Matthew Walton’s Blog

Yes, that’s really what it says on the T-shirt. I’m not quite sure why they’re branding themselves as ‘Folk Rock Pioneers’ now — okay so they are, but everyone who’s likely to see them knows this. It should also be reasonably obvious when you realise they’ve been famous in the folk world for about thirty-seven years now.

Anyway, last night was the second date of their latest tour, at the Palace Theatre in Mansfield. It’s the same lineup that I saw in 2004, which is fairly remarkable given Steeleye’s history of frequent lineup changes. This one seems to be working well though: the legendary Maddy Prior on vocals, the amazing Peter Knight on violin, acoustic guitar and keyboard (and vocals), Ken Nichol (formerly of the Albion Band) on guitars and vocals, Rick Kemp on bass and vocals, and Liam Genocky (he of the plaited beard) on drums… and vocals.

This is the first time I’ve seen an artist twice in concert (excluding seeing Kate Rusby at the Cambridge Folk Festival last year, and then in Leicester in a proper concert) so I had more expectations than last time. They failed to meet them — not due to standards, as they played very well, but because they’re doing something they don’t usually do. They’re trying out new material on the road.

After the current tour, as Maddy explains, they’re due in the studio to record a new album, which will be promoted with another tour in the winter. For a change, they’ve decided to work on some of the music on the road, and the results are extremely interesting. I think by the end of the tour, they’re going to have a wonderful solid set of new music to put on the album, with all the audience reaction to go on. Maddy as usual goes out and mixes with the audience in the interval and after the concert, so I made sure to get in and let her know that The Demon In The Well is a fantastic song that really should be on the next album. Fortunately she agreed — and signed my programme.

So if it’s not on the next album I shall be very disappointed! It’s a fantastic song, a good decent length with a nice story and lots of spooky overtones (it’s a ghost story). With all the new songs there wasn’t all that much time to sing the old favourites, but since the new songs were so good this isn’t an enormous problem. They finished the primary set with Tam Lin, something I’ve not actually got a copy of. Sure I’ve got the Fairport Convention version, and the Mediaeval Baebes version, but not the Steeleye Span version. Some research required to find out what album it’s on, as like the other two versions it’s a cracker (and yet again completely different, although unsurprisingly bearing more similarities to the Fairport version).

Two encores as usual. The first was All Around My Hat, the big Steeleye hit (got them on Top of the Pops, back in the day) and which is always good for an audience singalong. We were all singing anyway, but the band gave us an unaccompanied chorus as well. Good fun. Unfortunately my hands were hurting from excessive applause before they returned again and sang Gaudete (the other song non-folk people have usually heard) thus signalling the end of the concert.

And what a concert it was! Shame the penultimate bus from Mansfield left just about the same time I was talking to Maddy.

A BNP member caught on tape saying there is no Black Mozart. Okay, so that happens to be true — Mozart is Mozart after all — but the overall tone and intent of this… read the article, anyway.

Anybody still think the BNP aren’t dangerous?

Well I wasn’t really expecting to be able to go, but seeing as how I was in Leicester last night anyway, I thought I’d find out if there were still tickets left for the Flook concert last night at the Y Theatre — which is actually just the theatre at the YMCA, but it’s serviceable if in need of some renovations and more leg room.

Sure, said the woman at the box office, but there are only tickets for the balcony. So quickly fed and watered, I proceeded to the theatre, bought my ticket and had one of the best evenings I’ve had for a long time. The members of Flook are extremely talented musicians, entertaining between tunes and clearly enjoying themselves tremendously as they play. I found it particularly interesting to watch how Brian and Sarah, the two woodwind players, handled the extremely fast pacing of most of their music. Breathing at the right time on that sort of instrument is something of a necessity (as it is with the recorder), and they obviously learn breath points when they learn the music itself. Since this is what my recorder teacher’s been saying to me for ages, I shouldn’t be at all surprised.

There was no new music, except for people who hadn’t yet bought the new album (I noticed many copies of that being purchased during the interval), but the live versions differ from the album versions by varying degrees — partly due to improvisation. Whether this is done to cover up mistakes, on a whim or just because they play some of their older music differently now I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a combination of the three. Keeps things interesting.

Things that will particularly stick in my mind are Sarah’s habit of standing on one leg while playing the flute (when she doesn’t stand on one leg, the formerly free leg is usually stamping time), Brian’s extravagent style on all his instruments (variously-pitched tin whistles and a few different keyless transverse flutes), but most of all John-Joe’s extravagant bodhran solo in the middle of The Tortoise and the Hare. That track is made up of two tunes, and between them the other group members walked off stage and left him alone, where he proceeded to demonstrate that a bodhran is quite a bit more than just something you hit to make a thumping noise. Very, very impressive, and they were at least twenty bars into the tune about hares before we stopped applauding him.

The only disappointment is that there was only one encore. Well worth seeing!

I went to the cinema today and saw Inside Man, a sort of cerebral/psychological thriller about the perfect bank robbery. Films these days are promoted by who’s in them more than anything else, so I’ll mention that it stars Denzel Washington and Clive Owen (who is excellent) and Jodie Foster, who gets less screen time than her high-profile billing might suggest, but her character is nonetheless instrumental to the plot, and is also the major hook for a possible sequel.

I’m not going to say too much about the plot as it would spoil it, but suffice it to say that Clive Owen leads a gang who hold up a bank, Denzel Washington is the hostage negotiator who has to resolve the situation, and Jodie Foster gets involved when things start getting really interesting. Not really what I was expecting — much better than I was expecting. It’s definitely worth seeing if you’re at a loose end, or at least putting on your Lovefilm list when the DVD is out.

Just watch the language if you don’t like swearing — it contains quite a lot of it, although in a manner which appears to be quite fitting with the characters, setting and events.

What a contradiction, but it’s true. I like going places, I like to see things and meet people. I also like to stay at home, stay in my comfortable surrounds, and be geeky with my computers. At the moment I’m in travelling mode, and some of it’s good. Yesterday I went to Cardiff to see Luke and Jenny, two friends of mine from the old Netland White Tower site, get married. Luke’s nearly as tall as I am, and having just passed his PhD subject to minor corrections he’s clearly having a good week. It got even better when Jen arrived in the back of the hall, adorned with a stunning wedding dress that showed off her perfect figure and flawless shoulders to perfection.

Jealous? You bet! But I wish them every happiness, and intend to go over to Boston, MA and see them some time next year, for they will be making their new lives in the States.

Tomorrow the real stress starts: an 0638 train from Nottingham takes me to Bristol for the Automated Reasoning Workshop. At least I should get a good dinner in the middle of it — the restaurant where we’re having the meal looks gorgeous. I return to Nottingham on Tuesday, and have a few days of relative peace before turning out again to the Midlands Graduate School in Leicester, another four days causing me to have to miss the April meeting of the Society of Recorder Players, something I’m displeased about as due to the holidays I’m currently deprived of the opportunity to play with other people. I can’t wait for life to return to some semblance of normality.

Around all this I also need to finish off some other things, and somehow find some time to sleep and not go mad.

I cannot wait until May.