Martin Carthy

Last Sunday we went to see a concert billed as "Teatime with Martin and Eliza Carthy", part of a new, rather civilized development at the university's Turner Sims venue, where a performance begins around 3:00 in the afternoon, has a break for tea and cake, and continues on until 6:00 or so, leaving you with the rest of the evening free. Sadly, Eliza Carthy had to cancel due to bronchitis, leaving her dad to carry the entire show single-handed. No problem: one man, his guitar, and a bottomless repertoire of songs and stories. It was brilliant. Except ... Well, we'll come to that.

Martin Carthy may not be a household name even in Britain, but he has been one of the most influential musicians working within the British folk music scene; indeed, "legend" is not too strong a word. His early partnership with fiddler Dave Swarbrick was an outstanding success of the so-called "folk revival" of the 1960s. Around 1969, keeping a friend company as furtive underage drinkers, I saw Carthy and Swarbrick perform at the Red Lion Folk Club in Stevenage, and it changed my life. A vague feeling that folk music was interesting became a profound passion, and from 1969 to about 1974 my young life was in lockstep with the advent of British electric folk (something I've already described in a post on Swarb's death in 2016). I saw Martin Carthy again, a year later, performing solo at another local club, and as a nascent guitar player myself was inspired and excited by his open-tuned, percussive style of playing. His sonorous voice, unamplified, filled the room, actually a school assembly hall.

He was 29 then; he is 78 now. Fifty years is a long time to have been a legend: on Sunday the auditorium was filled with a mainly grey-headed horde of admirers, eager to hear him, and ready to forgive any age-related shortcomings. A lean, large-headed little figure on stage (like so many older men, he seems to have shrunk) and now using both a microphone and an amp plugged into his acoustic Martin guitar, his bold, skipping accompaniments are as strong as ever but, unsurprisingly, his voice is not. It's by no means weak or faltering – he's still a wonderful singer – but it's no longer the vocal foghorn it was 50 years ago. More problematic – again unsurprisingly for a 78-year old – is his memory. A few times over the course of a long and presumably largely unrehearsed performance he did lose his way in a song, retreating to the folkie's resort of "dum de dum de dum", or a couple of times a more emphatic and final "oh, bugger it!" Naturally, an audience of fans – many themselves all-too familiar with the challenge of unexpected "senior moments" – loved it and cheered him on.

At the interval, he was out in the lobby selling and signing CDs and posters, gripping and grinning like a true pro, uncomplainingly posing for selfies and listening to the "I heard you back when..." anecdotes he must have heard a million times (no, of course I didn't). Which made me think: this man, at 78, still needs the money. Despite everything, the acclaim, the albums, the performances, he is still essentially living that folk-scene life, going from club to club, stage to stage, no doubt driving himself, although by now I'd hope he has a network of folk-scene friends around the country to crash with, rather than sleeping in the car or some anonymous hotel. Having made the commitment to guitar and song as a young man back in the sixties, he's kept at it, performing on Sunday for an audience of mainly comfortably-retired professionals and public servants, contemporaries and early fans who made different, less risky but no less admirable choices and commitments when young. Which also made me think: there really should be a "national living treasure" pension scheme for exceptional but unremunerative careers like that of Martin Carthy. An MBE is nice, but doesn't pay the electricity bill. No-one, at his level of achievement and at the age of 78, should be pushing his own CDs and posters at a trestle table like some dodgy market trader, while the audience scoffs tea and cake.

Here is a link to one of the songs he had to abandon part-way through, but which I particularly enjoyed nonetheless: Adam McNaughtan's amusing three-minute rendering of Hamlet, "Oor Hamlet". And here's the Dynamic Duo in a live BBC Radio 2 broadcast in 1988. It's wonderful stuff, but I have to say I'm not a "folkie" these days, and haven't been since the late seventies. I think my enthusiasm was finally killed off by one of my work colleagues at my first job as a trainee at the University Library of Bristol in 1978. Paul was the consummate folkie: an extrovert, a big-bearded CAMRA member and morris dancer, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the folk scene, its performers, recordings, legends, and lore. Initially, I enjoyed working with him. But, quite soon, I began to realise that, although he was clearly much-loved by many, I really did not like him very much. From where I stood – an ardent and probably rather self-righteous and judgmental trades unionist recently emerged from a hotbed of student activism – he was an appalling reactionary, a smirking, sexist bully, who expected (and generally got) indulgence for some truly crass behaviour towards his female colleagues. Think Boris Johnson without the all-consuming ambition, and you won't be far off. So, by extension, the reactionary elements of traditional life, embodied in so much traditional song, were suddenly highlighted for me, and the music lost most of its remaining charm. The folk revival may have begun on the political left, but ultra-conservatism linked with a ruralist, nativist, roots-patriotic frame of mind has long been a persistent undercurrent in British culture: see, for example, a very interesting, if tendentious, essay "The Hangman's Ancient Sunlight", which should be compulsory reading for all folkies. Rural life? No thanks.

But seeing Martin Carthy again reminded me of the other side of folk: the ability of one performer to command the attention of an audience by matching songs and anecdotes from an enormous repertoire to the mood in the room, creating an atmosphere of goodwill, laughter, and shared emotion by tapping into a common reservoir of musical heritage, even if occasionally ... um ... Oh, bugger it! Listen, here's another one, but first let me tell you a story...

Living legend pockets a tenner