Bellowhead - part of the Derby Traditional Music and Arts Festival 24 October 2008

The buzz on Bellowhead has reached us perhaps late compared to many, but my word what a band to see live!

We caught some last minute tickets for their performance as part of the Derby Traditional Music and Arts Festival (on this weekend and back next year at my birthday weekend). So in advance of them we caught the fun of formation folk dancing (believe me we watched from the sidelines rather than joining in as we know what our dancing skills are like!) but it was clear many had come to see them specifically.

The audience was broadranging - from 60s down to under 10s - and all were swept under the magic of this spell-binding 11 piece collective. You have to admire a band that can accommodate pop posturings (the image of the string section playing off each other in various poses will have me giggling for a long while), funk influences (really, funk played by strings and horns in a folk-stylee has to be seen/heard to be believed), and even reggae... total madness with kazoos and everything.

Here's some cracking pictures of Bellowhead from various gigs and I will aim to add a couple of my own over the weekend.

It's also worth checking out the individual band members - many very active in lots of other projects - and like many events it's irksome to be reminded of how much we have missed in recent weeks (with both Faustus and Spiers and Boden in Nottingham recently Grr).

PS Can I just add that Jon Boden is a very compelling frontman and had the audience eating out of his hand. He also reminded me of an American Studies Professor I know who has a similar degree of intensity in his glare. Very odd. It may also be to do with the dark suit thing.