With Martin Carthy having to cancel his performance due to illness, Big Boulder Promotions put in a call to Martin Simpson, widely acknowledged as one of the best slide guitar players in the world, who stepped in at the last minute.
Educated in the folk clubs of Scunthorpe as a youngster, Martin, a professional musician for 35 years, has lived, recorded and played in New York, California and on Bourbon Street in New Orleans; delivering a mesmerising set for another spellbound, sell-out crowd which encompassed the harshness and violence of the blues landscape of ballads and the subtle nuances of folk story-telling.
Support on the night was provided by Phil ‘Swill’ Odgers, founder member of legendary folk/punk outfit The Men They Couldn’t Hang, who dragged himself through another Godforsaken train journey to deliver a rousing rendition of ‘Barrett’s Privateers’ and a moving version of ‘Marjory and Johnny’.
Martin and Swill also regaled the committed crowd with stories of the road and the tales behind the songs, leaving images of the unjust and the righteous, of human splendour and corruption and character that linger longest after the curtain falls.
This humble reviewer’s abiding memory of the night will be the youngest member of the audience, a tiny little baby almost making it silently through the night before being soothed in the hallway by mummy, daddy and messrs Whitehouse, Odgers and Hawley.
