In the rarefied environs of Salford’s Lowry Centre, MIKE WATERSON – all flat cap, beer and braces – seems a little subdued. He is sharing the stage with brother-in-law and English folk hero MARTIN CARTHY who always reminds me of an ageing punk rocker, which, in many ways, he is.
The two men take up half the stage and half the set each, alternating between Waterson’s unaccompanied singing and Carthy’s bewitching guitar and unearthed historical ballads. Waterson’s ballads are full of innuendo, nostalgia and working class solidarity, ranging in topic from the Cod Wars to his visceral hatred of coffee machines, all sung with a finger in the ear (his not ours). He is obviously an expert in his field and his ballads are often very moving, though I must admit I found some of the bawdiness a little anachronistic.
Unfortunately, due to illness, Norma Waterson, Carthy’s wife, could not accompany him tonight – a shame because their combined voices make some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. Still, solo Carthy is an entrancing treat. His commitment to the form is palpable, his guitar playing magical, and his choice of traditional material full of love, blood and murder. His legendary diffidence is still remarkably intact, as he entreats the audience to give their applause to Waterson rather than himself.
After a short interval, PEGGY SEEGER takes to the stage with an anecdote about getting stuck in her van in Sheffield’s one-way system. This leads seamlessly to an unaccompanied cowboy song about a horse.
We are truly in the presence of greatness tonight, though 69 year-old Seeger - feminist, environmentalist and social activist - would gently berate us for thinking in such elitist terms.
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Half-sister of Pete Seeger and life partner of Ewan Macoll (he wrote ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ for her, fact-fans), Peggy Seeger has spent a lifetime playing the music of the people. Tonight we are privileged to hear the result of a half-century’s immersion in folk music(s).
Seeger, in a reedy, spectral tone, alone, or self-accompanied by guitar, banjo, piano and, most beguilingly, auto-harp, sings lullabies, love songs, pro-choice numbers, anti-Bush tirades (‘he’s a bad man, a mad man…’) and even a song about farting. One of the most affecting moments of the evening is her rendition of a poem to her mother who died in her fifties (‘I am older than my mother’), made even more resonant by being included in a suite of pro-choice songs and lullabies.
Waterson and Carthy join Seeger on stage for a riotous rendition of ‘My Get Up And Go Just Got Up And Went’, proving that it really hadn’t. Again accompanied by Carthy, Seeger ended the night with her feminist anthem ‘Gonna Be An Engineer’.
This was a night of rare warmth and beauty, presented by a singer who I sincerely hope I will have the privilege of seeing again.
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