s singing was as beautiful as ever.
Rather more bizarrely, they also added to the mix on several numbers the talents of Welsh freestyler ‘Nobsta Nutts’. Yes, you read that correctly. Nobsta (real name Dorian Phillips) raps in a strong Welsh accent, accompanied by a jazz-influenced folk group. And remarkably, it mostly works.
Saturday was relatively uneventful until the evening, when Jessica and I were booked to play music at a birthday party. This went pretty well; the person in question seemed to enjoy our playing and clearly felt she’d got her money’s worth. Then I went off to the Elm Tree and had a few drinks with most of my friends, which was nice.
Sunday also passed fairly uneventfully until the evening. Jessica and I were thrown a little by the fact that the person who was supposed to be appearing with us, singing one song on her own and another with Jessica, disappeared sometime in the afternoon, and we were unable to contact her, and had to do the gig without her. I still don’t know exactly what the explanation for this was.
Nonetheless, we had enough material prepared to perform our slot for the evening, which seemed to go very well, which was a great relief, I must say. My father (at my request) recorded the set onto minidisc, and as soon as I can get hold of it, I will try to transfer it to the computer and make copies (which I may put up on this here webspace). The rest of the evening was then spent watching the other acts. Following us were Giles, Metcalfe and Woods, who were also down to two people, Ian Giles being in bed with food poisoning. Nonetheless, Ian and Graham put on an excellent performance. Then came the evening’s headline act: John Spiers and Jon Boden. These two are one of the most exciting acts on the folk scene at the moments, they’re Jessica’s biggest musical heroes, and it’s no wonder we were honoured (and terrified) to be supporting them. They turned in a cracking performance as ever, rounding off superbly an excellent weekend.
Unfortunately, travelling back to So’ton afterwards meant I got very little sleep last night. Since I already had a cold (it first came on last Sunday, and really came into its own on Friday), this was not a good thing, and I felt pretty dreadful this morning.
Ahh, well; such is life.