The Village Gets A By-Pass

To the Cheese & Grain last night for The Imagined Village.

Organisational whinge out of the way first. Cabaret-style seating (nice) around the edge of the hall, standing room in the centre (daft). Sightlines - terrible. At the Folk Festival, the seating was at the front, standing room at the back. Sightlines - good. Is it that difficult to get right?

Anyway, onto the music. The IV is a multi-cultural, folk fusion supergroup (!). They first brought English folk music kicking and screaming into the 21st Century a few years back by adding electronica, dance beats and ethnic elements to traditional songs. Sometimes it worked brilliantly, sometimes it was embarrassing, but it was always bold and never less than interesting. On the evidence of last night's show though, they are moving away from this into predominantly original compositions that hint at the tradition, but never quite set the goosebumps, er, a-bumping.

The evening took off in fits and starts - whenever Johnny Kalsi was released from behind his array of percussion to take centre stage with the dhol, the temperature in the hall rose appreciably. And when Martin Carthy took the vocals in Billy Bragg re-jig of Hard Times of Old England, the original, imaginative purpose of the band shone through. Carthy fille, Eliza, was full of vim and vigour, bouncing around the stage like Tigger-meets-a-rock-chick. Sometimes when a musician is demonstrably enjoying him or herself, this can actually alienate an audience - the party's going on up there and we're not invited. But Eliza's enthusiasm was endearing and infectious.

Eliza Carthy in a rare moment of a calm at the C & G

There was one truly bizarre moment. Carthy Senior sang Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize" in a dirge-like arrangement. What was the point of performing this as if it was some gloomy 18th Century murder ballad? Was it an example of the Louis Armstrong Philosophy? (He once said ALL music is folk music). Frankly, it was just odd.

So an uneven evening with the Villagers. Where will they go next - back to their roots or further into folk-pop territory? I fear for the latter.


www.imaginedvillage.com

Horses for Courses

Oh no! Someone's only gone and booked another concert into the Westway (Kirsty Almeida on the 24th). After our experience at the Folk Festival, I suggest you get there very early and nab a place near the front or else you'll only see the top of her head. It's a cinema, not a concert hall, and the rake of the seating reflects this...

Very much looking forward to The Imagined Village at the C&G this Friday night though...

http://realworldrecords.com/videos/the-imagined-village-trailer

On The Cloth Trail

The Cloth Road is a marketing wheeze to promote an art trail linking a handful of towns and villages on the Somerset/Wiltshire border that historically had connections to the textile trade - Bradford-On-Avon, Trowbridge, Corsham etc. The Cloth Road may not be the Silk Road, but it has its bucolic charms. Mrs W and I sallied forth amidst Bank Holiday rain to sample some of them. Veterans of arts trails, we know that sometimes the venues are more interesting than the work And to see inside some ancient Norton St. Philip homes was a rare treat. The village has joined the trail for the first time this year and all power to its collective and creative elbow, but here the architecture triumphed over the art.

The real treats were to be found in Bradford (we got no further after a late start). We'd never visited the wonderful collection of buildings that was once Barton Farm before and what a surprise... Centred around a 14th century tithe barn, there are shops and a tea room and as part of the trail the tough, yet paradoxically elegant work of blacksmith Brian Greaves was on show. Brian, surprisingly, works on a narrowboat moored on the Kennet & Avon Canal just behind the barn.  I guess one advantage is that there's plenty of water about if the forge ever gets out of control...

So were we...

Then to Melissa Wishart exhibiting mostly coastal scenes in her beach hut-like summerhouse. We were moved to put our hands in our pocket and invest in a small and very reasonably priced moody Scottish seascape.

Finally to the Artemis Gallery where we chatted to the delightful Frome painter, Caroline Walsh-Waring, about the challenges of marketing art and encountered for the first time the remarkable work of Cath Bloomfield: intense and dense collographs of flora, fauna and females (with stitching). Fascinating.

The Cloth Road Arts Week continues until the 13th May.


www.clothroadartists.com


PS Down in Vallis Vale the wild garlic is in full flower and aroma. Well worth a wander.