Sam Kelly’s take on folk music relies on a combination of reworked and mostly sped-up traditional songs and his own, often more introspective, self-writes. With the full Lost Boys band he frequently leans into a joyful and powerful wall of folk sound, so it comes as no surprise when half way through the gig Kelly and accordionist Archie Churchill-Moss reminisce about how they first met at a long ago Cambridge Folk Festival and that back then, Kelly was a fourteen year old who knew every song by Seth Lakeman.
With a new album, “Dreamers Dawn”, recently released it’s no surprise that it featured heavily on this evening in a reasonably full Junction 2, starting with what is certainly not your grandfather’s ‘Lincolnshire Poacher‘ on a version which is far removed from the smoky pub function room sing-a-long renditions of years gone by. Here, there’s a lot more bounce, veering into pop-folk – setting an upbeat mood from the start, which continues into the Donald Campbell-inspired ‘Bluebird‘, which finds the positivity in a fatal crash in pursuit of a water speed record. Another song from the new album ‘Gallows Pole‘ came out of Sam Kelly and his main collaborator in the Lost Boys, Jamie Francis finding at university that they shared an admiration for early blues recordings and the rendition of the plea to be saved from hanging has great drive as it powers towards a final discovery that no amount of money his family can raise will be enough to save the condemned man.
Less successful is Kelly’s phonetic singing of a song in Gaelic – as well as not speaking the language he reveals that although the song reminds him of his grandfather “the words suck in translation.” On the other hand, the sing-along isn’t exactly absent from Kelly’s repertoire as the banjo-heavy ‘Angeline The Baker‘ proves – it’s a song and arrangement that brings early Kate Rusby to mind. And to prove that this is a band that covers many folk styles, their version of ‘The Shining Ship‘ is introduced as bringing in some Persian influences. It’s one of the many variations on ‘The House Carpenter‘ with the false lover taking on a demonic aspect as he takes his former love from her husband and baby and out to sea on a boat heading for the mountains of hell. It brings to mind Pentangle, although perhaps it was Led Zeppelin that was intended. Whichever, it’s a dramatic take on the song that is a real standout moment.
Sam Kelly isn’t just a singer of traditional songs, although as he explains, his own material is often misunderstood. For example, ‘Guiding Light‘ is about an ex-girlfriend, and not a confession of a religious awakening, although it’s understandable where the confusion could come from. There’s a veering into the political on the introspective ‘The Old Deceiver‘, which is not about the Devil but rather the insidious rise of right-wing nationalism; although Kelly does note that Tories—and their likely greater disposable income—are welcome at his gigs. Good as these songs might be, little comes close to ‘Greenland Whale‘, the shanty turned into power folk that is irresistible; all one can do is give oneself up to it.
One small downside on the whole evening came right at the start – The Junction web site had the gig scheduled to start at 8pm so it was a bit of a surprise to get in the hall at that time to find the support band – Suffolk multi-instrumental duo Honey and the Bear getting towards the end of their set. A pity indeed. Jon Hart and Lucy Sampson take that multi-instrumentalist title seriously. Over three songs, they would play upright bass, guitar, bouzouki-mandolin, whilst a ukulele and another guitar must have been used earlier. At one point, this wasn’t enough for Lucy Sampson, who became a one-person band with bells on her toes and a kick pedal beating time on a cajón. They exude clean-cut positivity, to the extent of being nice about the fairly ragged crowd’s sing-along. Their rendition of ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes‘ – a song they covered during Covid – was a lovely closer.
