I went with my dad last night to hear Martin Simpson at the Colchester Arts Centre. I have enthused about Martin Simpson before. He is a sublime guitar player, fair vocalist, and top quality interpreter of songs, British and American, garlanded with folk awards. He is looking a little greyer and grimmer than he used to, and more of his material is overtly political (of the left), but he is still on fine form. The doors opened at 7.45pm, as always, and the tickets said that the concert would start at 8.15pm. There was no support act, just CDs of forthcoming folk guests, and at quarter past eight on the dot Martin Simpson appeared on stage and began to play. It was a generous first set, fully an hour long, and about the same again in the second half, after a slightly longer interval that was strictly necessary, presumably to allow for maximum purchases of CDs and drinks at the bar.
Martin Simpson tuning his guitar contains more rapid flurries of liquid arpeggios than most other people do when they are actually playing it. This has become a jolk among other bands on the folk circuit, and I'm sure that by now there is a self-referential element and he deliberately plays up the tuning. Martin Simpson playing his guitar is a joy.
His new album came out last month. It is called Purpose + Grace, and as he has been getting a lot of media mentions you may have heard of it. It is reviewing brilliantly, but touring presents a logistical difficulty, in that the album features assorted other musicians, all stars of the folk world in their own right, performing on one or two tracks each. A company including June Tabor, Dick Gaughan, Jon Boden, Richard Thompson, Andy Cutting (the Systems Administrator and I have a theory that it is illegal to make a folk album without Andy Cutting on it) and several others would be wonderful, but tickets would not be available for £11 a head (£9 concessions) and the logistics of finding a date when everybody was free would be so complicated it would surely be limited to a one-off performance. I heard Martin Simpson interviewed on the R2 folk programme and he was entirely pragmatic about the current line up, which came about because his producer (the legendary Tony Engles. He must be a hundred and three by now) said that Martin Simpson needed to do something different. You don't maximise album sales by churning out same-old same-old, even if it is good. The answer was to call in the services of friends, and make an ensemble album. I haven't bought it yet, though I will. Demonstrating that the market in folk CDs is anything but perfect, I could get it direct from Martin Simpson's own website for £12, or from Amazon for £8.99 (new) or £12.42 (used). Do I want to support the artist directly enough to pay 30% over the odds, that is the question. We'll leave the used ones out of the equation.
Last night's concert therefore featured some songs from the new album, and revisited several other recent releases. I'm afraid that life is not jolly in the world of Martin Simpson. Sir Patrick Spens was drowned, brave General Wolfe was shot, lovers' minds were altered, returning war veterans were shunned and Lousiana got flooded. He did do a couple of more optimistic songs, with a Mike Waterson number about a young man looking forward to his future working as a north sea fisherman (oh dear) and raising a family, and a fine song from Northumberland by an older man looking fondly back at his life of labouring and playing music. But some of the bleak and murderous ballads had very catchy, up-tempo tunes, so the whole effect was anything but dirge-like.
I was disappointed by the size of the audience. The Arts Centre hadn't bothered to set out seats on the diagonal down the sides of the church, a sign it was not a sell out, and while there were people all the way to the back, the rows weren't full. Instead they were gappy, like badly laid brood frame. Martin Simpson has been a regular visitor to Colchester folk club, so maybe this was a sign that, excellent as he is, people won't necessarily turn out in the same numbers to watch somebody they've alread seen twice in the last couple of years? Or maybe it was a sign of the economy biting. Two tickets at eleven quid, parking, maybe a couple of drinks, versus just buy the album (which has June Tabor et al on it)? Or maybe not everybody is such a massive Martin Simpson fan as I am? It was a wasted opportunity, folks. You missed the chance to see one of the finest guitarists in the world.
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