the folk awards

We've just been listening to the Radio 2 Folk Awards.  I couldn't guess who was going to win in any of the categories, or rather when I did guess, I guessed wrong.  The Furrow Collective, who (which?) I saw at the Colchester Arts Centre a few weeks back were up for two awards, but didn't get either.  I thought they'd be pipped to the post for Best Group by The Gloaming, which (who?) by all accounts are fabulously glamorous and includes Martin Hayes, that most fey and faerie of Irish fiddlers.  Who would ever have thought it would go to three young a capella male singers from Stockton?  Not the members of The Young'Uns, to judge from their amiable acceptance speech. Nobody at the Folk Awards ever admits they expected to win, but The Young'Uns did sound genuinely surprised.

I was pleased that Loudon Wainwright III was given a lifetime achievement award, and was waiting for him to thank his producer and Jesus Christ in his acceptance speech, only he didn't, although he thanked lots of other people.  The Systems Administrator and I were early adopters of Loudon Wainwright, and have his first album on cassette.  It still reminds me of lying at anchor on the river Deben, after we played it a lot one summer sailing holiday.  As a proud father he is probably chuffed to bits when the newspaper column inches are filled with praise of Rufus and Martha (I wish I had heard her version of Seven Deadly Sins.  I imagine it would be quite something) but he is probably pleased when the media remembers that his own musical career isn't over yet.

I was surprised that Cara Dillon didn't get anything.  The Radio 2 folk programme has been all over her new album since it came out, and she is so elfin and beautiful.  I thought there should be a Most Elfin award, and it could be given to Cara Dillon, Julie Fowlis and Martin Hayes in turn.  The SA nominated the creation of a Best Bellowhead award, to be awarded annually to Bellowhead.

I am rather sorry that I didn't go to see Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar, who I am pretty sure were on recently at the Arts Centre.  But I had a cold, the seats in the Arts Centre are so uncomfortable that it has to be something really compellingly good to persuade the SA to sit on them for an entire evening, and I was already booked to go to another gig there with the friend who is quite into folk music (though not nerdily steeped in it since infancy) and didn't want to overload her.

Looking at the full list of nominees, I have seen quite a few of them live, rarely in a venue seating more than three hundred, and seldom paying more than twenty pounds for a ticket.  Tim Dowling made a joke in his speech about how the four groups nominated in the category where he was presenting the prize were all dedicated to the tradition while pushing the boundaries (or words to that effect) while all other folk musicians were just in it for the money.  He got a laugh, but it was a bit near the bone.  How many other musicians up for national awards have to man their own merchandise stand during the interval?