Mark Erelli - Crying

At the Chris Wood show in Shrewsbury last Friday, 3 people asked me for this video to be uploaded.....

Mark Erelli - Crying.
Main Stage Shrewsbury Folk Festival, Friday 28th August 2009

Spooky Mens Chorale - Dancing Queen

The Spookies from the main stage on Sunday.....

Karine Polwart - Follow the Heron

Follow the Heron from Karine's Monday afternoon set

Seth Lakeman - Solomon Browne

Solomon Browne from Seth's fantastic set at the festival on Saturday 29th August.

Chris Wood - One in a Million

Requested by Phil on our first video post, Chris Wood's 'One in a Million' - a fantastic song from my favourite set of the whole festival....

Show of Hands & the Spooky Mens Chorale 'Don't You Want Me'

Here's the second video in the set - this time Show of Hands fantastic reading of the Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'.

If there's anything you'd like to see from the mainstage this year. then please comment...next up is Chris Wood (as requested by the first person to comment).

2009 Festival Videos

As a result of running big screens in the main tent, we also end up with DVDs of every main stage performance that takes place over the course of the festival (in fact, artists take one away with them - the guys who run the setup have these ready 10 minutes after the performance!)

The footage is superb and the sound is taken straight from the mixing desk, so the quality of these DVDs is excellent, and while we can't let full concerts go, we can let the odd song go out....

So, between now and January, we'll add clips from the festival to youtube and will post a link here - is there any particular song from the mainstage you'd like to see?

If you leave a comment here then I'll pick a few at random and upload them.....

Here's one of my favourites to get you started, Mark Erelli - Troubadour Blues from his mainstage performance on Friday 28 August.

Artists for 2010?

We're beginning to think about artists for 2010, and are putting our long list together of artists to be considered.

Who would you like to see at the festival 2010?

We'll read all the answers we receive, so this is a chance to help shape next years' festival!

Folkelarm, Oslo

Over the course of the year the organisers end up at folk music conferences, from Folk Alliance in the US, right through to Celtic Connections and the AFO in the UK.

I'm currently in Olso for Folkelarm 2009, a Norwegian folk expo, there's LOTS of music and delegates from as far away as Japan, Mexico, Canada and more.

It's a great conference and an essential part of networking for us to share best practice and form bonds with festivals around the globe.

Have seen some fantastic music so far, highlights include Valkyrien Allstars, Gjermund Larsen Trio, and an excellent Oslo five-piece Majorstuen.

There's a Showcase Scotland event today where Ross Ainslie & Jarleth Henderson will perform a showcase for the festivals of the world..those who saw them at Shrewsbury last month should expect to see them booked all over the globe next year!

Concerts in Shrewsbury 2009/2010

The festival team organise and host concerts in Shrewsbury throughout the year, with many of our festival artists in smaller venues around town, our current line up is

Friday 2nd October 2009
Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury
OYSTERBAND
support from Kerfuffle
£15 01743 281281 http://www.theatresevern.co.uk/

Fri 6th November 2009
Shrewsbury School
EDWARD II
£12 01746 768813 http://www.shrewsburyfolkfestival.co.uk/

Fri 20th November 2009
Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury
CHRIS WOOD’S HANDMADE LIFE
support from Mawkin:Causley and Lauren McCormick
£16 01743 281281 http://www.theatresevern.co.uk/

Sun 31st January 2010
The Hive, Belmont, Shrewsbury
MEGSON
£10 01743 234970 http://www.hiveonline.org/

Sun 21st March 2010
The Hive, Belmont, Shrewsbury
KRISTA DETOR
£10 01743 234970 http://www.hiveonline.org/
(there is a songwriting workshop with Krista in the afternoon – tickets for this are free but MUST be booked in advance neil@shrewsburyfolkfestival.co.uk 01743 231522)

We hope see you at these events, please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or queries.

It's over!!

The Proclaimers are close to finishing their set, and we'll soon be thinking about 2010.

But before we do that, we hope you had a fantastic festival and we'd like your comments and thoughts on the last four days.

Highlights for me were Chris Wood, Lau, Darwin Song Project, the packed out tent for the beginner's session, and the new Sabrina Marquee.

Let us have your thoughts, good or bad, and we'll respond to them and consider them for next year......over to you...

Streaming concerts

We're receiving lots of email/comments on the streaming webcast, so it seemed sensible to start a new 'thread'.

Most of the comments are from people who are watching the webcast in high resolution with no problems at all (I've been testing it out on site with my laptop and a '3' mobile broadband modem and it works fine), but if appears there are a small number out there who are struggling in some areas.

If you're having trouble with stuttering streaming, no vision, or badly out of sync audio then please reconnect and try again - we know the feed is working as we're receiving loads of positive comments via email.

12 hours before gates open!

Currently sat in my tent after an excellent day on site, everything is just about ready - the caterers are on site, lots of stewards arrived today and we're pretty much ready to go!

The satellite link up is working and wi-fi is live on site (leaflets will be given out as you arrive).

Wherever you are travelling in from we hope you have a safe and delay free journey - gates open at 10am, programmed events kick off around 5:30pm, with main stage at around 8pm.

Hope you all have a fantastic festival!

Set-up #3

It's all very busy today, all the marquees are up with stages in place and the sound guys were setting up as I left at around 4pm.

The set up teams are working hard and ticking off all the jobs in short order.

The screens were being installed into marquee 1, these are 12ft screens and are HUGE.

The forecast rain never really materialised today, it was a little squally in the morning, but the ground is still dry and pretty much perfect for camping. The weekend forecast is pretty good, perhaps a little rain on Sunday but all is looking well.

Artists' reception will be set up tomorrow (which is good as all the riders/beer/wine etc are currently in my dining room - will be nice to have some space back!)

All in all, it's looking fantastic - spirits are very high and we will be ready for the off at 10am on Friday.

I'll be heading back down tonight to drop a few things off - will try and remember my camera this time.

Set-up #2

Lots of action on site today, the roadways for camping are being laid out, Boxfresh Organics are setting up the fantastic festival shop and generally there's lots of movement as temporary structures seem to multiply each time you visit the site.

A few showers in the morning haven't had any effect on the ground, and by this evening the sun was out and I took a picture of the new Sabrina Marquee being erected.

Over the past 4 years, this marquee has grown from a small tent that seated around 50 and hosted the open-mic, to a venue that seats 300 and has a full programme of concerts, workshops and this year has two special album release shows, both Rachael McShane and The Wilsons are putting on special shows to launch their CDs. (and don't worry the open mic, still takes place!).

Here's a pic of the new Sabrina Marquee nearing completion in the early evening sun....

Darwin Song Project review

The Darwin Song Project receives its second (and possibly final) full airing with all 8 participants on Saturday night at the festival.

The disc is officially released on Monday 31st August, and will be available at the festival...the reviews are beginning to come through, here's one from Netrhythms

"Song projects featuring an assemblage of individually talented singer-songwriters have a bit of a chequered history, some amounting to nothing more than a thinly-veiled personal showcase for the artists that’s at best tenuously connected to the project’s theme.

The Darwin Project, however, is an honourable exception, for it displays a spirit of genuine artistic collaboration between the contributors, a special alchemy that I’m guessing is attributable to the good sense and vision of its director Neil Pearson in bringing together an ideal mix of participants who between them encompass a wide range of songwriting experience and styles: established masters Chris Wood and Jez Lowe; veterans of similar exercises Karine Polwart and Emily Smith; acclaimed American artists Mark Erelli and Krista Detor; and rising younger stars Rachael McShane and Stu Hanna. It’s even more of an achievement when you consider that most of the eight participants hadn’t even met beforehand, and that extraordinarily, they managed to get all the songs written during one week-long songwriting retreat in early March of this year and ready for performance at a public concert less than a fortnight later – an occasion that provides the source recording for this disc, which has been brilliantly mastered by Stu Hanna himself. The Project has already been the subject of features on BBC Radios 2 and 4, and the songs are due to be further aired at this year’s Shrewsbury Folk Festival.

This 72-minute CD succeeds in capturing the magic of the occasion, and features 17 of the 19 songs performed at the concert. The eight artists each appear in both lead and supporting roles (there being no purely solo outings), and the instrumental settings actually feel spontaneously conceived, almost semi-improvised and coming together in performance stage rather than being consciously pre-arranged.
The songwriters’ brief was to create new works that have a “resonance and relevance” to Charles Robert Darwin (naturalist and “father of modern evolutionary theory”), who was born in Shrewsbury two hundred years ago (in February 1809). Darwin’s great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, addressed the writers at the start of the week, furnishing them with unique insights and eloquent anecdotes which clearly much inspired the resultant songs, which surely do Darwin’s memory proud.

The first few songs portray snapshots from Darwin’s life; intriguingly, he sets sail on the Beagle to the tune of one of his great-nephew Vaughan Williams’s folksong settings! On Rachael’s reflective Heavy In My Hand, Darwin ponders his initial decision to decline the offer of the trip, after which on Chris’s masterly Turtle Soup he relishes the exotic adventures to come and portrays them with a keen sense of wonder before darker overtones and realisations creep in. Jez’s tale of Jemmy Button examines the familiar theme of the return of the native, while reactions to Darwin’s theories come from the confused man-in-the-street (Stu’s The Merchant’s Question) and an indignant American (Krista’s Emma Brawley), finally being summarised in Jez’s fond jolly-jape pastiche outlaw-ballad We’ll Hunt Him Down.
The grandeur of the miracle of life itself is conveyed by Mark’s Dylanesque Mother Of Mysteries (with beautiful harmonies by Karine) and the Boyesen-poem-inspired Mother Of My Soul, while other songs intelligently address the central theme and conundrum, the conflict between faith and science, which so preoccupied Emma, Darwin’s cousin (later to become his wife). Emma’s personal feelings and worries regarding the gulf between these two belief-systems, and their effect on Charles, are explored on the powerful trio-song Will You Be Waiting?, while Save A Place (sung by Emily) is a tender personal entreaty by Emma for Charles to remember her while at work. The sheer cruelty of natural selection is brought home to Charles by the death of his daughter Annie at age 10, conveyed extremely poignantly in the pair of songs at the core of the set – Emma’s Lullaby (sung by Krista) and the especially moving We’re All Leaving (sung by Karine) – having been also eerily alluded to in Mark’s earlier Kingdom Come. Then, two songs towards the end of the set muse on the implications of Darwin’s theory: Krista’s soulful-gospel Clock Of The World and the concluding rousing acappella of Chris’s sacred-harp-like hymn You May Stand Mute, an exhortation to us all to lay aside our opposing factions and unite in love and humanity.

Each of the songs is strong enough to stand alone outside the context of the project, although the performances on this disc will always be special. The digipack presentation is exemplary too, with booklet containing full lyrics and background notes. The project can be judged both a resounding artistic success – a massive credit to all concerned – and a fitting celebration of one of Shrewsbury’s most famous sons."

Set-up #1

The main two concert marquees are up and from tomorrow we'll start putting the stages in - we're at least a day ahead of where we were last year and will hit the ground running tomorrow when the majority of the set-up team arrive on site.

Here's a couple of pictures from the site today, the third concert marquee will be up tomorrow - this is a new marquee and will be a little different inside....we'll take a pic as soon as it's ready!

The Site Set-Up / Weather

Just a quick update to let you know that we've started the set up of the site today - the main concert marquees will all be on site today, and should all be safely up by tomorrow.

The site set-up team arrive in earnest on Monday, and from then on in I should have some pictures to post.

Have just been checking in on the weather, the set up week looks warm and dry and the ground looks like being in perfect condition for the festival....it does look as though it's going to cool off a little by the weekend though, so an evening jumper might be required!

Shirt #4

Well, not so much shirts as ladies vests.

Last year we tried ladies vest for the first time and they sold out by Saturday lunchtime! - this year we've opted for a couple of styles.

Our cedar green top is described as a 'strap vest' in the catalogue and thinner straps.

The baby pink top has thicker straps....the pictures decribe it better!

Both are available in S, M & L and sizes are pretty generous.

The Programme

The finished printed programme arrived last week and we've shipped copies out to all those who pre-ordered copies when they bought tickets.

Shrewsbury Tourist Information centre (has now moved to Rowleys House from the Music Hall) have copies available NOW!