Folk music in Hampshire - Gosport & Fareham Festival

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Gosport & Fareham Easter Festival-Photo-01 copyright Debbie Koritsas

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There's a great festival coming up at Easter from 9th - 12th April 2009.  I spent an enjoyable few days at last year's event, writing the following illustrated review for the Living Tradition Magazine.

A review of the 17th Annual Gosport & Fareham Festival,  March 2008

Gosport & Fareham Easter Festival is eagerly awaited by its supporters; it’s a brilliantly timed, high profile event, and well timed over the Easter break, bringing an excellent selection of folk musicians to Hampshire.  The festival is held these days solely in the market town of Fareham, but in previous years has been located at venues in nearby Gosport too.  The Fareham site is superb – three venues in very close proximity to each other, and good car parking too.  Because the festival is located over Easter Weekend most of it is free.

Peter Chegwyn is the event’s organiser.  He’s a councillor by day, and is used to cutting through enough red tape to get his festival plans through the inevitable hurdles and layers of bureaucracy.  He’s also a one-man committee, just like Scottish musician and event organiser Mick West, who we featured in our last issue.  Like Mick, Peter prefers to shoulder the responsibilities and make the decisions himself, assisted by a few trusted colleagues. 

A remarkable feature of this high quality festival is the fact that it manages to survive without benefit of huge sums of sponsorship.  As with many festivals throughout the UK, these events survive because of their loyal, supportive audiences, and through their tendency to build upon their reputation year on year.  Peter keeps his ear to the ground and attends Celtic Connections each January, paying close attention to the upcoming acts appearing at the Danny Kyle Open Stage, and looking to bring musicians his Hampshire audience might not easily get to see otherwise.  In this way he brought the highly gifted Shetland fiddler Maggie Adamson to Fareham with her duo partner Brian Nicholson.  The response Maggie received from the English audience was really warm and appreciative, and they seemed fairly incredulous that she is still so young and yet so gifted.  You heard comments like: ‘If she’s this good at 15, she’ll be giving fiddlers like Aly (Bain) and Chris (Stout) a good run for their money!’

Above all, of course, Gosport & Fareham is an English festival, and many of England’s best known acts were there in force: established acts like Show of Hands, Spiers & Boden, Roy Bailey, John Tams and Barry Coope.   And plenty of excellent upcoming musicians too.  I was particularly impressed by Derbyshire singer-fiddler Bella Hardy, accompanied by Ian Stephenson and Chris Sherburn.  Bella is from the village of Edale, and her presentation of her music, direct and very honest, pulls absolutely no punches.   Also in town were a cappella group the Young Coppers, the Askew Sisters, and a very young folk-rock outfit from Maidstone in Kent called Wheeler Street.  They’d started life as a school band playing rock music.  What they lack in experience they more than make up for in raw energy and enthusiasm.  And it was uplifting to hear young musicians like this, from an ordinary Home Counties town, proudly declaring their Damascene conversion to the folk fold!   As with any festival though you inevitably have to miss some of the music on offer.  I missed Dave Pegg, PJ Wright, The Askew Sisters, and Oysterband for example.  And not everything on offer appealed: Chumbawumba’s brand of social comment didn’t quite connect with me.  All very beautifully sung, but lyrically perhaps a little too cynical at times, and it felt like comment for the sake of comment.   Roy Bailey’s take on things didn’t appeal to all in the audience either.  I was surprised to see one person near me announce he was off to the bar for the duration of his gig because Roy’s brand of politics was not to his taste!

There was a good range of workshops at the Lysses Hotel, which was also being used to host a Festival Club for the first time; the likes of Mick West, Laurel Swift and Jennifer McGlone were on hand to offer a range of workshops, including traditional song, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, whistle and Long Sword dancing.   There was plenty of opportunity for young and old alike to practise each day in the Festival Band, their efforts culminating in a short performance on the final afternoon of the festival.  A striking feature of the festival itself was that there were good sessions going on all day in the Ferneham Hall bar, not just late night, after-hours sessions.  In this way you had young and old alike taking part, and there were lots of children around soaking up the atmosphere.  There was an opportunity over the weekend for people to gather to sing the songs of Hampshire collected by George Gardiner too.

Musical roots were much in evidence, with bands from north and south of the Border, and from Ireland too.  Breabach created a lively atmosphere with their twin bagpipes, fine singing from Patsy Reid and Ewan Robertson, and Donal Brown’s stepdancing always impresses.  John Tams and Barry Coope impressed with their immensely relevant songs, every one beautifully presented and interspersed with engaging and warm words.  Songs about the Mass Trespass of Kinder in Derbyshire, the steel industry, and more.   Kathryn Tickell and her band endured the proverbial ‘journey from hell’ and arrived late after being stuck in traffic for hours, causing a few scheduling headaches, but Peter managed to re-jig the programme successfully with the goodwill and co-operation of the many musicians on hand.  Hearing Kathryn play those exquisite tunes of Northumbria, you simply wouldn’t have known she’d had such an awful journey.   Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain played a fine set, interspersed with some lovely moments of humour; in fact the craic was as enjoyable as their tunes. 

Luka Bloom gave an intense, exciting and passionate performance; an extremely charismatic musician, singing with real conviction, and every song a story.  He’s the sort of musician who you always see joining the audience to watch other musicians perform; he seems to soak up the atmosphere at a lot of the festivals he plays at.    Guitarist/melodeon player Tim Edey was accompanied by Lucy Randall on bodhran and Brendan Power on Harmonica.  They performed a brilliantly lyrical, very jazzy set.  The harmonica lent the music a beautiful swing and offered the audience something very different.  Jazzy improvisation is the name of the game whenever Lau play, and they lived up to their reputation for making intense, fiery music at this festival too.   Scots-American singer-songwriter David Ferrard impressed too with his gentle, relevant contemporary songs. 

The powerhouse English bands Show of Hands and Spiers and Boden were on top form, their music bursting with honesty and conviction.   There’s a strong connection between these musicians and their audience, who respond immediately to the earthy, gritty integrity of these traditional tunes and songs, and who clearly love singing along to the superb lyrics to classic folk anthems like ‘Country Life’ and ‘Roots’.  Steve Knightley and his family have been through very difficult times recently due to the illness of his young son Jack, and his reflective, compassionate words about his son’s recovery resonated with the audience.  There’s always one gig at any festival that stands head and shoulders above all you’ve enjoyed, and for me that gig was Spiers and Boden’s Festival Club set – it was earthy, dynamic, intense, and intensely enjoyable.  They absolutely gripped their late-night audience with their glorious celebration of the English tradition. 

Gosport & Fareham is a festival with a calm, unhurried feel, and thankfully still small enough for festival-goers to be able to enjoy as much of the experience as they can without having to worry about missing much.  Many artists are scheduled to play more than one gig.   The atmosphere is very friendly too, with plenty of opportunities to socialise. True to the English tradition, however, there were many in Fareham who were totally unaware that such a splendid festival was happening at the heart of their town over the Easter Weekend.  The event attracts a hugely knowledgeable, supportive and enthusiastic local audience, but many travel from overseas too, preferring to take their music in a more intimate, relaxed setting than, say those who flock to Celtic Connections each January.  Gosport & Fareham Festival strikes exactly the right balance in its imaginative, interesting programming, and with its ability to create a welcoming, unhurried atmosphere.  Peter Chegwyn is currently preparing to ‘do it all again’ in the summer by staging Stokes Bay Festival, formerly known as Wickham Festival.  He recently encountered a sea of red tape trying to re-host the event at its usual site, so dealt with it summarily by moving it to Stokes Bay instead!

Debbie Koritsas