BLUE MURDER/KERFUFFLE

2/8/10, Sidmouth Folk Festival (Ham Marquee)

Kerfuffle are a four-piece: two brothers on fiddle and bass guitar (though the bassist is soon to leave to get "a proper job", we were told), a guitarist, and a diminutive girl called Hannah who sang, played accordion and clog-danced... spectacularly. Not sure I've ever seen clog-dancing. As performed here, amplified, by a woman in a bright orange dress and halterneck top, it was thrilling, and rather overshadowed the rest of their set, of which I remember little.

Blue Murder are a folk super-group: Martin Carthy, his wife Norma Waterson, their daughter Eliza (six months pregnant), their niece Marie Waterson (daughter of Norma's sister Lal) plus Coope, Boyes and Simpson, which is why we were there. (Norma's brother Mike was supposed to be there too but was evidently ill, and Norma has trouble with her hips to judge from her crutch and the fact that she sang sitting down.)

The Watersons/Carthys are folk royalty, even though their singing on this evidence is not outstanding (with the exception of Eliza). I think it must have something to do with the fact that they're a family. They manifestly represent The Tradition, of songs handed down the generations and written by ordinary folk (though once you become a professional folk-singer, can the songs you write be classed as such?), and being part of The Tradition is more important than making a pleasing noise. (I'm not qualified to judge their musicianship, though I suspect they're pretty accomplished.)

Coope, Boyes and Simpson on the other hand sing and (especially) harmonise wonderfully. The beauty of the sound they make knocks the Watersons into a cocked hat. They also have a clearer sense of theatre, three men in a line dressed in variations of black, very slick, very tight, whereas Norma and Mike and their clan are a bit all over the place, rambling and backchatting between numbers, forgetting what they're supposed to be doing next, dressed all anyhow.

The combination worked well, though. When all seven sang in (mostly unaccompanied) unison they could be exceptionally moving, especially in Dennis Potter's favourite hymn, "Will there be any stars in my crown?" which brought the hairs on the neck to attention. Otherwise the highlight for me was when Coope, Boyes and Simpson sang two of Mike Waterson's songs about Hull fishing, On the Cold Coast of Iceland and I Saw Three Ships.

Marie Waterson seemed a bit lost: she had an adequate voice for two solos, but she lacked the theatricality of Norma and Eliza, throwing their arms wide and rocking to the music, and she was in a rather old-fashioned grey woollen dress, unlike Norma's gypsy-peasant garb and Eliza's altogether funkier stuff.

Interestingly, neither D nor I can remember any other individual songs from the set.

BRASS MONKEY/BELSHAZZARS FEAST

2/8/10, Sidmouth Folk Festival

Belshazzars Feast are a pair of Pauls, one very shaggy with an accordion who does most of the talking, one clean-shaven and deadpan with a fiddle and occasionally a swannee whistle. Mainstream folk-plus-musical jokes, including snippets of familiar tunes (Mozart, Ode to Joy, Hallelujah Chorus). Witty repartee. Undemanding but most entertaining.

Brass Monkey something of a disappointment: a five-piece embracing two folk greats, Martin Carthy (guitar) and John Kirkpatrick (vocals), formed in the 80s by Carthy and reformed in the 90s. There's also a trombone, a trumpet and a chap playing sax/tambourine/boghran/side drum.

The first couple of numbers were thrilling: folk crossed with German oompah music. But after a time, and despite numerous changes of instrument by the fifth member and some changes of pace, it started to get boring. Some people left (towards the end that may have been because the set was over-running and other performances were due to start elsewhere in town).

The band were without their regular trumpet player, stranded in Jamaica, but his replacement seemed more than competent, so it probably wasn't that. Martin Carthy isn't really a team player: the others were in dark shirts, he was in a brightly coloured tie-dyed T-shirt, hanging loose.

And where Kirkpatrick has a good voice, Carthy's is a CofE hymn-singer's drone.

THE CALEDONIA SESSIONS

20/8/09, The Hub (Edinburgh Festival)

Billed as "triplepipes, lust and spilt blood" it appeared to have none of the latter two and only a little of the first, at the very beginning, when the piper Barnaby Brown and the singer (and harpist) Patsy Seddon came on singing a Gaelic son. Later he played the bagpipes. D complained she'd been short-changed and I was inclined to agree.

A concert by Concerto Caledonia, a Scottish early music group (harpsichord, viol, flute, harp and pipes -- the flautist came from Nova Scotia and the harpist, judging by his accent, from somewhere equidistant between Glasgow, Dublin and Brunswick). With them they had Seddon, a Glasgow folk singer and guitarist called Alasdair Roberts and, an unexpected delight, Martin Carthy, who hadn't been named in the original Festial brochure and who we've never seen live.

And though his voice is reedy his stage presence put him head and shoulders above the rest of 'em.

He and Roberts sang different versions of the same song (called Lord Randall in Carthy's version, Lord Ronald in Roberts's) with recongisably similar words but set to quite different tunes.

There was a fine version of Sir Patrick Spens (which I've never heard sung) by Seddon, a medieval Welsh harp piece (essentially ten verses, each a variation on a very simple theme, with a common refrain) and an utterly impenetrable 17th century pipe song which reminded one of quite how tuneless traditional Scottish pipe music is.

The Hub is an unforgiving venue, made less forgiving by a decision to keep the house lights up. An evening for the most part of academic interest, though one can imagine in the right setting it might have been quite engrossing and involving. We emerged into a cold evening to mingle with the crowds leaving the Tattoo.