Salut! Live

Boys, bylines and missing fivers

Reporters care a great deal about their bylines. This is absurd, since the only people who take notice of them are their mothers, other reporters and people intent on suing them and their publications for some real or imagined slight.

Given that they do care so much, it is perhaps not surprising that a journalist/folkie should have written a song called The Boys of the Byline Brigade.

But it does seem odd - at first glance - that not one but two such characters should have written different songs with the same title.

I am grateful to "Captain Ginger" and Anne Kennedy Truscott for helping to clear up what I initially thought was the simple issue of who had written a single song of that name. Each contribution to the discussion contradicts at least one other, but for the happy reason that - rare in such a dispute - everyone is at least partly right.

Cora Smyth's efficacious prescription

Cora Smyth Are We There Yet? (Claddagh)

You can just imagine the conversation in the Smyth family household, say 15 years ago.

The two sisters, Cora and Breda, are spending altogether too much time practising on their fiddles and whistles, not enough on their biology homework.

"But all we want to do is play music," the girls chorus, only for their parents, for all their own love of traditional Irish sounds, to retort: "Music's all very well, but it's not going to put bread on the table. You have to get some real qualifications behind you, and proper jobs."

If any exchanges of the sort ever happened, it would explain why the sisters went on to qualify in medicine. But it certainly didn't stop them making music. Girls being better at multi-functioning than boys, I'd wager that they simply took it all in their stride.

And Cora Smyth's new album Are We There Yet? gives cause for celebration that however conscientiously she followed her studies, the music was never sidelined.

Not another Irish fiddle album, I hear some saying. And if I am to be honest, the thought occurred to me, too.
But I am delighted to report that this one has quality and spark in such abundance that Irish fiddle album is a pretty inadequate description.

Produced by Smyth's husband Sean Horsman, it has all sorts of influences - "from blues, funk, Dixieland, gypsy jazz and Latin via Manchester and Co Mayo," it says on the tin - and just about everything you'd want in an instrumental set: virtuosity, changes of pace and mood, innovation and fun.

There is an occasional lapse into easy listening muzak, but I instantly forgive her this blemish each time I come across the lilting beauty of Banyuls.

And the rest is so good in any case that after 10 years of touring with the Michael Flatley and his shows, Smyth has established herself, with one solo(ish) record, as a force in Irish music. She has also performed a service she is unlikely to have envisaged.

Sounds of silence

Running websites keeps me sane and occasionally makes me happy.

Some readers will know that I am involved in the launch of a newspaper in Abu Dhabi.

This has been - is - a time-consuming and, at my advanced age, exhausting project and I have very little time to do much else; as far as my websites are concerned, priority has gone to writing about personally and professionally uplifting events here in the Gulf at Salut! (and, necessarily, recording downbeat moments for fellow Sunderland fans at Salut! Sunderland).

Some sort of service will resume here soon, with a review of an immensely enjoyable album by the Irish fiddler Cora Smyth, caught in the YouTube clip with her sister Breda, and - inshallah - an interview with the excellent Scottish singer-song writer Karine Polwart.

Please bear with me. If you are new to Salut! Live, there is a great deal to explore on the site and I believe the archives are reasonably easy to navigate; try starting with the interviews listed on the right of the home page. or use the search function.

Rachel Unthank, Martin Simpson, Kate Rusby, Flossie Malavialle, Marie Little, Vin Garbutt, Simon Nicol. That should keep you busy for a while.

The beauty of English

Ducking the verbal bullets from snipers over at the UK Music Folk discussion group, I felt the need for a reminder of how wonderful a language English can be.

If I had brought the album with me to the Middle East, I might have put on the Tony Benn speech to Parliament about the destruction of the coalmining industry, a model of elegant rhetoric made all the more stirring by the addition of music from the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Or I could have chosen, in a similar vein, the sequence of the film Brassed Off (which also featured Grimethorpe) that has Pete Postlethwaite's marvellous Albert Hall speech. In another place, I reported that the scene was recorded in a single take and the cast and crew in tears. My prized video of the film also rests in another continent.

So I turned instead to Graham and Eileen Pratt and Leon Rosselson.

Let me begin with the Pratts and their new album, The Greek King's Daughter on their own Grail label:

There can be few finer ways of experiencing the beauty of English than to listen to Eileen Pratt's singing. I have had the pleasure of hearing her at the folk clubs she and her husband visited in the West Country when I lived in Bristol, and it has occasionally struck me that she is one of those great singers best heard in live performance. For once, however, the studio production is a match for her natural gifts.

One of my first actions on receiving a new Graham and Eileen Pratt album is to head smartly for what I shall call the big Eileen ballads. Three stand out here: Donal Og, which inspired the album title, Lass of Glenshee and - not its first outing - the glorious Lark in the Clear Air. I could listen to them over and over again; indeed, I do.

But the pleasures of listening do not end with the purity and power of Eileen's voice applied to such demanding songs, and Graham's contributions - yes, the exemplary musicianship (guitar, harmonium and concertina), but also as a singer - should not be overlooked. Bright Morning Star showcases the couple's command of harmonies, but in truth there is no hint of a weak spot.

From start to finish, the album has all the fuel and distraction I need to get me painlessly through the Abu Dhabi traffic. The Pratts have not been especially active in the studios of late, at any rate as a couple (there has been a series of CDs with their choir, the Sheffield Folk Chorale), but they have managed to break the silence with an excellent illustration of how they earned such a high place in English folk music.

No Vin situation at Cambridge

Let it be said straight away that the line-up for the 2008 Cambridge Folk Festival is outstanding. But let it also be acknowledged that the name that perhaps stands out most prominently of all does so because it is once again missing. The name, of course, of Vin Garbutt.

The "will they, won't they?" question is duly answered. For all Vin's deserved reputation as one of the great performers in British folk music over the past four decades, they have chosen that Cambridge has no more need of his talents this year than in any of the past 17 years.

Salut! Live had jumped the gun a little, asking Eddie Barcan, the festival director, for an explanatory quote a couple of weeks ago - that is to say even before, officially at any rate, there was anything to explain. The programme had not been announced.

Well, now it is out in the open. As I said quite honestly to Eddie, it is such a terrific, mouth-watering bill that I regret the likelihood that from July 31 to Aug 3, I shall be toiling beneath the Arabian sun instead of soaking up the sounds at Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds. What I think of Vin's omission is a different matter.

This, then, is how they shape up:

k.d. lang Joan Armatrading Levellers The Imagined Village
Billy Bragg John Hiatt Judy Collins Allen Toussaint
Seth Lakeman Eric Bibb Eliza Carthy Martha Wainwright
The Waifs Altan Peatbog Faeries Tim O’Brien Karine Polwart
Michael McGoldrick Band Laura Marling Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba Tunng
Kíla Devon Sproule Chris Wood Cherryholmes Brian McNeill
Mauvais Sort Lisa Knapp Hot 8 Brass Band Beoga Grupo Fantasma
Frank Turner Whapweasel Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson Elizabeth Cook
The Chair 3 Daft Monkeys Noah & The Whale Jeana Leslie & Siobhan Miller 6 Day Riot
Kidsamonium Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers Megson The Shivers

Castaway folk (2): political song

For the second of Salut! Live's selections of 10 records for its desert island exile, I have chosen some political songs that have given me particular pleasure.

The idea occurred as I read contributions to a thread at the Mudcat site that began with a request for the guitar chords to Lean Rosselson's outstanding Song of the Old Communist, which naturally wins a place here (as does Oysterband's version of his World Turned Upside Down.

There are omissions, mostly to do with my present out-of-a-suitcase life in the Gulf.

Robb Johnson, Martin Carthy and others should be in there somewhere, plenty more Rosselson songs deserve to be highlighted and American protest ought to be represented. So it is likely that further lists of political songs will appear in due course.

Inclusion of a song does not necessarily mean that I agree with all, most or indeed any of its sentiments. I am able to appreciate lyrics by Left-wing writers even when they are clearly some way to my own Left.

However, I am not sure I could be as open-minded if the Right had lots of its own songs. In one of my earliest columns of folk album reviews for the Daily Telegraph, probably 18 years or so ago, I recalled that the actress Susan Penhaligon had once said she was reduced to a state of disbelief by the discovery that the man next door, who played sublime guitar, was a Tory. She could not reconcile the two aspects of his life, and I must confess that it was easy to see what she meant.

Castaway folk (1): intro

Which 10 tracks would you take, given the chance, if cast away to some desert island, whether for the entertainment of BBC radio listeners or because your ship had sunk?

We already know what Christy Moore would choose, because he was on the programme last year. I thought I would compile my own list, but then realised that I could repeat the exercise over and again.

So here is a new feature of Salut! Live, the first of a series of playlists to help me survive in soul as well as body on my desert island. Since I propose further lists, try to imagine I am hopping from one island to another in my attempt to escape and therefore qualify for a new list each time. The body's needs, I trust, would be catered for by my luxury items: limitless supply of champagne, red wine and Guinness, to wash down as much French, Indian and Middle Eastern cuisine as I could eat.

Read on for my first list. The picture of Maddy Prior, lead singer of Steeleye Span and the band's public face, is used with the kind permission of Roger Liptrot of the Folk Images site. A clever chap at YouTube came up with this delicious slice of Steeleye.

Marie's really Little interview

In her interview with Salut! Live, Marie Little advised young folk performers that talent is not enough, described how she had juggled motherhood, career and other activities and admitted that a glance at old photos showed she "probably wasn't a bad looking bird". But we couldn't let her go without peppering her with our now traditional one liners. She threw herself heartily into the spirit of the exercise, revealing along the way that she was good as gold at school, once begged a club organiser not to pay her and can think of no finer luxury than a never-ending supply of guitar strings.......

* My strongest memory of the place I grew up is...Two up, two down in Salford

* My best/worst subjects at school were...Best maths and worst PE

* Good pupil/bad pupil?...Good

* My most memorably good moment in music was...Seeing Tony Downs playing guitar in the corner of the youth club and getting him to show me how to tune mine and teach me my first chords and professionaly too many to mention!

* And my most memorably bad was...a gig in Norwich in 1969 ish. I was total rubbish, my guitar would not stay in tune ( I sang badly because of it) but Alex Atterson still insisted on paying me when I refused the money. Apparently everyone had enjoyed it. It was the gob rather than the music that got me through!

* I wish I had know when young that.....I knew what I knew when I needed to know, I have no regrets

* I am happiest when.... I am doing a good gig

* The singer/musician I most respect is...there are many, but Brian McNeill, Vin Garbutt, Harvey Andrews and the late John Wright (very sad) to name a few but for fab entertainment you can't whack The Doonans or New Rope String band

* My Desert Island luxury would be...a guitar and lots of new strings

* The North East is my adopted home because...I love the people, (really friendly and helpful) I love the countryside, I love being close to the coast, it's rich history, I just love it!

* Picture courtesy of Roger Liptrop of Folk Images

Marie Little rediscovered

In my memory, Marie Little is a stunning young woman with a gorgeous voice and a warm, outgoing nature to complement the physical beauty. Men of all ages at the North-eastern folk clubs in and around 1970 were mesmerised, though women loved her, too.

Then my days as a club organiser petered out, I moved south and Marie retreated to family life. Or so I thought. In reality, it is me that has been away, not her; Marie kept going, steadily and without fanfare. In her own words, she has "always been there".

The North East that both Marie and I consider home, though neither of us was born there, had a vibrant if uneven folk scene in the era when I knew her. There was the odd serious traditional club, where contemporary music or indeed any deviation from unaccompanied or sparsely accompanied British folk song was frowned upon, and there were the more relaxed, and sometimes more unruly, clubs of the sort I helped to run.

Marie fitted the second category much more comfortably, though her delivery of traditional songs was no less impressive than that of her repertoire of newer material.

The idea for this interview came as I browsed what a chap called Big Mick at the Mudcat folk discussion site described as "maybe one of Mudcat's best threads ever.......it is wonderful that these names are set free from the imprisonment of time".

Marie's name was mentioned during that debate - "Betsy" referring to the woman who was "known as Little in the 1960s, she married Pete Smith but still calls herself Marie Little. Great singer guitarist an'all..."

And Flossie Malavialle, a French singer also living in the North East, made sure I wouldn't forget the thought, by singling her out for praise when I interviewed her a couple of months ago.

Even if I had harboured doubts about making contact with Marie, these would have evaporated the moment I saw the brilliant title of her album Hot Pants to Hot Flushes. And I am delighted that after so many years, we have exchanged thoughts, albeit at a distance of nearly 4,000 miles.

In keeping with the developing practice of Salut! Live, I decided to let her speak for herself, treating the interview in question and answer form rather than as a written feature. Also in keeping with the site's preferences, there will be a short second instalment devoted to Marie's short responses to quickfire questions.

The pictures come courtesy of Roger Liptrot and his Folk Images sites........

Welcome here kind stranger

Now that the dust is settling a little over the animated and sometimes intemperate debate on the merits or otherwise of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, it is time for Salut! Live to talk about the raised profile its part in the discussion has won.

Perhaps I can be forgiven for having dropped hints at a few of the more popular folk music discussion sites. It would certainly have been a shame if Rachel's willingness to answer my questions so fully and candidly had not been rewarded by a reasonable level of interest in her words.

In the event, I could not have hoped for better. In the 10 days since the first of the articles appeared here, Salut! Live has recorded almost 1,000 "unique visits", which may not be a huge figure but is five times higher than the readership for the preceding 10 days.

It goes without saying, but will be said anyway, that a warm welcome is extended to everyone who has wandered this way, and especially those who have found other material - the Kate Rusby, Martin Simpson or Flossie Malavialle interviews, perhaps, or the Vin Garbutt/Cambridge Folk Festival discussion - worth exploring.

The almost complete absence of discussion among Salut! Live readers is not especially important; indeed it it misleading, since many people who are directed here by references posted by me or others at the Mudcat, UK.music.folk, fRoots or BBC forums, return to their natural habitats to continue the debate there.