September 2008

THE DEEP POOL

Sitting in the Artist’s Quarter cafe on a sunny July Sunday morning, at Larmer Tree Festival having a late breakfast with James Shepard, co-owner of the Festival, and his beautiful pal Lucy. James is my kind of Englishman – laid-back, astute, polite, knowing and with an excellent witty take on whatever the subject under discussion may be. He’s moving into a cheerful state of grace as the festival comes to a close, and, although there is always room for things to go wrong, the worst can be said to be over from his point of view. We’ve known each other for some years now, and we talk of many things.

I make him laugh by recounting the singer Duffy on television talking to presenter Jo Whiley at Glastonbury Festival. Jo asks Duffy what her first impressions of Glastonbury are. “It’s the like the great wall of China guarded by gorillas – what’s that all about?” offers Duffy. This rather throws Jo, who clearly expected Duffy to say something in Glasto-speak like “Really amazing, I’m looking forward to seeing lots of bands, the mud is really really friendly and I’m going to have some sushi later on”.

Jo decides, a little tersely, to defend the insanely hostile security regime that defines Glastonbury – ‘a security festival with some music attached’ as we musicians call it. “It’s to keep out people who haven’t paid” Jo explains with a fixed smile.

“Well they’re overdoing it” replies Duffy, then, looking round, and as an afterthought – “They could get the whole of Bangor in here”...

I warm to Duffy in this moment. She’s her own person even as her fame vaults – stay with it kid – remember what John Updike said: ‘Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face’.

James, Lucy and me shake hands till the next time, and I move through the fair to walk slowly along the chalk pathway that marks the top of the gentle ridge upon which the festival resides. From here, on a clear day like today, you can see as far as The Needles at the western end of the Isle Of Wight, through the white witch vales that surround the festival, and across to Bridport and the wild heathland sweeps of Hardy country in the south west. Once again I meditate on the great tribes of the Celtic county of Dorset and of Wiltshire and Somerset who come to this festival, bringing with them their subtle but palpable sense of ritual and identity. The regenerative power of ‘sudden community’ which a festival like this represents cannot, in my opinion, be overstated. For myself, I have met up with members of my own tribe at the festival – the Chieftan of our tribe, the artist Mikki Rain, the great Doll By Doll guitarist Joe Shaw, who played with me on my festival set, and the tribal seer and Custodian-Of-Relics John Ralph. Somehow the fleeting nature of these encounters intensifies the sense of belonging – in our ostensible small talk, agreements on the nature and location of beauty are reinforced, and the sorrow experienced in parting is as healing as it is painful. There is a collection of the works of Rainer Maria Rilke entitled ‘Ahead Of All Parting’ – this is the most terrifying name of any book of which I am aware.

Next weekend we are playing Trowbridge Village Pump Festival in Wiltshire, near the town of Bradford upon Avon. In direct contrast to Larmer Tree, this festival is set in a steep sided valley with a beautiful, very swimmable river running through the centre of the festival. The days are just about as hot as the weather gets in the U K, so the river is permanently full of children larking about together or thinking carefully on their own as they examine pebbles, all watched over by attentive gangs of parents, agreeably spaced out by the heat, the shade, and the sheer loveliness of the setting. I have three performances at this festival – that’s a lot of work, and it makes you hold yourself in a state of contemplative readiness so that you don’t really ever properly experience the simple pleasures of such an event. Sometime I must go to a festival where I’m not under performance pressure, then I’ll truly understand what everyone’s smiling about...

My second performance is with a tremendous bunch of musicians. They all play together in fellow Romany Leon Hunt’s band, Daily Planet and they really know what they’re doing. Which is just as well as our rehearsal consists of an hour-long sweaty get-together in a stifling portakabin just before showtime. The line-up is me, singer Deborah Greenwood, Leon Hunt/banjo, Josh Clark/percussion, Jamie Matthews/harmonicas, Michael Cosgrave/keyboards. Our set goes really well – there’s a particularly fine moment at the end of Tony Joe White’s DID SOMEBODY MAKE A FOOL OUT OF YOU? (sung by Deborah Greenwood) during which me and Josh Clark build up a storm of drumming, me whacking shit out of the guitar body, while Jamie goes mental on harmonica. Even WE think it’s good, and when I look out at the audience at the end of this stramash I can see the crowd are caught up in the white knuckle fever of it all.

Later that afternoon I’m bumbling around the festie village on my own when an amused voice behind me sings “Pass the wine and the Benedictine to the girl with the swollen eyes”. This is a line from a song of mine called “Soft Lowland Tongue” from my album as John St Field called “Control”. This means that it can only be Steve Knightley of Show Of Hands fame. Show Of Hands are a unique English duo, the other half is multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer, and we’ve been friends since the Seventies, when we all lived in the city of Exeter and played in an eccentric canalside pub called The Double Locks. In the World-Of-Folk Steve is considered to be a total glamourpuss and is also a man of organic charm, as opposed to acquired charm. I turn round, we shake hands – I’m really pleased to see him. We don’t meet much – at festivals from time to time. But, again, when we talk of this and that there is a good understanding that we are strengthening the bond between us. The bond may never mean that we work together as musicians, but the encounter reminds me of the power in American poet Robert Frost’s couplet:

And this I told him from the heart,
‘Whether men work together or apart
Men work together’

And then as if by magic, I’m at Southsea Pier, near Portsmouth, to play at the Southsea Folk and Roots Festival. This festie is the love-child of genuine eccentric, sometime spoons player with Country Joe MacDonald, and all-round fabulous human being John Roberts. As we drive along the waterfront to the pier, a riot of activity is under way: there’s a kite flying event at one stage, with an immense amount of elaborate kites, my favourite being a forty foot inflated green alligator with four legs treading air in hilarious fashion. To one side of this spectacle there is what appears to be a bouncy castle convention – so many bouncy castles, so little time. One bouncy castle is as big as a real castle, with happy kids at the top enjoying pouring molten tar over screaming nippers at the bottom. This seems to me to be going too far in the name of entertainment, but Portsmouth is a serious military city with a proud warrior past and present, so I reason that these tar-covered children are just going through a rite-of-passage deemed appropriate by the hardy denizens of this stern redoubt. Even the ambulance men and women just laugh as smouldering young ones crawl towards them squealing for help in their death throes, only to be kicked back toward the action, whilst being jeered at for being ‘cissy’.

When we get to the pier, I’m walking along with my guitar to the huge bar complex where the music is taking place and I see John Roberts running towards me in slow motion like lovers do in seventies films. I too run towards him in similar fashion – all is going well for a while, but then we decide as one that’s it’s simply too exhausting and we cover the remaining distance between us in normal walking manner, then have a big hug. I love this man – he decides what I need is a swig of some Gambian potcheen which he produces with a magician’s flourish. It tastes hideous, with honeyed notes but with a Chernobyl type aftertaste which seems to say ‘ drink much more and you’ll be fuckin dead, like us Gambians who did drink more and have subsequently gone ahead to join the ancestors’.

Inside the bar a fantastic Australian singer called Rory Ellis is at it with a great old mandolin player. I’ve never heard Rory before; he’s a big Jackie-style older bloke with a great sense of humour and a bass baritone voice like a humorous ghost in the well of all possible human experience. Afterwards we are immediate friends and vow to try and do something together without any analysis – this is how things ought to be between musicians and we both vibrate better within the world for having met.

My set is going well – there are French doors open to one side and slightly behind me with quite a strong wind coming through, which whistles and scuffles across the microphone sound. I don’t care, and the view outside is one of ships and ferries ploughing over the Solent seaway with the brooding contours of the Isle of Wight forming a shimmering grey backdrop. Just out of sight, a mile to the west, is Hillhead on the mainland coast, where my mother died in a nursing home. As I play I steal glances at this landscape, the one so beloved by her in her last trials, and the force of memory of those dying days powers into my playing, and I keep losing sight of the fact that there is an audience present until the song comes to an end and I notice that I am being held with care and warmth by a roomful of strangers.