Homegrown, Bury’s annual festival of English folk music (organised by The Met in partnership with English Folk Expo) is now in its fifth year and continues to bring together the contemporary and traditional.
Due to the refurbishment taking place at The Met the events were held in alternative venues and About Manchester went to take a look at what was on last Saturday afternoon in the Castle Armoury Drill Hall.
First up were Ange Hardy and Lucas Drinkwater.
Incredible solo performers in their own right, together they are magical and even the peeling paint from the Drill Hall walls above them added a poignancy to the purity of the sound and the emotion contained within tracks such as ‘The Sailor’s Farewell’ and ‘Invisible Child’.
Sadly their set was all too short but the disappointment was momentary as 3 Cane Whale aka Alex Mann, Pete Judge and Paul Bradley brought technically incredible mini pastoral symphonies to the stage that despite the four walls took us on a stunning journey of the countryside allowing us to hear for ourselves the passing of time in nature.
Their finale the amazing ‘Sluice’ took us to Nancy Kerr and members of the Sweet Visitor Band, James Fagan, Tom Wright and Rick Foot.
Although her voice and fiddle playing are clearly steeped in folk tradition Nancy added a feistiness to it with her strong stage presence and the challenging subject matter from her album Instar, in particular its title track.
Altogether a great afternoon, next year can’t come round soon enough!
