overlap

It probably is a sign of increasing age when catching the whole of an unknown support band is no longer the appealing proposition it might once have been, and finishing the email I was about to send turned out the higher priority. Ruarri Joseph is a cheery folk-acoustic singer, who seems to have enough shows under his belt to know what he's doing on a stage. There's something a tiny bit too polished for me in that, and while I know he's got a new album to promote and all the rest of it, I might have preferred to hear one more song by the time we get to the sixth reminder that the album is on sale at the back. He's got a decent voice, and he's ably assisted by a second guitarist who allows him all the limelight, the songs sound fine so really I'm just nit-picking about the delivery. Every now and then something reaches out and grabs me on first listening, and so it was with Show Of Hands when I heard them in session for Mike Harding a couple of years ago. Opening the show with a version of Martyn Joseph's Cardiff Bay, one of the defining characteristics of Show Of Hands is a local sensibility, which should be understood to be anything but parochial. All manner of traditional folk tunes are instantly accessible to Phil Beer's multi-instrument mastery, Miranda Sykes provides double bass and an extra layer of vocal harmonies and Steve Knightley is a perfect middle ground between the two of them. In Roots they have a song that spoke to me about English national identity in a way that only Billy Bragg's England, Half-English has previously come near. While they are award-winning Devonians, it's hardly a far cry from my own Dorset background, and in Undertow they have a song that speaks eloquently of exactly the sort of nothing going on seaside town I come from, and indeed had to leave behind in search of a more meaningful existence. Fittingly for a gig in a former church, and which retains a full complement of its external church architecture, this is less a performance and more a participation event, and it's almost irresistable to sing along. Cousin Jack deals with the exodus of Cornish Mniners in search of work, and with its uplifting chorus "where there's a mine or a hole in the ground/that's where I'm headed for, that's where I'm bound" has a differently specific local relevance, which sends a shiver up my spine. In between the story-telling of The Dive and the social history/commentary of Country Life, it's precisely this sort of thing that truly defines them as folk music for folk everywhere. Excellent. * Innocents' Song is a haunting ballad about Herod, sung by Phil Beer and based on the words of a poem by Charles Causley - season's greetings to you too!

Labels: gigs, Ruarri Joseph, Show Of Hands