A Shirt on Sunday: Bellowhead – 14/07/2013 – Kew Gardens

Folk music in the greenhouse helps your tomatoes grow.

For about 10 years, Kew Gardens in West London held a music event billed as ‘Kew The Music’. Started as a swing music event, the billing morphed into polite family-friendly and nostalgic acts. This was the only day I went in all the years, to see Bellowhead and Billy Bragg.

Ambling into Kew Gardens, at what would normally be closing time, one was directed via railings and John Lewis branding (which defines the audience demographic) towards the Temperate House – the bigger but less curvaceous of the two giant greenhouses. In front of the greenhouse was a reasonably sized stage and lots of branded picnic tables for those who shop at the right supermarkets.
I arrived just as Karine Polwart was finishing up, but in time to find Karl and his partner and their friends, who were sitting in an area which implied they did not shop at the right supermarkets.

Next up was Billy Bragg – who probably does shop in the right supermarkets these days, but brings his own Co-Op bags. He was touring ‘Tooth and Nail’ – a return to form after the very weak previous album, and his set was mostly classics and material from the Woody Guthrie archives. Bragg had his band with him – very electric and very loud. We got to sing along to a few songs and bounce around a bit, and it was all good fun.

Bellowhead were at their peak around 2013 – the formula of music-hall dance versions of traditional material was firmly established and Jon Boden was still fully engaged with the project. The stage that had looked comfortable for Billy Bragg and his band was cramped for 11 musicians running around welding bazoukis, fiddles and sousaphones. By adapting the songs into various styles, albeit filtered through the brass & string arrangements kept the set interesting and there’s nothing like a bit of brass-band disco! They got the crowd dancing, pogoing and occasionally singing along with songs you wouldn’t normally hear outside a folk club.

A good night out but the event organisation was not to my taste, and unless the sponsor is a brewer or a musical instrument maker, I’ve tended to avoid branded events ever since.

My photos above, but these videos are from the interweb. Couldn't find a full Bellowhead song from Kew, but this video is from the same summer.