Sometimes the best gigs are the ones you fall over in the dark, unexpected treats... I struggled out Friday night down to the Pack Horse because I had agreed to do the door for Mr Marmion – was feeling tired and a bit rough but did not want to let him down so duly reported for duty. After last weekend's concentrated blast of jazz- from fire musics and back via various ambles into the Asian sub continent – plus the great Roma buskers I heard - somehow folk music was not high on the acoustic agenda. So: it is good to have one's expectations wrenched sideways... To be fair, John Kelly had come with high recommendations from sources I respect, but my mood was not ready for the usual sad wander through the Arc of Loss that I perceive much contemporary English folk music to describe. In the event – the Harmonium Hero conquered all, despatching my misgivings immediately... Possessed of a light, lithe voice, more vocal technique than the average folkie but used expressively, for the benefit of the song, he accompanies on harmonium, backed up with cittern (I think) and guitar. All of which he plays masterfully. This is a man who has thought about his chosen music deep and long I suspect – there is a steely intellectual base to his performance, evidenced in the instrumental backings, (and discretely hidden under a quiet, dryly humourous demeanour) that lets his wonderful voice ride freely over. Use of the harmonium especially means he can match breath to air, as it were, in an organic flow, swaying and bending with the words. This gives the sea songs the movement of waves almost, the long ballads he likes, room for the narrative to flow. His playing on the stringed instruments was equally fluent, displaying technique enough to bend the songs into his use and avoiding the lockstep of orthodox folk clawhammer on his fingerstyle excursions. The material: intriguing... A couple of songs I did not know plus those I know well but haven't heard for a while, 'Polly on the shore,' ' Leazy Lindsay' (he bravely used the 'Lord Ronald McDonald' version and no one tittered!) 'Lakes of Pontchartrain,' 'Lord Gregory.' A nice surprise - 'Captain Kidd,' underpinned by fast, flatpicked cittern which echoed the first time I ever heard it, on a record of the late, wonderful Alex Campbell's back in the early sixties. (Which I found recently on the internet, a warm reminder of a great guy – 'Hell, yeah.'). John has been around, as they say, starting out back in Liverpool way back and retiring from the scene for a few years. Yet in his recent return he displays freshness of vision, rather than retreads of past glories. A rare talent – to be uncompromising musically yet be also accessible. Summed up, perhaps, by his encore: not a belter but a thoughtful meditation on 'The Plains of Waterloo.' A downbeat move – which gripped throughout. A special night... maybe there is something to this folk music lark after all... John gave a performance of grace and subtle power...
A final thought. Mr Marmion told me over lemonade on Saturday afternoon that John had been travelling around the country doing spots in the local clubs in the old pre-internet/MySpace fashion of building a base of support – and had been camping in a van during this endeavour. Which in the weather we are experiencing at the moment shows some steel and dedication. Harmoniums were instruments that were exported to the colonies and beyond in the nineteenth century, because they were not too adversely affected by the climate and were reasonably portable. Missionaries especially would have used them. Fancifully, I see John Kelly as a kind of poetic musical missionary, the long beard giving images of Walt Whitman and the Old Testament in equal measure, taking his music to the heathen. (Walt's beard 'full of butterflies' perhaps, after Lorca... Leviticus 19:27 'Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.'). He converted me back, that's for sure...
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