Shrewsbury Folk Festival - The Open Mic Highlights

One of the real highlights of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival this year for me was the superb open mic competition. I thought that it was unlikely to be as good as last year's final, which featured BarlowCree winning after defeating Kaleidoscope, Tri, and the Bailey Sisters - but how wrong can you get?!

Many people there saw Rosie Hood perform a stunning set prior to the C# Project on Sunday evening - fantatic scheduling by the way, guaranteeing her a well-deserved full house - but not so many saw the two excellent performances she gave to get there, or the wonderful artists she was competing against. For those who didn't see her at all, you missed a real treat - her unaccompanied singing of English folk classics such as The Lover's Ghost (also known the Holland Handkerchief) and Maids When You're Young Never Marry An Old Man were sheer bliss. We were warned by the MC when she went on stage for the winners' spot that she was rather nervous; indeed she said later on in the set that she'd never sung to more than about 50 people before - but you'd never have known in, as she settled in incredibly well. Astonishingly, this was apparently her first ever open mic competition - some debut! I was lucky enough to pick up the 5-track CD she's released in the Roots Records tent after the performance but sadly it doesn't appear to be available anywhere online that I can see. If you go to a festival and see it anywhere, buy it - you won't be disappointed if you like beautiful songs sung wonderfully!


I only caught a brief part of the first session, seeing CBA (Cliff's Barmy Army), a septet of talented young musicians. While more organised bloggers would have taken notes and stuff like that, I was bemoaning the lack of a pencil or paper to jot things down and hadn't quite realised that actually, you can do that on an iPod Touch which I had in my pocket, so am going from memory. I THINK there were 3 violinists, 2 guitarists, a bass player and a percussionist, but if anyone else saw them and can correct me am very happy for them to do so. Regardless of the exact make-up of the group, they showed excellent musicianship and a real stage presence; I'd love to hear more from them but sadly can't find anything online.

The one session which I caught all of was the second on Saturday. In a word, this was outstanding! The first half was very good, with the undoubted highlight being David Gibb and Elly Lucas, who I've been waiting ages to see, and the finalists from this year's Young Folk Awards didn't disappoint. Being completely honest, I was expecting that they would win this one at a canter after their brilliant performance of the charming Jerusalem Cuckoo, which had the audience singing along with gusto to the "Shout boys hurrah, my troubles they are few" refrain. (I should explain Jerusalem Cuckoo is about a donkey; I've just realised the 'canter' pun probably fails if you don't know this!) This Derby duo have an album coming in February and if the quality is this high for the entire CD, I'm ready to pre-order now.

It was the second half of the session, though, which positively dripped with talent. In addition to the already-mentioned previous winner Rosie Hood, we got local youngster Seamus O'Boyle, a singer-songwriter playing guitar, who performed two of his own songs - including Save Our Stiperstones, which he informed us was written as part of a successful campaign to keep his old primary school from being closed - and a cover of Todd Snider's Ballad of the Kingsmen, a largely spoken word track. Showing amazing stage presence for someone of his age, Seamus had the crowd getting really into his act and is certainly a prospect to watch out for in the future.

We then got Lichfield quartet the Offbeat - Facebook page here for those of you on FB, Youtube page here for everyone - a combination of 2 violins, a guitar, percussion, and absolutely gorgeous vocals. Playing their own instrumental Lev's Dance and singing the self-penned Half Past Nine, they also gave us a cover of Razorlight's Before I Fall To Pieces which was simply breathtaking, working so well that you would have sworn that Andy Burrows and Johnny Borrell had intended it to be a folk song when they wrote it. I have a feeling we'll hear rather a lot from this talented quartet over the next few years.

To close the session we were treated to the Bailey Sisters, unlucky not to win that incredibly close final last year - and possibly even more unlucky here, as they were if anything even better than 12 months ago. Their sweet harmonies made their acapella singing lovely to listen to, with a special mention for the beautiful Bells of Tallinn, written by Karen of the group, about the bells in the Estonian capital being hidden during the war to stop the metal in them being used for weapons. This was a breathtaking rendition of a stunning song, which I'd heard just once before, 12 months ago at the previous year's final, but could still remember most of the lyrics to it - a sure sign of a really well-written song.

Sunday's semi-finals were, by necessity, sessions I just dropped into - clashes with BarlowCree and Lucy Ward prevented me from staying as long as I'd have liked to. Still, some real talent here as well, although I've been less successful tracking down some online and am not quite sure if I copied one name down correctly (if anyone can spot mistakes and wants to leave a correction in the comments, that would be brilliant!)

The only act I saw in the first Sunday session was country singer Joanna Byrne. With superb guitar playing, two very good original songs, and a phenomenal Janis Joplin-esque cover of Kris Kristofferson's wonderful Me and Bobby McGee, I was really hoping to see her again in the final - sadly that wasn't to be. Still, a great talent well worth looking out for!

The last session before Sunday afternoon's final saw a young lady called Alice Brentford (I think, this is the name I'm not sure of) perform 4 pop covers. She had a really sweet voice and her interpretations of the quartet, particularly Coldplay's Viva La Vida and Maroon 5's She Will Be Loved, fitted in with the rest of the folk festival surprisingly well.

However, the deserved winner of the session was the excellent Rosie Hodgson - a singer-songwriter whose guitar playing, lyrics and vocals were all fabulous. Her particular standout track, for me, was the fantastic Liverpool Lullaby,  a composition of her own (NOT the Stan Kelly song), which will be there or thereabouts when I post my ten favourite songs of the weekend up.

I'm seriously glad I didn't have to judge the final as would have found it incredibly hard to pick between the talents of CBA, Rosie Hood, Hedgepig and Rosie Hodgson - but am very pleased I was able to catch so much great music by lesser-known performers over the weekend. I hope you check at least one of them out and enjoy them.