There were several reasons why I chose to go along to The Crew on Monday night and see what The Peatbog Faeries were all about. Firstly, I was curious. Together for 28 years,they have performed at Festivals all over the world. When I heard that they closed Cambridge Folk Festival last year,I understood that to get them to come out to a small town like Nuneaton on a damp Monday night was really quite an achievement. One that deserved attention.
They undoubtedly have Folk and Celtic roots. Peatbog Records are based in the Isle of Skye,and the Faeries played their first gig there in 1991.Of the original line-up the band I saw last night contained only two founder members. iTunes labels them perhaps unfairly as "electronica" which is really accurate. There are so many more layers to their music than that. They have got through a prodigious amount of musicians and for at least six years boasted a brass section. I was genuinely intrigued.
24 hours on,I still don't quite know what to make of them. Much like Tir Na Nog or Joe O'Donnell's Shkayla,(both of whom I've also seen at The Queen's Hall), it would be both rude and ignorant to try to categorise them. Throughout the evening their music gravitated across boundaries,from Rock,through Celtic Fusion on to Jazz,via Dance,Soul and back again.But beneath and behind the synthesiser(s),the drum and bass and the Fender Telecaster, there were (always) jigs reels and skirling tunes from the bagpipes,fiddles and whistles. The end result was near indefinable but with pipe and fiddle solos flowing amidst what was at times an almost psychedelic mood penetrating through the amplified solos,you never felt that far away from Scotland.
I was also drawn there by a sense of loyalty. Nuneaton is not my home town nor never will it ever be,though family members live there and my dad and his dad were born there. I love the place,warts and all. For a town of such size it boasts above the normal average of resident musicians and Folk followers.
Nuneaton Residents John Neal and Dragonhead's John Harris do their best to encourage Live music sessions at venues in and around the Town and a local radio station presents a twice monthly Folk Show "Anker Folk'. The town does its best to bring decent roots music to the population and surrounding areas,although the lack of joined up thinking by organisers and promoters is regrettable sometimes. The Library and the Abbey Theatre also do their best to pull in folk artistes for the occasional one off concerts. The former used to work co-operatively with other organisations to avoid duplication or repetition and the latter still does.The Library (presumably strengthened by Grant Funding) now considers itself too big to consult and pre-plan any longer. A great shame.
Finally there are the twin jewels of The Crew (downstairs) and The Queen's Hall (upstairs). Rich Burlingham,who has ploughed so much time effort and capital into keeping this place dynamic, has played his part too in supporting Folk and Roots music locally. The Ragged Bear Festival held in The Crew each October is now an established date on the Folk calendar and with Bedworth Folk Festival having ceased it is now probably the biggest Indoor Folk Festival nationally.
So I felt I needed to return all that support.The audience,mingling upstairs beforehand was (by contrast to our recent Folk Night attendances),impressive. It became clear by talking to people that few were local. Along with myself I counted only six people in there that I recognised, among what looked to be around a hundred. The Peatbogs are not everyone's cup of tea locally perhaps,but you've surely got to give things a go sometimes? How else do we continue to extend our musical boundaries? I sometimes wonder what that elusive cup of tea is for our local Folkies.
As with Shkayla, it was an evening of instrumentalism. Tunes all night only. No vocals:the only human voice heard from the stage was the witty links from the band between numbers or in one piece,The Humours of Ardnamurchan,some vocal sampling featuring Katie Stafford. Presumably relayed through the large sound desk squatting (unusually) on the hall floor. Unusual because other artistes often rely on the resident sound engineers to mix,and I have to say that at times last night despite all the extra kit, there was a little stage imbalance coming from the floor.
The Peatbogs rely heavily on dance beats. This is not quite as contemporary as it sounds:there is a commonality between the more manic Highland Flings and hard core Ibiza dance tunes. Most of the audience were gyrating gently rather than busting a few moves. There was a very mellow groove on at times, with that curiously evolved Folk Festival dance spreading rapidly across the auditorium like a Mazurka. Both men and women individually rotate first to the right and then to the left,barely mobile below the waist apart from the occasional foot change. Quite hypnotic,and clearly enhanced by the music.
There were exceptions of course. Right at the front,just below the stage an Angus Young figure was visible throughout,whirling like a slow motion dervish or duckwalking at high speed to and fro. I felt myself wondering if his energy was due to an overdose of Dundee Cake or if the effervescence of the pulsing music was merely carrying him along on a jetstream of pure adrenalin. I bet his joints ached the next day.
Did I enjoy it? Yes.Immensely Difficult not to get carried away by the towering presence of pipe player Peter Morrison and those pounding rhythms. They really can play,all of them and like Shkayla,they exchange passages of music so fluently and rapidly that at times the listener feels spoilt for choice. Whether to admire the musical virtuosity of the fiddle playing,or Tom's guitar licks and solos. I'm one of those revolutionaries who considers Folk to be a very broad church. I believe there is room for everything. I refuse to turn my back on any one style or genre. It that makes me a non-purist that's fine by me. Would we have met and loved Sam Kelly,Kate Rusby or Merry Hell without being broad-minded?
