All the best folk…

We went to the Towersey Folk Festival on the last bank holiday on August and had a brilliant time.

Three of us went along and camped the weekend at the site in Oxfordshire. Although it was grey and windy for most days, apart from Monday afternoon’s sunshine, we were lucky that it didn’t rain, as I am sure that could have dampened our spirits.

We were on the go all day seeing many concerts and acts, interspersed with some liberal consumption of alcohol and the regular burger before bed. Even though we kept busy we still missed seeing anything at the off site venues or the ceilidh tent (pronounced kay-lee, or if you are Sue, see-li-dah).

There wasn’t an act that we didn’t like though there were a few favourites and I now have a longer wish list on Amazon. The highlights for us were:

The Imagined Village – an exciting cosmopolitan folk collective demonstrating how tradition can be made contemporary and grow from it
The Spooky Men’s Chorale – ‘a vast, rumbling, black-clad behemoth’ group of Australian (led by a Kiwi) ‘blokes’ who sing in great harmony and like a bit of silliness. We also went to the Spooky Men’s – Sing Like a Bloke workshop, where a large group of people learnt the ‘Let Me Through’ song and then invaded the Market Square, singing at the top of our collective voices, much to the puzzlement of the other visitors.
Megan and Joe Henwood – a great young brother and sister act – winners of the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards 2009 and an act to watch for
John Smith – another great new act, unbelievably unsigned
Chris Smither – an old school American Blues singer who sounds like he has been gargling gravel and looks a bit like a cross between Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash
Karine Polwart – a successful new Scots singer with an angelic voice
Devon Sproule – a quirky North American songstress with an unique sound that wasn’t universally liked by the old school folk audience. We had seen here last year at Womad and love her stuff

We also saw…
Roy Bailey – an old school folky, from before it was big the first time around. Popular with young and old alike
Mawkin – a fun modern folk group who are making waves on the new scene
The Lark Rise Band – this band were around before the TV series promoting the works of Flora Thompson with readings and song
4Square – a group of young, precocious and extremely talented youngsters who will undoubtedly go onto big things
Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson with Ali Hutton – a talent couple of pipers with their friend
Pete Coe – another old school folky who has been around for a while and has a big following
Demon Barbers – the noisiest group we saw who like to keep things lively
Cupola – a talented group of traditional folk musicians
Various Dance sides and musical acts in the Market Square, Beer Tent and the Rope Circle.