rural Devon music camp + trio debut

On Friday night Vicky and I headed out to an undisclosed location in rural Devon for a night at a low-key music camp, the same one Rupert and I spent an evening at last summer.


the low-key music camp at an undisclosed location in rurual Devon
The weather wasn't looking too good, but in the end, it held off for most of the evening. I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Steve who'd been at the previous night's Drone session, the first person we saw when we arrived - he had an acoustic bass with him which he played with great skill and enthusiasm throughout the evening. Rob, an old acquaintance who's now his landlord was also there tending the central fire. I saw Jim Invisible briefly, but he's suffering from whiplash (recent car accident), and so didn't play that night, which was a shame. Stevie P kept everyone entertained with an excellent choice of songs played on his ukelele (which he actually practices and plays really well these days) - the highlight of the evening for me was clustering around with a ukelele, saxophone, saz and acoustic bass, playing a hilarious, extended version of Chic's disco classic "Le Freak" (sung by Stevie, who's got a few other disco numbers up his sleeve). Jon E. Aris sung some of his wonderfully eccentric songs of joy and love, many people joining in (he's a regular). A slightly drunk Irish woman sung a rather lovely, unaccompanied "Black is the Colour" and an equally-lovely accompanied (by me) "Spancil Hill". When the rain finally came in, we moved into a marquee and Stevie and I got into some psychedelic jamming, before it was finally time to drive back to Exeter.

The next evening was the first gig for the new trio I've been getting together with Henry (playing drums) and Keith (playing bass) from Children of the Drone. We still haven't come up with a name. I've been contemplating "Orbis Tertius" (from the Borges story - sounds a bit pompous and Latin, perhaps), "Earth Culture", "Otherworld" (both sounds a bit too "World music"), "The Honesty Box" (too twee?), "Parliament of Gnomes" (lifted from Andy Letcher's recent book Shroom - too whimsical? Vicky pointed out that Henry is entirely lacking in gnomic qualities!)...So we ended up being announced as "The Brotherhood of the Lurid Fez", due to the lurid, makeshift fezzes Henry's wife Lucy had hurriedly made for us. It was a kind of fancy-dress, vaguely Moroccan-themed charity evening (with Moroccan food, belly dancing, etc.). We were actually playing in a marquee pitched on a croquet lawn, and had our second set interrupted for a raffle draw (how un-Rock'n'Roll can you get?). On the positive side, the event was sold out, we were very happy with our sound and people responded very positively - lust the right kind of situation for a debut gig, as no one had particularly come to see us, or knew what to expect. As we're still working out a sufficient body of material, and it's 80% improvised, we played the "same" set twice:

Afro-Cornish, Ambee Dagez (trad. Armenian), Levitating the Pentagon, Uffington Riddle, Offa's Dyke, Pisci Cuspus, Mingus/Fungus, Bonny at Morn (trad. Northumbrian)

Only the first set got recorded (apart from "Uffington Riddle" for some reason):

Listen Here
We had a lot of fun and got some lovely North African food (plus beer) for our efforts. No idea when the next gig will be, but Henry's very enthusiastic, which certainly helps.

Sherwood Drone

There's not a lot of summery weather left, it seems, but Vaughan got another Children of the Drone session together in his open-sided barn last night. It was a good one, with Rupert along for the first time in a while, and a bass player called Steve who'd never played with us before (he described the experience, enthusiastically, as "overwhelming").

Vaughan - acoustic guitar, mandolin, percussion, melodion, voice, acoustic bass guitar, autoharp(?)
John - acoustic guitar, mandola, charango, sitar, whistles, voice, percussion
Henry - percussion
Rupert - percussion
Keith - electric guitar, percussion, melodica
Steve - electric bass guitar
me - saz, balalaika, percussion

Steve mentioned having to cycle back to Eggesford as well as a musical Krishna connection - I correctly guessed that he knows Rob (an Army surplus trader who's been very helpful to me and some of my traveller friends in the past)...in fact Rob's his landlord now. I've had fun jamming with Krishnas in the past - Stonehenge Summer Solstice 2001 (where they had the best beats amidst the djembe chaos) and a Diwali gathering at the Friends Meeting House here in Exeter. I don't know how involved Steve is in the actual movement, but there's definitely evidence in his playing of a lot of the positive, uplifting energy they seem to generate.

Listen Here
On returning home, Vicky and I caught the end of Radio 3's Late Junction. Verity Sharp was playing some weird-and-wonderful stuff heavily featuring swanee whistles. This was followed by one of the most beautiful things I've heard in ages - a piece of psych-folk that went unannounced and ended the programme. I guessed it was Espers, and I guessed correctly, having checked the online playlist - "Dead Queen", from their Espers II album. I was feeling quite emotionally fragile at the time and this piece was medicine for the soul. I love this band. Listening to that song again makes me want to try and get a band like that together. The swanee whistle piece turned out to be from an album called Eine Kleine Thriftmusik (recordings based on instruments found in charity shops, car boot sales, etc.) by Brass Monkey (not to be confused with Martin Carthy's one-time ensemble).

Also, Simon Drone has been out in Vilnius (Lithuania) checking out the scene and meeting what he calls "our Lithuanian fanbase", a librarian called Lukas who enthusiastically got in touch after listening to some Dronings online. Lukas has his own "intuitive music collective" and Simon had a chance to jam with them the other night. Here's his description of it (he has previously apologised for spelling, etc. - the result of using a Cyrillic keyboard!):

Hi All

last night i went to a small room above a music library in an old soviet era building to meet and play music with our lithuanian chapter.they are a very different bunch from us, with four maybe five experienced musicians and about ten that i would describe as enthusiastic amateurs. they all wanted to know about what we do and how we do it, and i felt very much like a special guest and also some kind of international droning diplomat.One of the musicians who turned up,Solus, is at the music academy hear and played various woodwind, percussion and trumpet.Only one other person there new him and he claimed to know it was happenning because angels had whispered it to him.In fact the Djembe player, Darius, had told him about it when they met to play music the previous night.

Wilka, who kindly organised the whole event, after one piece said "how did I like thier Mistakes", so i explained that there can not be mistakes when you are inprovising, just unexpected events.

I talked with vytas after about how often they get together, he said about every 6Months,so i tried to encourage themm to get together more regularly and they all liked the idea of meeting once a month.

The age/gender split of the group was very different from us, being mostly comprised of young women, with many improvised vocals being produced.

I took a couple of photos as did Wilka, and i will ask here to email me some copies.

One interesting point is that here they have tea and biscuits before they play, and don't stop for half-time.

we played inside for a couple of hours and then moved outside and played by a monument to lithuanian writers, until it started to rain.

Unfortunately no-one recorded this session, though Darius has a minidisc which he may bring in to future sessions. I hope the sherwood drone went well, by coincidence one ot the women singing last night was talking to me about visiting sherwood forest near nottingham when she visited the uk a few years ago.

I have alsoo talked to vytas about the vilnius 2009 city of european culture events, he is going to see if it may be possible for us to come here as part of the year's calebrations.

See you all when i get back.

Simon

La Radio del Alma, Podcast 9

Nahuel Awka from Barcelona, who has previously used Children of the Drone music as part of his blog La Guerra Invisible, recently let me know that he's used some more in a podcast linked to his other blog, La Radio Del Alma. It features me talking about COTD (as well as my other musical activities, and this blog), plus a track from the latest compilation (the one which starts with Vaughan overtoning) and can also be found in the Internet Audio Archive here.

Big Green Gathering (and Sidmouth)

Musical highlights for me included:

• United Vibrations featuring vocalist/MC/poet/bard Rob the Rub - They're from New Cross, highly politicised (in a refreshing sort of way), generally very young and exceedingly talented. Pok's been talking about Rob the Rub for a while now and I wasn't disappointed. I was a bit disappointed to find that the CD of theirs I bought appears to be blank, but I'm sure it was an honest mistake.
  
• The Mighty Redeemers - an very young roots reggae band who impressed me so much last year - I caught most of an excellent set on the Small World Stage featuring the United Vibrations horn section...their 16-year old guitarist Tony Isaac was doing some amazingly subtle and beautiful playing, too
  
• Fraggle's "gypsy-hup-wobbley-jazz-diddley-ska" band Gadjo (who I last saw in Barcelona back in Spring 2005, shortly before launching this blog). I caught three incomplete sets, all excellent, although I particularly enjoyed their friendly little afternoon set in the Green Mobility disabled camping area.
  
  
  Gadjo in Barcelona
  
• a couple of even-more-high-energy-than-usual sets from The Mordekkers (with whom I travelled down from Wales) - their first set, in the Green Forum, was particularly insane, energy-wise...I'm sure most of the crowd had no idea what the name of the band was, but the reaction was a kind of frenzied rave-type energy that one doesn't usually associate with primarily-acoustic live bands.
  
• a pleasantly chilled Sunday afternoon set from The Green Angels (who play European folkdance music in a way which is as enjoyable to experience sitting on a cushion as dancing...was particularly taken by what their bass player George was getting up to - reminded me a bit of Danny Thompson's inventive bass playing)
  
• a funky dub band called Dubterrania who I've seen a couple of times before in Cornwall and Devon (but who have massively improved) playing in a little timber-framed building built by someone called Ben, apparently (James S from COTD was involved with this)
  
• Mal Webb, an Australian multi-dimensional human beatboxer who makes extensive use of a sample-loop recorder pedal (the Akai Headrush E1) and who's really got to be seen/heard to be believed.

Prof. Raphael Appleblossom at the BGG 2006
I didn't play a huge amount of music myself, but enough. A lot of the festival was spent doing "freestyle walkabout performance mathematics lecturing" as my eccentric alter-ego Prof. Raphael Appleblossom (that's how I got my free ticket). I had my saz and Pignose amp to fill in the gaps when there was no one to "lecture", but there were suprisingly few of these. At one point, Stef stopped by with his concertina, and a session kicked off, with Jon E. Aris, Rohan, Frazer and others sitting down and joining in.


Prof. Appleblossom, Stef and Banana Tom
I only recorded one thing (festival sites aren't really very good for spontaneous acoustic recording - too much going on, soniclaly). It was an extended modal saz-and-mandola jam with Stef in "The Grove" (formerly "The Mermaid's Grove", presumably someone noticed that the sea is miles away from the festival site...). We bumped into each other wandering around the site with our instruments on the Saturday and got this together. I've edited out three excerpts:

Listen Here
The Sunday night I found myself in "The Magic Canyon", a little strip of reclaimed quarry which runs along the middle of the site. This was beautifully illuminated with hundreds of candles and lanterns. I found myself in a little circle, jamming with a couple of German-Lebanese Rainbow sisters, etc. (all the usual chants and bhajans, but lovely to play along with, particularly so having a Pignose amp to allow me to play gently and yet still be heard).

Wandering further along the "Canyon", I ended up sitting on a ledge for a while listening to Pok trying to sing some songs, but being sonically swamped by annoying/hectic/drunk people. After a while, it seemed to calm down, and I went to join him in the little elliptical space he'd found (what he'd call a "pook"). He suggested a couple of folk tunes, which we delivered most energetically (saz and mandola), attracting quite a crowd of people, most of whom then stayed put for hours while a spontaneous Gorsedd (a sort of unplugged, bardic open mic session) unfolded. Pok and I started off playing a lot of his stuff, old Spacegoats songs, Hawkwind's "Brainstorm" (?!) and others. One mathematical tutee who recognised me from earlier in the day asked if we could play any Incredible String Band (we couldn't, but it's always very pleasing when someone asks). A guitarist called Justin, who Pok's known for many years, came to join us, provided some nice simple chord sequences for some wild jamming, and then helped to facilitate the proceedings, encouraging people in attendance to come forth with their songs and poems. Some really quite profound and cosmic poetries were spoken that night...it almost got too much at times...I can remember a woman with elaborate face paint and feathers in her hair singing in some kind of alien-sounding language shortly before dawn. Pok's been talking about the concept of a "roving Gorsedd" recently (they're traditionally things associated with a particular location), and he's been talking for years about "pooks" (circular spaces in which magick is worked through the singing of songs and speaking of poetries). He's particular good in the compering role, and so it was truly excellent to see him so much in his element.

I headed back to the camping area just as it was getting light, and as I passed The General Store (closed obviously), witnessed someone just standing there, absent-mindedly playing beautiful, simple, flowing acoustic guitar. I sat to listen for a while, and then couldn't resist getting my saz out and joining in. A few passers-by sat down to listen. One mushroomed-out young woman came out with a rather moving soliloquoy about the poignancy of the Green Gathering in the face of imminent destruction of the ecosystem, how she'd arrived bitter, learned to love life again, and remembered how important it is to "tread lightly", even if there's no hope for humanity on the Earth...

The guitarist later introduced himself as Richard, a.k.a "Richardardard" (Richard d'Dard? Rich Ududud?). I hope we'll meet again.

On the Monday, I got a lift home to Exeter in The Mordekkers' bus, they being on their way to Sidmouth for the Folk Festival. I got myself out to Sidmouth on the Wednesday for their gig in the hilltop Bulverton Dance Marquee. They were scheduled to play disappointingly early, but they still managed to get a respectable number of people grooving out enthusiastically and, afterwards, we realised that the full moon had risen during their set. Pok was there, particularly pleased with the proceedings, as he has deep-rooted psychogeographical connections with the various hilltops, etc around Sidmouth, where he had many formative experiences in his youth. I slept out in the open that night on a hill above Sidmouth, looking down at the silvery moonlight reflecting off the sea, shooting stars whizzing about above me...

Mordekkers CD work

I've just been up in Wales for a few days, helping The Mordekkers put together the artwork for their new CD. This has been quite an interesting challenge, with limited software and an unstable computer, but we now have something that everyone's happy with. The title took a while to come up with ("Do you mean murderers?" was one whimsical suggestion, this being what Google used to respond when asked to search for "Mordekkers"). It's ended up as "Wild Roots". The cover features one of Stef's seemingly-kinetic op-art Celtic mandala paintings, and the inside pages of the sleeve involve photomontages of the band but also images reflecting where Stef and Peni are coming from with the music - St. Catherine's Hill, Winchester (adjacent to Twyford Down), Tipi Valley (near here, where Peni started piping), Pentre Ifan (the local dolmen), and some of the Dongas Tribe camped at Maiden Castle.


Mordekkers 'Wild Roots' CD inner sleeve
Listen Here
We also got up to Llanidloes on Saturday for a gig they were playing (a party for some recently married mid-Wales heads). When I walked across Wales in the summer of '97 with Inge, Andy and Pete, we had a most excellent few days around Llanidloes, remember it fondly. I recorded that one on MiniDisc for them, and it seemed like another storming set to me (Ed Headmix came up to do the sound, very effectively), but Stef and Peni were both a bit frustrated by tuning problems brought on by the damp weather. Sadly, after weeks of blazing sunshine, Becky and Drew's party was scheduled for the most miserably wet Welsh kind of day - but people around here are used to it, and there was a good vibe despite the weather.



the cover art - painting by Stef
There's not been a lot of time for jamming while I've been up here, but in a few hours we're off down to the Big Green Gathering, so hopefully there'll be a bit more time for that sort of thing (part of the urgency with the CDs was so that they'd have a stack to sell there and at the Sidmouth Folk Festival where they're playing a few days later).

What else has been going on lately? Not a lot of blogging. A couple of weekends Vicky and I went up to Glastonbury for an "eco-folk" night put together by Nathan, hosted by Pok, and built around Whistler Jim reading from his new book Nine Miles about the Newbury protest. It was called "Knot of this Earth". The audience was unfortunately a bit small (a lot of the Avalonian types being off at the nearby Buddhafield Festival), but still very enjoyable. Before Pok finished with a few songs, someone called Pamela Wynn Shannon got up with a guitar - I was expecting yet another identikit sensitive singer-songwriter, but she was of an entirely different order (both the quality of her voice and her songwriting). She sung three songs all nature/seasonal-based (the last one was about the goddess Flora), what Robert Graves would classify as "proper poetry" according to his criterion in The White Goddess. Her accent sounded Canadian to me, but I've since discovered she's from New Jersey of all places. The real hightlight was a completely unexpected bit of magic which occured when Jimoona (Djamoona?) was called to the stage by Pok. He's a Liverpudlian psychedelic Krishna devotee who I've heard all kinds of stories about for years but never met. He shuffled onto stage with an mbira and a can of beer - I was expecting a bit of a ranty-poem accompanied by semi-random plinking - but what we got was an outpouring of enchantment. I can't remember much of what was spoken - there were references to Twyford Down and Solsbury Hill and the events there in the 90's, but then it flowed off into something much more general and really quite profound. What really struck me and Vicky about this was the completely uncontrived quality of what he was doing. No artifice whatsoever, it was just flowing out of him with a deep authority that one might associate with, say, African tribal elders. We got 60 litres of spring water from the Chalice Well and White Spring (for mead-making, mostly) and went up the Tor in the moonlight - I played a bit of saz until my fingers were too cold - and then back to Exeter.


"Knot of this Earth" eco-folk night flyer
The next weekend it was my old friend Dave's 50th birthday celebrations in his arboretum home near Canterbury. I got the coach down for that, arrived with a stack of mix CD's he'd asked me to put together - all Dave's favourite soul, funk, reggae, ska, punk, rock and psychedelia. This provided the soundtrack for most of the weekend, but I also had a couple of nice jams: a late night one guitar and saz session with Miles, Dave's Christian-Anarchist friend (also a professional forager), doing a few of his songs plus a load of great covers : "Brown-Eyed Girl", Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower", "Love Minus Zero" and "I and I", etc. The next day it was saz and mandolin with Nick, my carpenter friend from Faversham, who's got a lovely new Ozark rather like the one Stef played throughout the 90's.