SUE WILSON hears a strong Scottish presence add to the good vibes in a classic Cambridge year.

Treacherous Orchestra

THERE WERE lots of cherishable wee moments, images and phrases that encapsulated elements of this year’s 45th Cambridge Folk Festival, staged in partnership with new title sponsors the Co-op. One particularly noticeable motif, though, was the number of acts – from Québécois trio Genticorum through bluesy US singer-songwriter Susan Tedeschi to English neo-trad radical Jim Moray – who called it “an honour” to be playing there.

The Irish super-trio of Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden and Séamie O’Dowd opted for “a total joy”, while puckish Liverpudlian popsters The Zutons gave us a “Nice one!”, but the sentiments were essentially the same. You could tell they meant it, too, and that the feeling was shared by pretty much everyone else on the bill, by the way they all played, upping their game to the max and surfing the singularly blissful vibe generated by one of the music world’s choosiest and – when well pleased – most rewarding audiences.

The best Scottish musicians have always enjoyed a home-from-home welcome at Cambridge, be they long-established or up ‘n’ coming, devotedly traditional or daringly futuristic. That relationship has developed significantly over the last decade, mainly via the Showcase Scotland promotion at Celtic Connections – catalysed of course by the buoyant fecundity of our folk scene during that time – to the point that often around a fifth of the 40-odd international acts on Cambridge’s bill nowadays are Scottish.

And as of last year, the annual delegation has performed under the official banner of Scotland at Cambridge, backed by a modest but deftly targeted sum from the Scottish Arts Council, spent on things like additional marketing and a backstage reception for all the industry movers and shakers in attendance from nearby London.

Even more to the point, it’s spent on things like making it viable (by chipping in towards travel costs and suchlike) for the 12-strong Treacherous Orchestra to be there in the first place, on their inaugural visit south of the Border, closing out Saturday night on Stage Two, then the weekend as a whole on Stage One.

Having variously converged on Cambridge from gigs with their other bands in Devon, Hampshire, Sweden, Arran, Speyside, Auchtermuchty and Glasgow, they departed after securing their place in the annals with one of the mightiest debuts ever witnessed amid the lush, leafy environs of Cherry Hinton Hall – transcending even the formidable impact made twelve months ago by Orcadian first-timers The Chair.

With several high-profile gigs already behind them this year, the Orchestra’s ambitiously complex, genre-splicing arrangements, of mostly self-penned jigs, reels, strathspeys and other traditional-style tunes, attained an electrifying balance of majestic grandeur with visceral fire and drive.

Key anchor-points within the mix included the gorgeously luminous synergy between fiddlers Adam Sutherland and Innes Watson, matched by the muscular lyricism of flautists Kevin O’Neill and Bo Jingham, while the whole ensemble’s melodic and rhythmic sophistication, spanning moods from mad, bad and dangerous to sublimely anthemic, flew the flag for contemporary Scottish folk in truly world-beating style.

And as if over a dozen actual instruments onstage weren’t enough, the uncanny attunement among the players frequently engendered the phantom sound of more: you could have sworn there was a brass section in there, too, and occasionally a piano as well, adding yet more layers and colours to this marvellous panoramic maelstrom of triumphant new-old music.

Surveying the scene of sweaty, breathless euphoria before him as the band took their final bow, the compère with the unenviable job of denying them an encore expressed his delight at seeing so many young people in the crowd, and indeed, as ambassadors for the future of folk music, The Treacherous Orchestra could scarcely have been bettered.

Leaving just as strong an impression on the under-20s from another angle were eight young musicians from Fèis Rois, featured within the Scottish showcase by way of cross-border peer education. If you’d pitched your tent in the right corner of the campsite – among the trees up towards the duckpond, just along from the internet café – you could hear the Scottish tunes flying fast and furious well into the night, from the big yurt that houses Cambridge’s admirably extensive and popular youth music programme.

Eddi Reader dropped by to sing some songs with them on Sunday lunchtime, ahead of her wonderfully relaxed, warmly engaging and vocally spinetingling main-stage set that afternoon, while the current Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year, fiddler Ruairidh MacMillan, along with members of the Treacherous Orchestra, led instrumental workshops over the weekend.

MacMillan also paid his dues among the eight acts performing over the festival’s two smaller stages on Thursday night, for the early crowd, before the main festivities kicked off next day. Flanked by his title’s previous holder, singer-guitarist Ewan Robertson, and bodhrán player Adam Brown, he rose cheerfully to the challenge of a garrulous Club Tent crowd scoffing their first pints of real ale, with playing that allied sparkling technical finesse to terrific heft and momentum.

Another of those lovely capsule moments occurred midway through the first of Lau’s two festival sets, in Saturday’s penultimate slot on Stage Two, when the opening instrumental bars of their beautifully bleak, brooding take on ‘The Unquiet Grave’ – hardly their most obviously catchy or cutting-edge number drew instant applause from gaggles of teenage boys throughout the audience.

When voguishly bedraggled and droopy-drawered English adolescent males are hanging on every minutely considered maverick note emerging collectively from a fiddle, an acoustic guitar and a piano accordion, it really can seem that there is hope, after all.

In similarly beatific vein, another Lau song – singer-guitarist Kris Drever’s own lovely composition ‘Winter Moon’ – also contributed to a high weekend count of apposite song lyrics, with the line, ‘Redemption waiting in the afternoon’.

At the risk of getting gushy, the big-picnic ambience that prevails out in front of Stage One – when the weather smiles, as it did this time – comprises a really remarkably diverse collection of humanity, soaking up the sounds almost literally cheek by jowl: stockbrokers next to crusties next to big multi-family groups next to retired local government officers next to erstwhile flower-children. . .

And the mood of mellow mutual courtesy and curiosity which unfailingly prevails, in communion with the equally rich variety and calibre of music that brought them all here, does indeed feel profoundly redemptive.

Further snippets in similar vein included two from the aforementioned Susan Tedeschi, a Massachusetts-born throwback to classic blues, gospel and soul – “so thankful for this feeling” and “make a joyful noise”. Her gutsy, big-hearted, feel-good set, backed by an excellent rock-inclined band, was one of several exhilarating discoveries within this year’s programme, another being fellow Stateside singer-songwriter Hayes Carll, who combined an expertly laid-back line in old-timey juke-joint country and honky-tonk with wickedly deadpan, irreverent banter.

Yet another capsule came from reformed English trad/reggae fusioneers Edward II, currently back together for one year only, a decade after disbanding to general lamentation. It was during their mid-afternoon set on Friday that Cambridge 2009 really hit its stride, as the Cheltenham-born eight-piece brought much of the recumbent Stage One crowd to its feet, jigging and chorusing along with their sunnily ska-inflected version of a classic sea-shanty: “I can dance, I can sing, I can do most anything/I can whistle, I can play. . .”

Given the plethora of reunited bands nowadays plying the circuit, it’s an all too rare achievement for them genuinely to recapture their original unique appeal. Edward II, though, with their vibrant, polished and palpably joyful reprises of long-unheard favourites like “Dashing Away”, “People Get Ready” and their sweetly reworked “Wild Mountain Thyme”, did exactly that.

The all-female Borders-based sextet The Shee – representing, along with MacMillan and the Fèis kids, the up ‘n’ comers among the Scottish delegation – had a somewhat harder time of it on the same stage immediately beforehand. Not that there was anything musically wrong with their silkily intertwined sound, a lustrous blend of Scottish, Gaelic and Appalachian material incorporating twin fiddles, flute, harp, mandolin, accordion and vocals. But they seemed to find the occasion and its scale just a bit too big for them as yet, coming across too diffidently to capture most people’s attention. The experience, though, can only help ensure they’ll be ready next time.

Blazin’ Fiddles, by contrast, are like the oldest of old lags at Cambridge, despite this being only their third time there – thanks in no small part to a certain infamous incident involving a broken caravan on their first visit, back in 2000. It’s also to do with their being exceptional enough entertainers to redeem themselves onstage, as they did twice over in their newly rejigged line-up – despite wilfully going ten minutes over their allotted time on Sunday, in full knowledge that Cambridge is unusually strict about these things.

Though they’ve lost fiddler Aidan O’Rourke and guitarist Marc Clement, they’ve gained Anna Massie, who plays both instruments and a couple more besides, but here was mostly gi’ing it laldy on guitar, lending the Blazers’ sound an array of fresh rhythmic twists that underpinned an all-round dazzling display.

They’ve a way to go, though, before they’re as established a Cambridge fixture as Brian McNeill. He was back once again being the host with the most at the Saturday afternoon session on Stage Two, featuring such headline guests as contemporary English icon Martin Simpson and members of hot neo-bluegrass combo Crooked Still, as well as numerous fellow Scots: another fertile locus for that redemption Lau were talking about.

There were also stunning performances from two of England’s most groundbreaking current trad-based acts: the massed eleven-piece might of Bellowhead, in brilliantly rambunctious yet astoundingly tight form, and the previously namechecked Jim Moray, long renowned for his studio wizardry – along with his exquisite singing – and here at last bringing his live show triumphantly out of the bedroom.

Bellowhead’s co-frontman Jon Boden also had a gig singing his own songs with his other band, The Remnant Kings, delivering a deliciously dark, distorted slice of morris-inflected moodiness.

And The Zutons’ brash, smart-ass alloy of pop, punk, funk, post-punk, prog, metal and rockabilly divided the crowd as it was partly intended to do, sending plenty of oldies fleeing for the exit but rendering most in the 10-20 age bracket almost beside themselves with excitement. This was widely expressed in a series of robotic gestures which presumably comprise today’s version of the hand-jive, not to mention plenty of high-pitched squealing.

Although top headliner Lucinda Williams came on and threw a hissy fit, aborting her opening number until all the (officially accredited) photographers were ejected and then delivering her set pretty much on autopilot, the rest of the US contingent provided ample compensation. Besides Tedeschi and Carll, the legendary Booker T set the good times sensuously a-rollin’ in suitable Saturday-night style on Stage One, while the Hot Club of Cowtown had Stage Two positively sizzling with their virtuoso mix of gypsy jazz and Western Swing.

Ireland was represented by two equally outstanding and contrasting singers, the divinely honey-voiced, magically eloquent Cara Dillon and fast-rising star Imelda May, whose influences range from blues and skiffle to burlesque and whose talent, on this spectacular showing, could have Amy Winehouse for a pre-breakfast snack.

On the instrumental front, there was that not-so-small matter of Messrs O’Connor, Hayden and O’Dowd, plus special guest Jimmy Higgins on bodhrán, who made a noise like at least twice their number as they tore thrillingly through a pyrotechnic succession of tunes: such was their sound and precision-honed fury, it seemed little coincidence that their line-up exactly mirrors Lau’s.

Similarly spellbinding was the sole UK festival appearance in 17 years – following her first album in 15 – from Canadian First Nation heroine and veteran Renaissance woman Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose singular achievements include having earned a Grammy, an Oscar and a PhD (not to mention an FBI file), and having breast-fed on Sesame Street. She’s also written some all-time great songs, as wildly varied as ‘Universal Soldier’ and ‘Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong’, both of which featured in a hugely compelling set, sung in a voice reminiscent of Iris DeMent channelling Edith Piaf.

If this review weren’t already so long, there’d be another good half-dozen acts it could mention: the weekend’s total tally, counting only those where I saw at least half their set, was something like 27, of which all but three would have scored as very good or above. That’s a pretty awesome strike-rate even by Cambridge’s own exalted standards – and thus one in which it was especially gratifying to witness Scotland playing such a central part.

© Sue Wilson, 2009

Links

• Cambridge Folk Festival