1999

Waterson:Carthy

Altan

Governor Hindmarsh

Eliza Carthy with Saul Rose

Big Star Basement

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Their name  may sound like a company of chartered accountants but Waterson:Carthy are an old firm of a very different sort. With more than eighty years experience between them, they are the cornerstones of traditional music in Britain. Martin Carthy, his wife Norma Waterson, their daughter Eliza and son-in-law Saul Rose are a family enterprise to rival such great UK singing families as the Coppers or… the Watersons. Which is to say both Carthy, descended from four generations of singers, and Norma Waterson, descended from five, are part of a succession of indigenous English music which dates back two centuries.

But this is not about carbon dating or the obsessive details of folkloric taxonomy. What makes  Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson so remarkable is that they approach their vast and varied repertoire as if it had been written just this morning. They are not “folk singers” in that self-conscious way that Greil Marcus so rightly despises in his chapters, inInvisible Republic , on Bob Dylan’s use of traditional material. In fact it was Martin Carthy who taught Dylan the tune to Lord Randall which he promptly swiped for the Freewheeling album track, Bob Dylan’s Dream. And then there is the story of how Paul Simon heard Martin Carthy’s setting for Scarborough Fair and, with Garfunkel providing harmonies, turned four English herbs into more greenbacks than the entire British folk scene has earned in thirty years.

Not that Martin Carthy is anybody’s idea of a forgotten man. His vocal style, his distinctive guitar settings  and his willingness to join any enterprise that looks interesting has meant that he has made classic albums with Fairport fiddler Dave Swarbrick, recorded with Steeleye Span and the Albion Country Band, and now,  along with his current band CDs, has recently recorded yet another solo venture, Signs of Life (Topic) which includes Heartbreak Hotel, Sir Patrick Spens, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and even the Bee Gees’ New York Mine Disaster, 1941. The album received a five star rating from no less a mag a la mode, than London’s Q.

Norma Waterson career has been equally impressive. One third of the Watersons, which consisted of her late sister Lal and brother Mike, she hails from Kingston-on-Hull and is simply one of the most accomplished singers you could hope to hear. She also has recorded in various abundance, including songs from Richard Thompson, Billy Bragg and Dave Bromberg as well as American tin pan alley, Sankey hymns and airs, laments and work songs from all around the British Isles.

Performing at the Governor Hindmarsh just days after headlining at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, Waterson: Carthy are looking relaxed and making the most of a balmy Adelaide evening. Martin is wearing a sporty blue Mambo shirt covered in big orange stars. Norma, often sombre-looking in photos, lights up when she greets the crowd. And then there’s the young fry. Eliza, her hair no longer in signature pink spikes, is in basic black and fishnet. Brother-in-law Saul wears brown baggies and industrial strength boots to keep the beat while he labours on a variety of accordions, melodeons, squeezeboxes and other musical wheezies.

They open with some bells and hanky Morris tunes. Saul sets up a spry melody to which Eliza adds a  vibrant fiddle, Carthy a strummy bass-heavy guitar and Norma a rattlingly strong triangle. There are plenty of jigs and reels but it is the songs and ballads which make the skin tingle. Norma introduces the songs like they are old friends. There is pride in their flair and wry invention. We Poor Labouring Men unfurls like a weary Yorkshire blues. The harmonies from Norma and Eliza are sublime, as they are for the ballad of that high born lady who goes bush, The Raggle Taggle Gypsies-O , a spirited version learnt from the late Norfolk singer Walter Pardon.

It is a program of contrasts. There are Eliza and Saul hornpipes and jigs, with names like Our Cat Has Kitted and Donnington Lads. And there are ballads such as the Napoleonic variant, Bay of Biscay-o, with Norma Waterson weaving her arms as she intones in a lovely contralto about the woes of separated love and press gang politics. Bows of London is another highlight, with Eliza playing a fiddle raga and Martin supplying oaken second vocals. Jacob’s Well , a Sheffield carol with Blakean images of Christ walking the streets of England is splendidly performed, as is Eliza’s solo Bonny Fisher Boy.

Norma sings Black Muddy River, poignant even without the Richard Thompson solos, and Martin, wonderfully dotty and ever generous to his fellow band members steps forward to sing New Mown Hay, a rendition as fresh as its title. The set, as sublime as any I have in some time, concludes with the emigration ballad When I First Came to Caledonia, the American country tune, Midnight on the Water and, as a nightcap a crooning  lullaby, Sleep on Lilleyford. And well may traditional British music rest for forty winks with Waterson:Carthy keeping such careful vigil.

As a bonus for the band’s visit a second program has been arranged by Vic Flierl, Big Star Records honcho – and occasional patron of excellent live music. The basement at Big Star in Rundle Street has been made over for a set from Eliza and Saul Rose. Playing selections from her accalimed Red Rice double set, Eliza Carthy, vivacious and good-natured bounds into a set of jigs –Picking up Sticks/Felton Lonnin and -a tribute to her mum- Kingston Girls. Norma isn’t there but Martin, like a proud father on talent night, beams and cheers as he always does, as if the music is fresh minted and he’s hearing it for the very first time.

Eliza has a lovely vibrant voice, less expressive than Norma’s but full and youthfully fresh. She sings The Americans have Stolen My True Love Away and the marriage song, Tuesday Morning, a ballad from the Copper Family called  Forsaken Mermaid and the so-fishy-you can-sniff- it, Herring Song. Particular treats also include Fuse , a sombre little song written by Carthy- with slow sorrowful chords from what must have been a keyboard borrowed from the days of The Garden Path- and a terrific version of Ben Harper’s Walk Away.

Closing with the Mighty Sparrow reggae tune Good Morning Mr Walker, Carthy and Rose are cheered from the tiny basement stage.

There are encores, of course- more jigs and hornpipes and then the  Bonny Fisher Boy, a tune Eliza had sung the night before at the Gov, with strange atavistic lyrics about erotic capture. The Fisher Boy, sings Eliza with wide eyes, got hold of me. And, for two nights Waterson:Carthy and Subsidiaries have certainly got hold of us.

It has been quite a month for the Governor Hindmarsh as Altan also are playing in Adelaide after appearing at the Port Fairy kneesup. Led by willowy blonde lead singer and fiddler Mairead ni Mhaonaigh they restake their claim as one of the very best traditional Irish acts around. Opening with the haunting tune Suil Ghorn (Blue Eyes) from their latest CD Runaway Sunday (Virgin) they have the Saturday crowd in a pre-St Pat’s Day swoon.

It is a reel and jig-heavy night with Dermott Byrne on accordion, Ciaran Curran on bouzarre, Daithi Sproule on guitar and Ciaran Tourish brilliant duetting with Mairead. They play Cape Breton jigs and Germans, solo whistle medleys from Tourish and  some squeezies from Byrne. Mairead sings a Gaelic love song dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin and reminisces about meeting him when we she was a teenage violinist in Donegal.

I would have preferred more song and less dance- especially more from scholarly looking Daithi Sproule, who sings the Sweeneys Men song My Dearest  Dear and might well have dipped further into the repertoire he covers in his solo CD for Green Linnett, A Heart Made of Glass. Mairead ni Mhaonaigh sings I Wish My Love was a Red Red Rose, an Ulster version from Sarah Makem said to predate Robbie Burns, and a favourite wedding song from the  Altan Harvest Storm album,  Donal Agus Morag. But the night is for reeling and rocking and at night’s end we are left with the ensemble energy of Altan and duelling fiddles fit to raise Cuchulain himself.

The Adelaide Review, No.187, April, 1999, p.36.