A Recent Launch

(from 2014)

Folk music is a funny old business. How do you define it? Perhaps the best definition, because it is suitably vague – it is music sung and played by “folk.” It encompasses former Heavy Metal Bands doing their stuff in acoustic fashion, to grizzled old men singing about some 18^th century agricultural aberration with a finger stuck in one ear. The finger in the ear routine is apparently used by British folksingers to aid with concentration and help sing harmony. Meantime, the audience sits with fingers stuck in both ears, waiting for welcome relief when the bar opens.

Which brings me to a recent concert I attended featuring someone who has been featured on this blog in the past, Amy Goddard. Amy hails from Wales, but now lives in Hampshire, and I have actually known her mother for some years. Hearing about the show and having had experience of folk clubs and concerts, and also having family in that part of the world, Mr and Mrs Occasional decided to make a visit and see the show. (You see, the internet brings people together). Fortunately we had early tickets, because the show was sold out.

One of the biggest problems in attending a show that is sold out is that it takes you forever to get to the bar. Once you get to the bar it is almost impossible to get away from the bar, without having your drinks all slopped down your sleeve, or over the back of some strange woman’s kaftan. She is not well pleased, and neither is her male companion, a portly gentleman with a bald head and sporting a ponytail as compensation. And folk music (well, 60s folk music) was all supposed to be about peace and love as well...

The show very nearly didn’t happen. There was a massive power cut in the area, wiping out the electricity for miles around. So the lights all went out, leaving only emergency lighting by exits, and no sound, no nothing. I heard tales of people dashing out to buy lanterns to light up the corridors so that people could visit what Americans quaintly call “rest rooms” without injury and falling foul of Health and Safety. The sound engineer dashed off home to collect a generator. According to the musician who went with him, he couldn’t find the key to the padlock to retrieve the equipment, so had to use bolt cutters to get in. Then the sound man slipped over in the mud and wrecked his trousers and cut his hand. It was a bit like a Laurel and Hardy film. Struggling back about half an before curtain up with a generator in tow, suddenly the lights all came back on again. While various ones were doing a headless chicken routine, the star of the show remained remarkably calm, and was all set for a cosy candle-lit acoustic evening if necessary.

The show was to launch Amy’s first solo CD, entitled “Burn and Glow” and released on the Incantus Media label. With various guest singers to open each half, including a local choir, she then did two slots to cover all the songs on the album. After the last song – suitably called “One More Song” there was a huge cry of encore – so the “company” all sang “The Goodnight Song." Any closet folkies here will know of the folk super-group Blue Murder who recorded it a decade or two back. For the rest of you – well, at the end of an evening, suitably mellow and well watered, it’s a sort of folk anthem – we’re wandering off but we’ll meet again further down the road, sort of thing – perhaps with mobile phones doing the “lighters in the sky” routine.  It was a fitting conclusion. Ne’er a dry eye in the house.

The show was very well presented and well sung I have to say. Ms Goddard comes over as a perfectionist, and had organized the event down to the last detail. She reportedly provided the backdrop, rehearsed the acts, hired professional sound people, a local radio DJ as compère, and made them all work!

The audience were a mixture of people from the folk music world, a few who had perhaps heard her on local radio, probably some of her students because in the real world I’m told she is a music teacher, plus some members of a religious group to which she belongs (which is a connection I share), although her material was strictly secular.

No doubt some of this material will end up on YouTube in due course.

She wrote a post on a blog a little while back on what she called lyrical detachment. In song writing you don’t have to write directly about your own feelings and happenings – you can write in a vague way that hints at things, and then the audience may apply the songs however they wish to their own lives. Her CD includes a song about bullying in schools (Susie), a song about Betrayal (Web of Lies), and a song warning about the dangers of the demon drink (Taking the Edge off the Day). I thought I might suggest that, rather than call her CD “Burn and Glow” perhaps “Bullied, Betrayed and Blotto” would fit better. But then I thought better of it.

Two songs stood out for me. “I Will See” combined a mass of imagery to ultimately give the message that, while we might improve in areas, we should all understand ourselves, and learn to be content with ourselves. And the other “Don’t Try” was a serious song written for a mental health charity sponsored by people like Stephen Fry and Ruby Wax – which is all about depression. The message? Don’t be judgmental. And if you are a sufferer, then hang in there, because it will lift and get better. The charity is called The Black Dog Tribe, and adding to the crush at the concert was a table selling Black Dog toys galore – all proceeds to the charity.

Will other people like it? Amy told me she would like others to sing her songs, and one song has already been recorded by another singer. Musical taste is such an individual thing. I liked her stuff because, in spite of the joke in the first paragraph, I have a lifetime of enjoying folk music. Whether blog readers here would like it, all I can suggest is that they have a quick look at her website – http://www.amygoddardmusic.co.uk/  They can hear samples of some of her songs and see her in action and decide for themselves.

Now, for a sequel, perhaps Occasional could organize a concert for HIS singing. And really shock the world...