A catch-up...

Hello one and all! I've been very tardy in blogging over the Christmas period (mainly because there are no folk clubs where I was back home!), but things are well and truly back on form in Oxford.

The Port Mahon on Friday was great fun - despite the driving rain and lack of any ale or beer (!?), the place was remarkably packed out. Lucy gave us a lovely version of the 'January Man' to mark the New Year, and Sharron played two typically beautiful songs; 'The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood' (which I'd only heard Sandy Denny do before, and of course the tune I know from 'My Laggan Love' as one of the most haunting in trad music) and her own 'Wake Up Sleepers' from her fantastic album of seasonal songs 'Right Wantonly A-Mumming' (surely one of the best album titles?!). You can hear that song and more from Sharron on her Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/sharronkraus. Check it out!
Despite some unattractive coughing, I did manage to sing 'King Orfeo' and 'Lowlands of Holland'. The latter has always been one of my favourite songs - I first heard it through a heartbreaking version by the wonderful Dave Burland, but the tune and words I sang (with an extra verse from the Internet!) are from a verion by the great Irish singer Susan McKeown on her album 'Lowlands'. I believe she herself heard it from Lal (or possibly Norma) Waterson - I don't have the sleevenotes with me unfortunately!

The Half Moon was, true to form, fantastic for the soul and vocal chords and terrible to the liver and sleep-bank on Sunday night. There was a real mix of people there, and a great bunch of students stayed with us regular all-nighters until the bitter end. They weren't folkies but they had a real enthusiasm for the music and vowed to make the HM their 'Sunday Club' from then on! It's so nice to see new converts being made, as I remember how happy I was to find the HM. It's especially encouraging when non-folkies discover the music and can really see the power of the songs without thinking about the negative labels sometimes associated with folk - so that alone made the night worthwhile! The night was late and my memory is hazy at the best of times, so I have real trouble remembering exactly what was sung and by whom, but Dave and Ian did some crackers as always, including a great run of bawdy tunes which had the aforementioned new converts rolling with laughter. Dave did 'Shallow Brown', one of my all-time favourite songs. I seem to remember that I liked it so much we sang it again down the streets on our way home at 4am too...poor (although I am tempted to say *lucky*) Cowley Road residents...

The week is already drawing on and I'm a wee bit behind on my learning songs front. I don't even know what to learn next - all I know is I have a backlog of titles and masses of lyrics. At least there won't be a shortage! I'm hoping to learn some medieval English and French songs soon, as I feel like I should know more - after all, they're about as old as you can get in terms of traditional music, and quite unlike anything else you hear. I love Alva's Vivien Ellis singing 'C'est en Mai', and I also heard the fabulous Dorothy Carter on a Mediaeval Baebes album singing 'L'Amour de Moi', and I'd like to learn that, although I'm sure I couldn't even approach Dorothy's eerily beautiful version. Speaking of hurdy gurdies (we actually weren't, but there's one on the track!), tonight is the Chester Arms French music session, so there should be some great tunes and hurdies galore! The session is always fantastic, but it also serves as a sort of 'memento mori', as it's every month and every time I go in I feel like I've only been away for a day or so! Scary how quickly the time goes.

I've had cause to be greatly excited recently, as I've just found out that I'm going for four days of the amazing Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow next week! My harpist friend Harriet Earis, http://www.harrietearis.com/, is going for a gig and she asked me to come along too, so I plan to spend tonight manically sorting out finances, booking transport and (most importanty) booking the gigs I want to see! I've wanted to go to Celtic Connections for years and years, but I was either too young to go on my own (not knowing any fellow folkies in my salad days...) or at Uni, the terms of which clashed maliciously with the opening of the Festival. But now I'm free as a bird, and am really excited. Everyone who's ever been has said it's the festival to end all festivals, and it certainly sounds pretty close to perfection to me - a) it's in Scotland and b) there are just 100s of gigs that seem to have been scheduled purely for my benefit, so closely do they mirror my ideas of dream gigs! I've planned which gigs I'd like to go to (there's so much on every day that you sadly have to make decisions to go to one thing and not the other), and so far from memory they include Flook (whom I've never seen but heard they're great live) and Damien Dempsey (possibly the best young lyricist/singer of the modern day - absolutely sublime), the Lewis and Harris themed night with lots of Gaelic songs from people like Christine Primrose and Margaret Stewart, a night of Scottish political songs which I can get righteously fired up over, a concert of songs and stories from travelling people, and, possibly the highlight, a Gaelic song workshop!! There are so many other people I'd like to see at the same times, like Julie Fowlis and Chris Wood, and Bellowhead and Lisa Knapp, but I've tried to stick to the ideology that I should go to the gigs that I don't think I'd be able to see anywhere else, or possibly even ever again. So the majority of the things I'm seeing will be Scottish/Gaelic themed ones, with singers that I don't get the chance to see in England. Bellowhead are thankfully appearing at the Oxford Folk Festival in June, so I don't need to worry about that, but Lisa Knapp I'd have loved to see - but then she is based in England, so chances are I'll bump into her again sooner or later. Right, now I just need to actually *book* all these gigs...
What sounds like the crowning glory of all of this wonder is thw Festival Club, which runs from 10:30 to 4am (yes, the only decent time to even begin thinking about winding up a night) every night, and features surprisre guests from the day on the stage and hopefully lots of impromptu stuff too. It won't be the Half Moon (she says loyally) but it should be stonking good fun - in fact, the majority of the raving praise I've heard about CC in the past has been centred heavily on how good the Club is. So I don't plan to get much sleep, let's put it like that! Thankfully we're staying in the same hotel as the Club, so we won't have far to stagger to bed. I'd like to think that my army-esque staying-awake training courtesy of the HM will stand me in good stead for the duration. So expect lots and lots of info about the festival when I get back (those bits that I can remember that is...)
By the way, if you want to know more about the Festival yourself, there's still plenty of tickets (as you book each gig individually), so go to http://www.celticconnections.com/ and feast your eyes....

More to come soon, the hurdy gurdies beckon!