Bellowhead Interview & Live Review - The Old Vic, Bristol - 11th Nov 2010
Monday, 22 November 2010
Written by Richard Kemp
Late one crisp Tuesday night, long after the elfin children had been put to bed and the stars had risen to twinkle over us, Stereoboard were invited to commune with co-founder of traditional English folk troupe Bellowhead, John Spiers. Like any traditional folkster worth his salt, Spiers most likely had plans with a crafty freight of wenches not long after our interview. We tried to take up as little of his time as possible.
“I only said 10:05pm because I was watching the end of Spooks.”
“Good show.”
“I like it.”
A fine example of how self-effacing a band like Bellowhead are who, even at Bristol’s unassuming Old Vic, were able to nearly pack out the theatre two nights in a row. “We do very well at it,” Spiers admits, musing over their unarguable success. For a traditional folk band, Bellowhead make one of the most successful bands around right now. However, fame and fortune were never on the cards. “It wasn’t ever the goal to be popular…it’s incredible what we’ve managed to do.”
A modest man, Spiers takes the fans’ adoration in his stride. Originally Spiers and fellow folkmate, fiddler and vocalist Jon Boden played as a duo with Spiers on squeeze box duty. They honed their folk craft by going to folk clubs, art centres and taking part in jam sessions in pubs (with the added bonus of a potential lock-in at the end). However, the twosome had grander plans for their music, with a mission to “…make a band that would show off traditional English folk music.” They knew that if they were to get people listening to them, they needed to pull out all the bells and whistles. They needed more people. The pair enlisted the help of nine more musicians including a drummer, cellist and saxophonist. Now touring their third album, Spiers feels that they have finally found their sound – not to mention the love between them. “It’s a family, not a team,” says Spiers. “We’re all up there batting for one another.”
The majority of people who hear the term ‘traditional English folk’ will most likely conjure up an idea of slightly podgy men wearing long white socks, bells and hitting one another with sticks. While Spiers professes his love for such lore, he makes it clear that this is not what Bellowhead aim to do. “Controlled cacophony,” is one way Spiers attempts to describe their act. “A real romp.” Indeed a romp, Bellowhead have been receiving praise all over the media circuit, being lauded as one of the most enjoyable acts in the country.
Originated around the 1600s or 1700s, English traditional folk consists of stories that English people used to sing “punctuated with music.” These old stories developed into ballads, constantly changing with every artist that tried their hand at them – but that doesn’t make them covers, says Spiers. “Traditional folk songs being covers is a bizarre idea to us…As these traditional songs are played over time, the corners are rounded off and the sound evolves…The songs played way back then most likely sounded nothing like what we play today. These are arrangements of old songs rather than covers.”
Bellowhead play the kind of music that begs to be danced to and so the booking at Bristol’s Old Vic seems a strange choice. Spiers remembers that they had played at the venue once when they were in between refurbishment and so the seating that would hinder a good boogie had been ripped out awaiting replacement. However seated people’s bottoms may have been tonight, people came ready to be entertained. The show at the Old Vic started out with a tempered bang. Very soon into the set, the eleven-piece folksters leapt into a rendition of ‘Amsterdam’ so filled with grandeur that it tingled every hair on your spine. Lead singer Jon Boden held his arms out wide as he bellowed to the crowd, the controlled cacophony of the other ten blasting out from every angle. There was foot stomping, jumping ceilidh-style dancing, humorous story-telling. Bellowhead even performed racy parts with some tracks basing their prose on necrophilia and magician copulation. All this merry hilarity and all to the chiming jingling harmony of more wood, wind and brass instruments than you could shake a morris dancer’s stick at.
As well as bringing old English folk tunes to glorious life, Spiers, Boden and a few other band mates incorporate tracks of their own into their sets. On announcing that Spiers’ composition was to be played, the band urged the seated crowd to get up and have a riotous jig themselves. Anyone sat in the rafters of the first floor would have been forgiven for thinking there was a herd of elephants threatening to come through the ceiling above them.
If anything at all to pick at with this show, it was not the band but the venue. The Old Vic is not a place for an exciting, danceable group like Bellowhead. Perhaps out of sheer desperation of what to do with themselves with such little space to dance around, most of the crowd clapped to the rhythm of every tune. Clapping along once or twice is acceptable, but when the audience claps in unison to every song from start to finish, the set begins to resemble a cheap game show. However, the issue with seating had no bearing on Bellowhead’s performance on stage, which came off splendidly.
As well as bringing new tracks into the fray, the band had rearranged a number of old folk songs to inject a bit of jazz, funk, disco and soul. A little too cabaret for some folk fans, we were glad when they got back to ‘traditional’ arrangements of traditional tunes. Boden then treated us to some more delicious prose before going into a slow-building, Victorian-sounding song about a town that was trying to keep on top of its ten deaths a day. The beauty of Bellowhead not only lies in their wild explosion of sounds on stage, but the way they contrast it brilliantly with chilly, Silent Night-esque harmonies before igniting once again.
As the group left only to be promptly called back for two encores, you really got a feeling for how big the stage – and the band itself – really was. It was their utter size that grabbed you, not just physically, but audibly. As all eleven danced around and climaxed into a kazoo-riddled madness, it became very clear just how fun it must be to play in Bellowhead. Each band member sported a firm smile plastered on their face the whole time they were on stage and that happiness easily transferred itself to their busily bobbing audience. Even the saxophonist climbed up a speaker at one point and their trombonist had come dressed resembling a vicar. What was not to love?
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The majority of people who hear the term ‘traditional English folk’ will most likely conjure up an idea of slightly podgy men wearing long white socks, bells and hitting one another with sticks. While Spiers professes his love for such lore, he makes it clear that this is not what Bellowhead aim to do. “Controlled cacophony,” is one way Spiers attempts to describe their act. “A real romp.” Indeed a romp, Bellowhead have been receiving praise all over the media circuit, being lauded as one of the most enjoyable acts in the country.
