#i expect a lot of appalachian tradition and legends were lost to the years

[persephoneprice]

and if i said the lack of elderly people in district 12 is detrimental to appalachian culture and folklore surviving then what

[plungermusic]

“Kinda bent, but we ain’t breakin’… in the long run”

Maverick Saturday stretched out before us like a challenge - thirteen hours is a long time on your feet for a couple of oldsters, but we’d give it our best shot…

We didn’t catch all of Dan Walsh’s opening Barn set, but his closing number, a lyrical, backwoods folk-flavoured instrumental that peaked in an increasingly frenetic celtic reel to the whoops and stomps of the crowd, was enough to impress us with its fleet-fingered dexterity.

Kelly Bayfield made her second barn appearance with another stylish set drawn from the new album: Kelly taking to the piano to give us a new short number Sing which was twinned (“well, they’re a similar flavour, and in the same key!”) with her last single Hitchhiker, both oozing classy 70s chanteuse vibes and the latter closing in some great Telecaster work from Andy Trill in a majestic closing solo.

There’s not much that’d drag us away from a Kelly performance early, but having spotted his programme picture (“Long hair, Les Paul? That’ll do!”) we pottered down to the open air Green Stage for David Banks and his band. He did exactly what we thought it said on the tin: lots of Springsteen/Petty influenced muscular Americana with a dash of Molly Hatchett topped with excellent southern-fried guitar and classic ‘big endings’… marvellous.

He was followed by Simon Stanley Ward (another ‘old fave’) who brought his Jonathan Richmanish irreverence and wit to Old Time Country in Excuse Me While I Feel Sorry For Myself; the Graceland-African-style I’m A Worrier (”…that’s worrier, not warrior”) a swinging rock’n’roller Bigfoot, Baby (Eddie Cochran meets cryptobiology) and Rocket In The Desert (the salad leaf not the projectile) with its Lawrence Of Arabia theme tease. While lampooning his own assumed-Nashville twang in American Voice the accompaniment was as echt as you could want, and the deadpan humour of Beluga Whale was sung to a properly stirring Journeyesque anthem.

As it wasn’t raining The Green seemed the place to stay, where Forty Elephant Gang came next. Reviewing their album we were a little sniffy about their ‘crowd-pleasing festival songs’ but aside from the field holler-meets-O Brother Where Art Thou-style Songs Of Praise, this set was mostly the ones we’d liked: the relaxed Tex-Mex of Strange Things Happening with three-part harmonies and intertwining mando’n’guitar lines; the melancholic waltz of Young Man’s Game and the Squeeze-y domestic wit of Drunken Promise Song. A final ‘crowd-pleaser’ came in the chugging bluesy Hands Out Your Pockets, an instruction the assembled masses eagerly followed to add the required clap-along.

Sam Chase Trio made another appearance at The Green, wooing the larger crowd with both edgy humour (including praising UK portaloos in comparison to US versions, and introducing Everyone Is Crazy But Me as “a children’s song... now, what they mean is that it’s simple, since kids are generally at the dumber end of the spectrum”), and songs as varied as the fiery protest of What Is All The Rage and the haunting, wistful Lost Girl, (from the “Faustian Spaghetti Western Of Epic Proportions Known As The Last Rites Of Dallas Pistol”) sung by cellist Devon.

Now Plunger do like a bit of bluegrass, whether it’s grainy b/w Flatt & Scruggs clips from the 50s, through Sam Bush and New Grass to Béla Fleck and Greensky Bluegrass so The Folly Brothers should have been our kind of thing… however what we heard of them was more My Old Man’s A Dustman than anything Appalachian so we wandered off…

Back at The Barn Dean Owens and the Southerners drew a large and attentive crowd, but the popular Scot also left us a bit underwhelmed. Mellow, melodious troubadoury country that wouldn’t have been out of place on a mid-afternoon 70s Radio 2 show, the kind of thing that takes a deep listen in your bedroom to appreciate the stories told: very easy on the ear for sure but without any particular thing to grab us at a festival.

After an abortive attempt to catch Ella Spencer and her accompanist at The Moonshine (an extremely long soundcheck with problems with feedback from pretty much everything they touched meant we gave up) we caught a snatch of Los Pistoleros as we rounded The Green: probably the most C.O.U.N.T.R.Y. thing of the weekend, complete with draggy fiddle, pedal steel and old time vocal harmonies… if I’d not left my cowboy boots at home I’d have been out line-dancing with the best of them.

Plunger had only just seen Alyssa Bonagura (with Tim De Graaw’s band) less than a week since. Here at The Barn she was nominally solo but Tim joined her to add sweet harmonies and mellow guitar to Alyssa’s polished Cali-country: her strong yet ethereal vocal equally at home in slow emotional confessionals or giggly upbeat Big Yellow Taxi-style big strummers.

Listed only as ‘Dogs Play Dead’ it was only a lucky guess that took us down to The Green for what turned out to be Friday’s headliners Black Eyed Dogs playing a set of Grateful Dead classics. Mainly those with a countryish twist to them already, like Casey Jones, I Know You Rider and Friend Of The Devil; and bringing that flavour with fiddle and pedal steel to others like Truckin’, China Cat Sunflower, Playing In The Band and the epic closing Franklin’s Tower. All done with the right degree of loose, shambling rhythms and discursive noodling on guitar (and fiddle!) Fabulous stuff for grooving on the grass under what by now were glorious sunshine-filled blue skies.

Brooks Williams’ jangly sonorous acoustic and warm, smooth higher register vox was ideal early evening fare at the barn, in covers like Dave Alvin’s King Of California, traditional numbers like Deep River Blues and originals like the Gordon Lightfootish melancholy of Frank Delandry, and the damp-eyed nostalgia of Palomino Gold, aided toward the end of his set by some more excellent banjo from Dan Walsh.

The USP of Eddy Smith & the 507 is Eddy’s gravelly soulful voice, ideal for their bluesy-edged material, like the harp-led strut of It Don’t Feel Much Like Living and the new single Ticket Out Of Here, a bustling two-step with impressive three-part harmony vocals. They definitely have moved up a level since we last saw them a couple of years back.

Somehow we managed to miss Sarah Petite with her band completely on Friday, and almost all of her stripped-back Moonshine set on Saturday. Which was definitely our loss gauging by the brief snatch of crackling husky vocal over restrained bass and reverb laden guitar that we heard while hunting for a still-open toilet (a water supply problem having rendered all loos unusable for a considerable portion of the late evening... pretty much the only fly in the ointment all weekend!)

As the sun set the two-month date differential was beginning to tell: clear night skies in September aren’t quite the same as July and the growing chill was testing our stamina a bit. We headed for The Peacock and the tribute show to John Prine, hosted by Rich Hall. Pretty much every act who was on site came to do a turn in honour of the recently-deceased songwriting legend, with their own favourite from his oeuvre. Kelly Bayfield band gave us Hello In There, Tim De Graaw with Alyssa did That’s The Way The World Goes Round, Alyssa gave us the obligatory Angel From Montgomery, and Simon Stanley Ward (plus Kelly) gave a fantastic rollicking Lake Marie. Entirely in character, Sam Chase Trio broke the mould and gave us their own tribute song John Prine.

Rich Hall had to skip out on MC duties to attend his own set at The Barn: sacrilege to say, but the appeal of stand up (even to music, even from such a big name) palled a little. It was getting bitterly cold (you could see your breath hanging in the air) and given that what we could hear of his set was the same as we’d heard last time he was here we spent much the time attempting to warm up with piping hot beverages. However it was by far the rammedest set of the weekend, with the tightly-packed crowd spilling out of The Barn for some distance.

Jon Langford was unsurprisingly somewhat hindered by the draw of Rich Hall (which left The Peacock a bit underpopulated!) His spiky, punky approach wasn’t entirely our bowl of chilli, although the rendition of Eddie Waring (originally by Help Yourself with Deke Leonard and BJ Cole, who was sitting in with Jon tonight) was very good.

The programme description of headliner Jerry Joseph did its best to weaken our staying power too: with our deep suspicion of any write-ups that include the ‘p-word’, and somewhat incredulous of the mention of ‘jam bands’, Jerry looked like he wouldn’t be our kind of thing at all. However he didn’t live down to expectations (wholly). A very animated stage-prowling audience-provoking figure in shorts and no shoes, there was no shortage of energy even if it was largely unchannelled and could get a little wearing… (maybe it was that, maybe it was the chill, but The Barn steadily thinned out during his set, ending less than half full). War At The End Of The World was the pick of the bunch, although like most of his material it would probably have sounded better with a band (like, erm, Stockholm Syndrome, which he co-founded; or, erm, Widespread Panic who he has written for… so much for our ‘jamband incredulity’!)

While it might have ended as a bit of a test of endurance, there were more than enough high points to make Saturday another enjoyable Maverick experience.

“Did we do it for love? Did we do it for money? More like stubborn dumb persistence and hot chocolate, honey…”