Cambridge (UK) Folk Festival Lineup announced

[Welsh Rich]

So I queued round the block to get my ticket today! 1.5 hours... don't think I've queued that long for any ticket!

 

Sorted though - let me know if you have any luck with yours Andrew.

[Albert Tatlock]

So I queued round the block to get my ticket today! 1.5 hours... don't think I've queued that long for any ticket!

Sorted though - let me know if you have any luck with yours Andrew.

Wow! They reserved that many tickets for locals? Given that it doesn't appear to be tha largest of sites (any idea on the numbers?) I'm wondering how I will have fared. My ticket application must have been there on time, so I'll keep my fingers crossed for an email notification today or tomorrow.

[Albert Tatlock]

I've just been given some indication from the Corn Exchange Box Office that I was successful. Hurrah! I was beginning to wonder if I should have given you the money last Thursday if you were going to queue. Listened to the mix yet? I'll check the train / B&B situation tomorrow.

[Welsh Rich]

Yeah - I should have thought of that - but I wasn't planning on queuing until I found out I couldn't get through on the phone.

 

Your mix is next in line on my listening pile, so it'll get a spin tonight before I go out!

[Albert Tatlock]

Rich, I shall expect to see you bouncing across the screen to Amadou & Mariam. Looks like a 1pm arrival on Sunday for me.

BBC Radio 2 coverage begins with Tom Robinson on Thursday 27th, 10.30-12.00 midnight. Stuart Maconie will broadcast live from the Festival on Saturday 29th July from 2.00-5.00pm and Mark Radcliffe will introduce highlights from the Festival so far from 9.00-10.00pm on Saturday evening. Mike Harding and Nick Barraclough join forces to present a special 2 hours of highlights from the entire Festival on Wednesday 2nd August, 7.00-9.00pm.

Listen again to all the Radio 2 coverage for up to 7 days after the festival via the BBC Radio Player on the BBC Radio 2 website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/), where it will also be possible to: view picture galleries of artists on stage throughout the weekend, watch video highlights of the event on broadband, find out more with interviews from the top artists taking part, find out what's going on backstage and on site with the daily diary and share your comments and views about the event.

BBC Four will broadcast highlights from the Festival on Friday 11th and Friday 18th August at 9pm, presented by Mark Radcliffe and Verity Sharp.

[Welsh Rich]

Cool - I must get a print out of the full setup for the weekend.

 

I shall be there on Fri night, Sat and Sun... not sure about Thur night yet, depends on whether I'm roped into an 11-a-side football match against NIAB!

[Welsh Rich]

Hi Andrew

 

Is it ok to email your work address to organise a meet up on Sunday? I take it you're still without a mobile phone??!

[Albert Tatlock]

Wilco

Haven't seen a specific stage/artist order yet.

[Albert Tatlock]

The warmup show for the summer dates:-

From the July 23, 2006 Tennessean:

A NIGHT IN THE BASEMENT WITH EMMY by Tennessean music writer Nicole Keiper:

 

Another one for the "only in Nashville" files:

 

The 7 p.m. "surprise show" listed on cozy rock club The Basement's Web site for Thursday turned out to be Emmylou Harris, rehearsing for a short overseas tour (in the form of a benefit show for the Nashville Humane Association).

 

You probably can't wedge many more than 100 people in The Basement, so folks were treated to quite an intimate affair, with Emmylou singing alongside longtime friends Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose (who you might know as Kennedy Rose and bassist Dave Jacques (you may have heard him with John Prine).

 

Emmylou, Kennedy and Rose sang together some in the '80s and '90s, but it had been a while before some performances this year brought the three back together.

 

Kennedy and Rose joined Emmylou in January at The Ryman for another Humane Association benefit (with Patty Griffin, Mindy Smith and Paula Cole), and a few southern U.S. dates in March.

 

That all led to the coming tour (a batch of fall U.S. dates are scheduled, too) and a little bit of recording together.

 

The three recently recorded a song by Jesse Harris (he's the guy who wrote a bunch of Norah Jones' best) called "The Speed Of Sound," for a movie adaptation of actor Ethan Hawke's book "The Hottest State." The film is due out next year.

 

But speaking of hot, The Basement set may have been a warm-up, but Emmylou and Co. sure sounded warm.

 

The three singers hushed the room by taking to one mike to sing "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" a cappella

[Albert Tatlock]

Also, for those who will be playing along at home:-

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/cambridge2006/

 

Some TV coverage over the weekend too - see earlier post somewhere above.

[Welsh Rich]

Still a bit annoyed to not see a full itinery yet - here's hoping there'll be something when I turn up on Friday night...

[Albert Tatlock]

The prestigious Cambridge Evening News weighs in ...

I'm not scared of George Bush

 

BE CAREFUL what you wish for. In the late 1960s, teenager Emmylou Harris, her head filled with the songs of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, wrote to the legendary Pete Seeger to ask him if, in order to make it as a folk singer, she needed to suffermore.

 

"I wanted to sing folk music but I didn't think I had enough experience," Harris recalls. "I felt like an interloper; a sheltered, teenage white Anglo-Saxon protestant with a very happy childhood. But Pete said, 'Oh don't worry - it'll happen'."

 

Fast forward a couple of years and, having made her recording debut with the album Gliding Bird, Harris has seen her record company collapse - and her marriage to songwriter Tom Slocum go the same way. As the 60s became the 70s, she was a single mother living back home with her parents in Washington DC, where she played six nights a week - and sometimes up to four shows a night - to largely indifferent punters on the local club circuit.

 

So that was the suffering box duly ticked.

 

But even these reversals of fortune were about to pay dividends for a woman who claims to have led "a charmed life".

 

One night in 1971, Harris found herself singing to a crowd that included members of country rockers The Flying Burrito Brothers. Guitarist Chris Hillman was so impressed with her performance that, in 1972, he recommended her to his former Byrds and Burrito Bros colleague Gram Parsons, who was looking for a female vocalist to sing on his debut solo album. It was an introduction that would change Harris' life forever.

 

"It's hard for me to imagine what my life would have been like without that meeting," she admits, 34 years later. "Gram was the one who set things in motion in so many ways. I really think he helped to define my voice and my vision of music."

 

Sadly, the collaboration was short-lived:

 

Parsons died of an overdose the following year, and the theft of his body and subsequent cremation at Joshua Tree fast became one of rock and roll's most enduring legends. But, for Harris, the partnership had identified a gift for harmony singing that remains an integral part of her work to this day.

 

"For me it's real natural - if it's a simple song," she laughs. "It has to be three chords and the truth, as [Nashville legend] Harlon Howard calls it - then I'm pretty happy and I don't feel it's anything arduous. It's just a matter of listening to the lead and singing another lead. When it gets into three parts it's a little more difficult, because you have to not step on anybody. But it's always a wonderful experience to sing with someone because everybody has a distinctive voice."

 

One of Harris' most celebrated harmony contributions was to Bob Dylan's 1976 Desirealbum. Arriving at the studio, she was told to take a stool next to the great man and start singing - without any time to learn the song.

 

"I don't think he ever does anything without it having a purpose, and I think it was just 'jump in' and see what happens," she recalls. "Whatever he wanted to do was fine with me!"

 

Dylan had simply requested a "chick singer" but, as Harris' stock began to rise, she found more and more artists beating a path to her door. She recorded songs with, among others, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Roy Orbison, and formed lasting creative partnerships with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton (with whom she recorded two Trioalbums) and Neil Young.

 

More recently, Harris has lent her vocals to records by a new generation of singersongwriters, including Ryan Adams, Beth Orton and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst - though she is quick to dismiss any notion of a "new country" genre inspired by the likes of Parsons, Hillman and herself.

 

"For me I just take it an artist at a time," she says. "I have a problem with categories and I don't know how you would categorise Ryan and Conor, really. I think they're very unique, so it's always a challenge and interesting to come in and try to find some way of layering over what they're doing."

 

Of course, Emmylou Harris has built her career on much more than simply being a voice for hire. That Gliding Birdmay have failed to take flight in 1969 ("It was a bit unfocused; I hadn't really learned how to sing country yet so it was a bit overwrought," is how she described her debut today (Thursday, 27 July)) but Harris' solo career soon got airborne with 1975's classic Pieces Of The Sky.

 

She went on to enjoy consistent success over the next 20 years until, in the early 90s, country radio stations started waking up to the emergence of new - or "alt" - country, and the promise of the holy grail of audience demographics - young people.

 

In this climate, it became increasingly difficult for artists on the wrong side of 40 to make the playlists - a trend that couldn't help but dent the sales of Harris' 1993 album, Cowgirl's Prayer.

 

Fortunately - and here's where that charmed life comes into play again - the more muscular aspects of Harris' output had already done much to endear her to the rock fraternity, who wouldn't be seen within a country the Grand Ole Opry. So it wasn't exactly a seismic shift when she hooked up with U2 and Peter Gabriel producer Daniel Lanois for 1995's alt-rock friendly Wrecking Ball,which featured covers of Jimi Hendrix's May This Be Love, Steve Earle's Goodbyeand a remarkable take on Neil Young's title track.

 

Four years later, Harris took another leap into the dark with the album Red Dirt Girl.

 

This was the first record since 1985's autobiographical The Ballad Of Sally Rose on which she had written most of the material herself - a brave step, given that she was now working outside her country comfort zone.

 

"I think after Wrecking BallI knew I wanted to continue with that sound and working with that crop of people," she says.

 

"And I felt I had to bring something else in order to give myself permission to do that.

 

"Daniel had been very supportive about my writing; he said 'You really need to write for your next record'.

 

"And Guy Clark [the Texan songwriter who co-wrote the track Bang The Drum Slowly] pretty much insisted on it. He pretty much gave me my homework assignment, and I thought 'You know, I really should try this'. I've been given a gift here with this record and this resurgence in my career and also my own passion for music. And I thought, I've got to do some real work."

 

Over the years, Harris' "real work" has been rewarded with no fewer than 12 Grammy Awards. "I don't know about winning awards," she says (despite having just playfully corrected scene's sloppy research, which had her tally at 10). "You certainly want to be recognised but I don't think I have anything to prove. You're only trying to prove things to yourself and awards don't really do that. But they're certainly nice.

 

"My career has been blessed in so many ways. I think back on it sometimes and it's overwhelming. The extraordinary people that I've been able to work with - not just other artists, but the people in my band, even my crew members.

 

"I suppose it sounds a bit corny but it's true - I've really experienced a great deal of joy in my work and I've never taken it for granted. I've always been very grateful."

 

Recently, Harris - who turns 60 next April

* has been putting her profile to good use by organising the annual Concerts For A Landmine Free World tour, all proceeds from which go towards the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation's Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaign to ban landmines across the globe.

 

"I got involved through an old friend who had started working for [VVAF founder] Bobby Muller," Harris explains. "He was trying to make the world aware of landmines, because he'd spent so much time in Vietnam and Cambodia after the war - and the war basically continues when these landmines are still in the ground.

 

"Around the same time, I read an article in The New Yorker which said there were an estimated 200 million landmines in the ground and I thought, it must be a typo - except The New Yorker, as you know, don't ever have typos. So I volunteered my services and they're just a great, very committed group pf people.

 

Bobby is a very inspiring person to be around - he just lives to try to help other people and make the world at least slightly better."

 

The campaign has brought the Foundation into direct conflict with the Bush administration, which has refused to ratify the 1999 Ottawa Treaty banning landmines.

 

Recent experience has proved that taking on the neo-cons is dangerous territory for anyone with even half a foot in country music camp, but Harris shrugs off any suggestion of a backlash like the one that followed the Dixie Chicks' denunciation of the war in Iraq.

 

"I don't think it will happen, because I've ever been as highprofile as the likes of the Dixie Chicks," she says.

 

"My career is pretty much established. I don't sell 10 million records - I have a bunch of fans who, every time I put out a record, will buy it, and it stays pretty much the same. It's not a bad way to be - not a bad way at all."