Leigh Folk Festival 2012

24th June 2012

We spent a few hours at the Leigh Folk Festival yesterday, and plan to spend much more time there next year!

Spread over three days, the festival featured dozens of performers playing in a wide variety of locations – on a couple of stages in the Library Gardens on the Saturday, and on the Sunday down in Old Leigh, and in other smaller gigs across the town. It’s the largest free folk festival in the country.

One of the events which was charged for, which we went to, was a short event with the folk legend Martin Carthy, in St. Clements Church.

Carthy was supported by You Are Wolf. The only disappointment with the support was that her set was restricted to a few songs. Actually, the other disappointment was that Kerry Andrews (for You Are Wolf was in solo mode) was seated, and was only visible to the first couple of rows of those seated in the pews at St. Clements Church. She does some amazing things with technology, recording backing vocals and music as she builds up layer after layer on the song. Her singing voice is beautifully clear, and here’s an idea of what she can do :

We had an hour from Martin Carthy, in his sixth decade performing, and he kept the audience entertained through a range of songs, and one instrumental. His guitar-playing and vocals were equally powerful, and he had a lot of clearly devoted fans in thrall. He played one instrumental during the set, which was excellent, and his single encore was the Harry Lyme theme, similarly virtuoso.