Tag: Paul Hutchinson

Co-produced by long-time Gerry Colvin sideman Lyndon Webb, who also plays mandolin and guitars, Catch The Sun is a welcome return after a six-year gap for the Nottinghamshire-based folk-rock sextet led by fiddler founder Nick Gibbs, here variously featuring accordionist Paul Hutchinson with brass from Emma Vogwell (alto sax), Steve Harper (trumpet) and Paul McLaughlin (trombone).

Sharing the writing credits, it opens, drums rattling, fiddle flying and woodwind whirling, with Nick’s driving title track about not letting age dim your lust for life (“And even now we are old/We still hold the fire that feeds our young souls/And search for that way down long trodden roads/That lead where life flows”) encouraging audiences to “Stand up and sing along to the song we’re singing/Dance to the tune of the moon see sparks fly/Run like the devil, catch the sun”.

The first of five by mandolin and banjo man Martin Vogwell, ‘About You’ with its fiddle swirl intro is of a decidedly obsessive sexual passion persuasion (“I’d be lying if I said our carnal knowledge wasn’t daring/Entwined in interaction and the touches that were sharing… I don’t want to think about our lifetime/It detracts from this moment of our bodies touching”) and, while aware that tears will one day replace laughter “there is not an hour/When I’m not stuck by these arrows you’re flinging”.

Guitarist Bryn Williams takes the credit for the shuffling, country and folk-flavoured singalong ‘Shire Man’ with its commonality in working the land (“If you cut the corn or raise the barley, run the hills with Ern’ and Marley/Spread your light with Diwali, you’re a shire man/If you’re celebrating with Lord Vishnu, with you my friend I have no issue/Our differences are thin like tissue/ You’re a shire man”). Bassist Paul Dowling’s sole contribution is the fiddle and piccolo swaying ‘Endlessly Thinking’ about not always looking on the downside (“You Cannot Win/Endlessly thinking the walls will cave in/And your lover will leave ’cause you won’t let them in/Drinking through pints of your anxiety”).

Gibbs and drummer Gaz Hunt collaborate on the moodily slow walking love song ‘Burn’ (“even when the fire has gone/You still warm me and this old heart/from when the day was young..,.you burn me still”) with solos from both Helen Harper’s woodwind and progrock electric guitar.

By way of a shift, Vogwell’s spirited ‘Fighting For Charlie’ dips into a Civil War Royalist narrative with a lively bounce to its step, changing his tack on ‘Right To Roam’, a briskly paced protest about restricting access to common land (“Your right to roam’s been cancelled/This land’s been private bought/And for your transgression we’re taking you to court”).

It’s back to Gibbs for, as the title suggests, the rollicking Irish flavours of ‘Road To Donegal’, taking its musical cue from The High Kings followed by Williams’s second credit on the jazzy brass, woodwind and fiddle arrangement of ‘He Dances’, the lines “We got gypsy folk and Irish tunes/people dancing like their loons/the drummers beating out the tunes/so we’ll make it through ’til morning” sounding like a promotional pitch for the band itself.

Vogwell’s last two contributions follow, the first being the fiddle dancing, witty uptempo call for unity ‘Bookshop’ (“Why can’t all the world could be like a bookshop/All the subjects sitting side by side/You’ve got Nietzsche next to Marx and they’ve been getting on just fine/Why can’t all the world be like a bookshop”) that wouldn’t be out of place in a Merry Hell set, and the second, keeping the skirling rhythm going, ‘In Old England’ with its calling out of the state of the nation (“Did you see the queues at the food banks…when the job don’t pay us then you’re sank…well you can try as hard as you may, but it’s at the bottom where you’ll stay…try to shout from the common lands…, well you won’t find a friend or a helping hand/Instead a copper’s boot there will land/To stop dissent and all your plans”) and the concomitant call to “join your voices up as one, tell them that we’ve had enough/We’re in charge of the government/In old England”.

Picking up the sentiment, it ends with Gibbs’ energetic ‘Hope Is Still Alive’, opening with drone before mandolin, clopping drums, fiddle, piccolo and guitars kick in as he sings “Hope is still alive till the day that I die/You and I against the tide… When judgement day comes I know we’ll prevail”. And when we do, they’ll be there to light up the celebrations.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: www.FolkLaw.co.uk

‘Fighting For Charlie’ – live: