Summer festivals: Landed, Radnor, Workhouse, Festival at the Edge

LANDED FESTIVAL

Lovely time at LANDED FESTIVAL… very chilled late afternoon gig, with beautifully languorous people sitting and lying around. They were very kind in their attention. New album is not quite released yet but I was very happy to sell out of pre-releases : ) I played a green glass vase I bought at Ikea – beautiful sounding piece of glass hand thrown in Stockholm… an LED light box on the floor reflected in the glass, and so many people afterwards asked me about the kind of flying saucer shaped home made digital thing… : ) Lovely to see my friend Jo Crabtree who supplied me with endless Hot Chocolate, without which… (thanks so much!)… and the indefatiguable Malcolm Locker occasionally stirred from beneath his hat to take some pictures…

Landed festival

Landed by Lightsmith 2

Landed

Landed by Lightsmith

Landed

2 Chalk on the rocks of Rhaedr Gwy

WENLOCK POETRY

Performing at WENLOCK POETRY FESTIVAL – heart’s homeland, my feet in Silurian earth, wisps of morning caught on warm yellow-grey stone and a distant Wrekin – Speedwell, Stitchwort and Periwinkle wreathing our words.

The old stones and alleyways of my little town were alive in a different way yesterday – poetry stuffed into every crack and crevice. I sat with my son and listened to stories of fields and hills – of far off corruption in the dark heart of the nation and tales of falling. I played a blue-green glass drum and told my own stories of the wide world and a yearning for home.

Wenlock Poetry festival 1

WPF3

WPF2

RADNOR FESTIVAL

I was belly bumped by dreich this morning, Brown Clee dripping with English summer. Every twist of my road into the hills heightened, wrapped in roiling candy twists of heavy air, grey and green stigmating an emotion I love as much as the colour of sun. Deep in a forest my stage, in Fynnon Parc Craigiau next to an ancient iron rich spring – old long before the railway Victorians, who gave it a marble lion and a plaque saying ‘Chalybeate’. I like Llandrindod – and loved it more today. A lop side robin hopped and stepped around my gear – forest ambassador, with smiles from the valley and trees. Ululation of water from ground – trickling through my sounds, always there, a figured wet continuo. Sun by the end of my set, then a silver band and a story of giants, pulled from a fiddle by the drag of a sparkling girl’s bow on string. Heading home the thousand nameless hills of this ecstatic Welsh wasteland danced with something I might call my heart, in the sunlight, and the pulse of rain washed blue over green.

Radnor fest 1

RADNOR FEST POSTER

Lovely stuff going on – like this fiddle powered story…

Radnor fest 4

and the excellent Dawns Powys

Dawns Powys 1

Radnor fest 3

Never forgetting the Art Gallery cafe…

Arrrgh

Trwbador

Most of all though, the music!

Four string

WORKHOUSE FESTIVAL

The Workhouse Festival was truly wonderful. Days beneath the sun and rain of the Welsh sky, hemmed in by hills. A blustery evening in a grassed quadrangle, high windows holding still the echoes of children’s faces – grey wrapped orphans who worked their childhood in these halls. I played for them as much as for the bright clad sparkle eyed crowd – and the many high spirit and holiday young ones, cosseted and push chaired, not redeeming the past but improving on it. Last night after my gig I watched an eclectic and inspired line up as people coalesced from easy darkness into a fairylight and firelit glade – before dissolving again in the night. It may be that I am happier this year than last, but I suspect the positivity and joy I’m sensing so strongly are counterbalance to other prejudicial and uncaring aspects of our times. I will let the joy and laughter have the last word… x

Workhouse Festival

Workhouse stage

Can’t quite express the heartache I feel for these kids … and the indignation as we seem to be heading back to such times….

Workhouse Festival, Llanfyllin

FESTIVAL AT THE EDGE

On the brink of the Edge, a limestone reef 400 million years old, whose infinitely slow decay feeds the hay meadows and purple orchids. The forest on one side tumbles to Apedale – named by the Romans for its plentiful bees (Apis mellifera) – and the green lane on the other to an ancient town of yellow-grey stone chimneys and paper. In the high meadow a temporary town for stories and music – it was my privilege to be a part of it. x