A Life In Music: Joe Broughton. From child prodigy to the peerless UFQ, the Folk Ensemble, and much more.

The Conservatoire Folk ensemble will be back!
Power Folk at the Spotted Dog will be back!
UFQ will be back!
Proper lessons at the Conservatoire will be back!

... but Lockdown's a bitch, now ain't it?

Joe Broughton is a non-stop phenomenon. From his days on the Folk circuit as a teen prodigy, his ebullient approach: nothing should be passed by, cos you never know what might come up. 

This podcast is a companion piece to go with Lives In Music podcast Series 3 - the tenth in the series. After which I lie down in a darkened room and plan series 4. The podcast is here, or you can scroll down and play it off the blog post. 

Years and years ago, I navigated the dusty corridors in the old Birmingham Conservatoire building, to write a blog post about the Conservatoire folk ensemble. It was a thrill, ducking and weaving through that old building, getting closer and closer to the explosive NOISE that Joe was whipping up. 50 or 60 students of all shapes and stripes, contributing to an exhilarating blast of music. Now, of course, under lockdown. the Folk Ensemble can't perform. But here's hoping they will, in a year's time. And many's the Conservatoire graduate, now making their way in music, who passionately missed the time they spent with Joe.  

So, there's been a steady, if exhausting to put together, stream of YouTube work, and you can catch a lot from the Links, which joe sent over. 

I've talked to Joe lots, been to several Urban Folk Quartet gigs, caught the Folk Ensemble in person and on YouTube and it's always been a complete pleasure. This is the first podcast he's done with me, and of course, a lot of the chat revolved around lockdown, which has stopped a lot of Joe and co's work in their tracks. It's not all doom and gloom, though – a chat with Joe is always a huge pleasure. 

Links (largely recommended by Joe)

Urban Folk Quartet
More about the Conservatoire Folk Ensemble
Tank and The Bangas on NPR Tiny Desk

Trimukhi Tala  Clap/ Clap/ Little /Ring /Middle /Clap/ Clap/ Wave/ Clap /Clap/ Wave/

UFQ remix from Josh Wunderlich: Waterbound Conservatoire Folk Ensemble remix from John Wunderlich: Sleep Talk
Jeff Beck live: Cause We're Ended as Lovers 
Bach Cello Suite No 2 in D minor / Paul Tortelier  
Joss Stone & Urban Folk Quartet - Solsbury Hill (Quarantine Live 2020)
and most important - Support the Urban Folk Quartet

The Podcast

A footnote: the intro and outro flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music podcast come from Vo Fletcher who is featured in this series, along with Loz Kingsley, here. I asked him for a bit of live impro, and this was the result.  

The Lives in Music Podcast series has been running for about two years now. These are interviews with local musicians, looking at how music has shaped them throughout their lives. Series 3
also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. There are some lovely stories. To see all the artists, here's a link to every episode.

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. I then expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts since then, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog.
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A Life In Music: Sid Peacock and Ruth Angell - two music worlds collide

Well, lockdown screwed things up for us all... but there are ways around it.

This third series of Lives in Music Podcast doesn't just concentrate on peoples' music journeys.

It also has a consistent thread running through everyone's lives: Covid 19, the resultant 
lockdown, and the effect it's had on people's activities. 

That said, this has been a springboard to a range of different takes on lockdown creativity. The podcast is out now. You can listen to it here, or scroll down the post - it's embedded below.  

Lockdown grief

I recorded this talk for podcast some eleven months ago, just as Sid Peacock's Surge in Spring festival at Cannon Hill, the Midlands Arts Centre, was cancelled as lockdown came down on all our music activities.

Much later, I settled down to edit our chat. Sid and Ruth Angell, who make a formidable musical team, about what might still be relevant, or even taking place. And it turns out there is a lot. That's because they are, truth be told, absolutely monster musicians, who spend a huge amount of time working across different music genres.

But what shoots though this episode is the to and fro between the two of them: two very different musicians, with very different personalities, and even more different backgrounds, and how they collaborate. It also opens up a fascinating perspective on how some of the musicians in our town work together: it's a veritable list of great players. Over and above that, there is the sweet story of how two contrasting and brilliant people met, hung out, and fell in love. 

Two different backgrounds; new music worlds

Peaceful, settled Derbyshire; stressed and troubled Northern Ireland. Different backgrounds, different cultures. Music thrives and continues to emerge from both places. But the conditions that allow music to flourish are dependent on whether you are actually allowed to create. Sid has a lot to say on this issue. 

Music pulled these two together, physically at the Birmingham Conservatoire, and much more powerfully and independent from the Conservatoire, creatively. Both Sid and Ruth are contributors to each other's work. The trick is trying to define the range of music they work across  - because they cover so much ground.

There's a sample of new work from Ruth at the end of the podcast, and here's an example of what Sid can get up to with his Surge orchestra, from 2019:

Links
Sid's Surge Orchestra 

Sid and Ruths' band Peacock Angell 

The Podcast: Sid and Ruth on Lives in Music   

The Lives in Music Podcast series   

I've been doing these for about two years now. These are interviews with local 
musicians and music enablers, looking at how music has shaped them throughout 
their lives. Series 3 also looks hard at how lockdown has had an impact. 

There are some lovely stories. To see who's in the list of artists, here's a link to 
review every episode.

One further footnote: the intro and outro guitar flourishes I'm using in this series of Lives in Music podcast come from Vo Fletcher, who is also featured, with Loz Lozwold (aka Kingsley), in a podcast in this series. I asked Vo for a bit of live impro, and this was the result.  

The Radio To Go blog
This blog has been going since 2007. I started it to focus mainly on radio stories, as the industry went through convulsive changes. Those changes aren't over yet, not by a long chalk. I then expanded the range of topics to cover local music, another subject close to my heart. I think it was a Destroyers gig that pulled me in that direction. I've banged out several hundred posts since then, and of course deleted quite a few. But if you're interested in thoughts on the local scene and/or radio futures, by all means visit the full topic index on the Radio To Go blog.

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The for-Wards project

40 Wards 10 Districts 10 Composers 40 Community Groups 10 public performances... One person's vision

I'm sitting in Moseley's Maison Mayci with Bobbie-Jane Gardner. Her project, for-Wards, is about to shift up a gear, with tangible (and audible) results. This is an impressive and complex programme which will have generated ten specific works of music, each one inspired and in many ways powered by ten districts in Birmingham.

Bobbie-Jane deserves huge respect for nurturing such a project into life. Long-term, complex projects are always tricky to set up, and it's always tougher than ever to secure enough funding to support the work.

Dempsey / Broughton

Two generations of UK Folk. Oh, the stories...

Joe Broughton likes to play varied crowds. Here's a clip of his Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, shot on Monday 25th. Joe took his 68-strong troupe to blast bleary-eyed morning and evening commuters at New Street station; it was part of Birmingham City University's open day. 
 


Audience numbers? Who knows, but maybe ten thousand people passing through the station caught the blast.

Dig around on YouTube and the like. You'll see Joe with his Urban Folk Quartet, one of the finest Folk outfits the UK has right now. There are festival gigs filmed in Europe in front of audiences in their thousands. That's before you pick up on the specialist fiddle masterclasses, or his own one-day festival, Power Folk, at The Spotted Dog in Digbeth.

And in a couple of weeks he's playing the 60-seater Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath with long time friend and collaborator Kevin Dempsey. So is the Dempsey / Broughton gig likely to sell out? I would expect so.

The fiddler in the shed and his army of bright-eyed Folk monsters

It's that time of year. The Folk Ensemble will run riot. All 50 of them.

I'm sitting with a university lecturer in deepest Smethwick. If truth be be told, I'm not here for his academic chops. He's a muso, and a bloody brilliant one at that. We're at the bottom of his garden, drinking coffee. In a shed; brick-built, but still a shed. But instead of bamboo canes, rakes, spaces and shears cluttering the floor, you step around guitars and fiddles. There's posters and a couple of really tasty speakers hanging off the walls, hooked up to quite a large Mac.

You've guessed by now. This is actually a studio. It belongs to the Urban Folk Quartet's Joe Broughton. This is his workplace.

The Old Dance School – eight years of different.

Robin Beatty has been studiously shepherding The Old Dance School since his music student days in Birmingham. A seven piece, they're finishing up a live album, their fourth. Nowadays, their music is increasing expansive and flowing, and it presents an interesting contrast with the decidedly funkier groove-driven sound of their early days.  Personnel changes have triggered part of that evolution; time the rest. And it has to be said that they have outlasted a great many of their contemporaries. The next studio album will, again, be different.

Defining them? That's a whole other matter.We're looking at a band who now have a lot of miles and music on the clock, who command respect and can happily pull in large audiences wherever they play; their home town audiences are studded with fellow musicians and collaborators. Creativity, practicality, and the business of managing it all, after the jump.... 

Dan Whitehouse: old craft, new songs, growing audiences.

How a song develops, from raw demo to the finished article: hear both in this post. 

I first heard Dan Whitehouse when scheduling Rhubarb Radio’s output in 2011, in the dying days of its second incarnation. I used just local material, mixing the best of West Midlands music makers into one audio stream. 

It was great. I got to listen to lots of music in different combinations, which is always interesting. And I saw how unusual and new songs bedded in on air with consistent and repeated play, the way they are delivered on mainstream radio..

Dan’s songs worked brilliantly. The more they came round, the better they sounded. That may well be because of how he crafts his songs. They wear well; they stick in the memory. 

It seems to be working for him. On Sunday 29th September, Dan put together a particularly lavish hometown launch gig for his second album, Reaching For A State Of Mind. Unsurprisingly, the gig sold out.  

So where are we? A conversation with Jazz enablers and new generation players.

OK, go ahead - you define Jazz for me, because I don't know where to begin. 

Defined or not, it’s one of those areas marked by love for musicianship, experimentation, willfulness, and avoidance of genre definition. Fashionable? Hell, no, but that’s never a bad thing. And, from it, a steady flow of new genres seems to emerge – also never a bad thing.

It's not surprising that 50s Jazz was so tightly bound up with 50s existentialism: both are centred on the individual and the moment. And like too many other music areas, Jazz is a place where pigeonholing, snobbery and tribalism can seriously taint the music-making process.

And it seems to be heavily freighted with assumptions and contradictions. At one end of the spectrum, it's seen as safe, just arty and just nicely experimental enough for countless cosy festivals each year. It's also a cute label for record companies to bolt on to their offerings to give them more credibility.. At the other end, it's full of explosive, passionate and uncompromising music that simply isn't going to wait for you to catch up. 

The Wonder Stuff's Erica Nockalls: attitude with violins

A solo album at last, playing in three separate outfits, Nockalls talks rock violin at music school, session work, doing it right, persistence and perseverance...

Birmingham has a School of Music. I've had dealings with them down the years, from when the old BRMB ran classical shows - really, they did - and I presented. That was all some thirty years ago, when the place was resolutely classical. I always felt like a hooligan scruff around them, probably because I was a vulgar commercial radio person trespassing in the groves of academe. 

Things change. I don't know who leaves the Birmingham Conservatoire to build a classical career these days - and by the way, I'd love to know who does -  but I'm constantly delighted and impressed by the range of musicianship the place has spun out into the local scene. I love the folk stuff encouraged by Joe Broughton; a mighty eight Conservatoire graduates have graced the Destroyers. There are many others, of course; I haven't even touched on the jazz guys. A common factor is a sense of adventure, a willingness to up-end apple carts, and blazing musicianship. 

Erica Nockalls is part of this: a terrific fiddle player with a brand new solo album. She tells a story of musicianship, multiple bands, attitude and application. 

Mr Bailiff! Del Camino and 1EYE. 2 bands, one set of musos.

This post is about two bands with the same core personnel. They’re absolute killer musicians, by the way. On the one hand they operate as Del Camino, who bang out top notch Salsa; and on the other, they’re reggaemeisters 1EYE. And they’ve got an interesting take on where reggae is going. 

1EYE. Excellent moody attitude at the Custard Factory car park, guys

There are those who hold that Reggae is done and dusted. That it was all over and done with by the end of the 80s. But they’re quite wrong. Before we go any further, it’s worth pointing out that Reggae is now global. It's not just made in Jamaica. And Birmingham is, more than ever, a powerhouse for reggae, with a string of fine third and fourth generation bands flying the flag. 

For example, Xova, who are going from strength to strength. Or the fluid and infinite permutations of Robin Giorno’s Friendly Fire Band. Or brilliant ska groovers such as 360 and Tempting Rosie. And the fine work coming out of Elephant House. There are others too.

Now there’s a brand new video from 1EYE, after the jump, which is absolutely delicious… You owe it to yourself to watch.

The Folk Ensemble - a Birmingham talent factory.

 Scoot up a flight of stairs in one of central   Birmingham’s least appealing 70s concrete   piles, duck down a passageway, head   through reception, left, right, big space,   down more stairs, hang another left down a   long corridor with music on all sides, follow   the noise, follow the noise, follow the NOISE  as it grows, and… bang! 

 I’m in the New Lecture Hall, in the midst of an   unholy and magnificent racket. It’s absolutely   thrilling. 

There are, maybe, 45 young musicians in the room. It’s hot. In the middle, Joe Broughton of Urban Folk Quartet fame is exuberantly taking them through their paces. They rock. Hang on, there's three-quarters of UFQ in the room. And a big fat brass section, fiddles, woodwind, melodicas, cajon and percussion, proper electric bass. Way in the back, a tiny elegant harpist, dwarfed by her instrument, is dancing like a maniac while she plays. They’re all dancing, Joe included. You'll know exactly when you listen.

Damn. I wish my classes were as good as this. 

For this is a class. We’re in Birmingham Conservatoire, and I’m looking at the musical unit that has spun dozens of fantastic committed musicians out into the Birmingham music scene and beyond: Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble. Past members are now gracing The Old Dance School, the Destroyers, and TG Collective. Others closely associated include Simon Harris, Ruth Angell and Sid Peacock, and many more. Teaching staff such as Joe and Percy Pursglove are also heavily involved.

It’s rehearsal time. The Folk Ensemble were preparing for the Birmingham’s Olympic Torch shindig in Cannon Hill Park, which took place this weekend... although you won't find any sign of them - or, disgracefully, any other local performers, apart from Soweto Kinch and the CBSO, who were way down the bill - on the Birmingham 2012 page. A new number was commissioned for the event. As the choirs and other musical collaborators aren’t here today, I’m only getting a partial picture of how it will eventually sound. It’s still great. I’d hate to be the band that has to follow them on stage.

I didn’t expect to see UFQ members working with the Folk Ensemble. 

"Well, this is a different one-off show. We’ve just come off our annual spring tour, but as it’s the end of the academic year, some people have left. So Tom Chapman’s back to help – and yes, that was Paloma Trigas you saw playing there. Some people are raring to go; some are in it for the first time."

So the song for the Olympics…? 

"Birmingham City Council has commissioned it. There’s other choirs coming – who I haven’t met yet, so I don’t know how that’s going to go. I sent them the music!"

It’s a tight schedule. On Tuesday, Joe was due to meet with a group of djembe players, on Wednesday it was the turn of the choirs. This was to be followed by a dress rehearsal on Thursday, and a performance at the Adrian Boult Hall on Friday. As torch day neared, the whole troupe went out to play at several different venues across the weekend, to wrap up the year for the ensemble.

Is this going to be recorded when you do it live, after all the work you’ve put in? 

"I hope so… But I have no idea. They’ll have the facilities to do it, but that’s not my area." 

Well, one bit has been recorded, bootleg style, by me. It’s from the Ensemble’s own repertoire - and Joe has kindly allowed me to put it up in this post, as long as I make it crystal clear that this is a recording of a rehearsal. It’s not perfect, and the brass outweighs the strings. But it’s enough to give you a little taste. I think it’s a brilliant listen: it makes me want to shed forty-something years and pick up a sax or a clarinet all over again.

Fiddle Castro - CFE

A few posts back, I wrote about Mendi Singh, and his generous and deep involvement in all types of music making in the region.  I suggested, not for the first time, that there is a collaborative vibe to much of the region’s music which is enriching the city. This is driven by generosity of spirit, and a genuine musical curiosity on the part of dozens, hundreds maybe, of creative souls.

Joe’s work with the Folk Ensemble, over the past 14 years, is also key. If you wonder why there is so much adventurous jazz, folk and world music coming out of one of the UK’s most industrial cities, follow those musicians’ careers back. A staggering number of them came out of the Conservatoire.

I’ve said this before, too: this musicianship is a priceless cultural resource in our city. It’s never been better, richer, braver, more cross-cultural and more welcoming, in almost all genres. And it’s time we recognised it, at all levels, and gave it a more prominent place in the city’s creative landscape. 

We can design all the computer games we want, and that's fine, because it creates jobs and wealth...but unless they are works of towering creative genius as well as snappy pieces of tech, they won't enrich our cultural life. 

If we want to commemorate past glories, we can stick as many blue plaques up, and lay as many walk of fame stars down, as there is time and space… but all that celebrates yesterday. We also need to celebrate, right now, the vital groundwork going on, in the city and beyond.

I’d love to see the powers that be recognise this. It has been shown, time and time again, that where creativity flourishes and is cherished, jobs can follow. Check this link from the US. There's also, if you have the energy to plough through it,  a dry as dust report from 2011 from The Department of Culture. There's some local stuff too - I was going to post a link to an impressive local government study from earlier this year, 'Destination Birmingham', but it appears to have been expunged from all the websites I had hoped to find it on.  

Simply put: right now, powers that be, is the time to do something. The creative sector - according to ex-head of the Arts Council Christopher Frayling - accounts for between 8 to 9 percent of our national GDP... which, says Frayling, is a couple percentage points less that our vastly discredited financial sector. We take our creative sector for granted... and we let the financial sector walk all over our economy while trousering obscene amounts of our tax money. 

Central to our creative and media sectors, especially in the West Midlands, is the astonishing diversity and creativity of our musicians. Right now, there’s a new generation of great musicians building the region's creative and cultural reputation up all over again. And I’ve just seen some of the next batch. It's time to acknowledge this. 

Links:
Joe Broughton
Folk Ensemble