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.
________________________________________________________________________


Subscribe to the mailing list!


* required field

Email Address * 
First Name 
Last Name 

Email Format
html
text
mobile

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.

Urban Folk Quartet: what happens when a key member leaves? The classic problem.

How can Urban Folk Quartet handle Frank Moon's departure? Time for radical thinking.

       Joe, Paloma and Tom are staying....    Frank's going....    and Dan's coming  

Urban Folk Quartet are a cheerful bunch. They're fun to watch and very good at going about their business. In fact, they're a shining example of how to do things; other bands could learn from them. Musically, they deliver mainly storming high-octane instrumentals, with a bit of vocals and a lot of badinage, and bravura instrumental work from all four members. 

Up to now, this included fabulous oud and guitar playing from Frank Moon. But Frank's skills and career are taking him to all sorts of new places. So, regretfully, he is moving on, leaving UFQ with a huge hole to fill. The big question was: how do you replace someone like Frank Moon, who has been so integral to the band?  How do you transition?

Joe Broughton (fiddle, expansive personality) and Tom Chapman (cajon, percussion, clever stuff with triangles) spent time with me this month going though their options. 

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

March/April 2012 Airplay

Last Month saw a really pleasing burst of radio activity at national level for West Midlands acts. Time for a few facts and figures. 

Impressive music is emerging from the West Midlands. Some of it is starting to get equally impressive recognition at National radio. 

This is a big deal. Scoring airplay at Radio 2, the country's most listened-to station, even in off-peak shows, means more than scoring airplay on any other station in the country. It means that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people, will have heard your song, and that it will have been presented, sympathetically, to an unusually receptive audience. It's a great trick if you can pull it off, and it is definitely not easy - just ask anyone who's tried. 

Local acts are breaking out. When you gather it all together, it begins to look good: we're talking about millions of listens at national level. Of course, I have no way to ensure that this info is comprehensive; there's probably a lot more to celebrate.


Star performers in March:

The Musgraves: Last of Me single, with 6 plays in the past month at BBC Radio 2

Also shining brightly: 

Destroyers: Hole in the Universe single. Transition Records 
Mike Harding Show, BBC Radio 2, 28 March
It’s also worth noting that the Destroyers logged two sell-out shows last week to alarmingly enthusiastic crowds in Birmingham and London. And if you play the video, do note the comment, from Taysidethistles, up near the top.

Urban Folk Quartet: Jaleo Bus/Up In The Air. Taken from 'Off Beaten Tracks' CD 
Mike Harding Show, BBC Radio 2, 28 March

Dan Whitehouse: My Heart Doesn’t Age, It Just Gets Older single, Tiger Dan records.
Alex Lester, 21 March; Steve Lamacq, 3 March, BBC Radio 2; also playlisted at Q Radio (National Digital)   

  Sam Redmore: Is This Love Remix 
Craig Charles, BBC 6 Music, 17 March.

Thanks to the excellent Compare My Radio website, we also know that
Ruby Turner scored more play at BBC Radio 2 with Lord I Thank You - thank you for the update comment, PF - in March. 

Nightingales: Best of British Luck / The Burster, new CD tracks
Marc Riley, BBC 6 Music: 8th/13th/19th/22nd/28th March

Chris Tye and Wes Finch 
Honourable mentions in Guardian reader playlist, 21 March

So, so far, so good, but I've almost certainly missed some stuff out. Researching this in detail is time-consuming; getting play details out of all the key specialist shows isn't the easiest thing in the world. If you're not on the above list, and you’ve scored some national play, please drop me a note so that I can update the post. 


There are some interesting issues to consider: 

How did these guys score national airplay? 

In particular, what steps did each act take to bring their work to national exposure? 

There are a number of routes, but it’s heartening to note that national DJs are going out of their way to explore new music from the West Midlands. 


Now, this can’t be the whole picture, and it goes without saying that Kerrang, BBC Introducing at WM, CWR, Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire and Stoke are all playing their part, as are WCR-FM, Bridge FM, Scratch Radio and other community operations. And, as I have repeatedly suggested, judicious local plays for the right local artists can bring unique benefits to both station and artist.

Urban Folk Quartet; TG Collective. Two GREAT bands. Folk, Jazz, Latin, World. Your call.

New CDs launching this and next month. Shared musicians and connections. Academic rigour, passion and skill. 

New nujazzfolk albums abound in Birmingham this spring. They’re all different, but with common threads. The musicians all work with each other, for a start. Tracking who plays where is bewildering. It’s musical promiscuity of the highest order, and as always with promiscuous behaviour – let’s put this delicately - cross pollination will take place. I think I’ll stop exploring that analogy any further before I get into trouble. 

Both bands here are as much into Jazz as they are Folk. The key is experimentation, adventure, and a lot of fun on the side. The danger is that we take this brave and appealing work for granted. Please, don’t ever do that. Savour it; appreciate it, support it if you like; but don’t take it for granted.  


Urban Folk Quartet

UFQ: Broughton, Trigas, Moon and Chapman

Less than three years ago, UFQ – short for Urban Folk Quartet - didn’t officially exist. Three albums on, they’re one of the guvnor UK folk bands. They set a fearsome standard, effortlessly winning must-book status on folk and festival circuits across the UK and Europe. Teaching forms a large part of their background, the widest of wide musical experiences another, jaw-dropping technical skills a third, and genial enthusiasm and experimentation a fourth. 

I caught their first two gigs – opening for Jo Hamilton at the Glee Club in Birmingham City centre, and their official lunch at the Cross in Moseley. Both were lovely, musicianly, powerful, confident affairs. I loved them, but I wondered then how they would fare. I didn’t have to worry. For a brand new operation, they’ve done really rather well…

“We were quite careful about when we became a brand new operation”, explains UFQ cajonista Tom Chapman. “We probably did a little bit more prep and rehearsal before we started gigging. After our first Birmingham gigs, we headed out to Belgium, Spain and Italy. It’s always been part of the ethos of the band to try and get work abroad. With Joe and Paloma s' histories, having travelled widely and built up some ready made connections, that’s how that part of things came together”. 

It doesn’t hurt that they’re well connected. Joe Broughton teaches at Birmingham Conservatoire, of which more later, and he and Paloma Trigas teach at the Guildhall School in London. Tom also works with Joe for Music For Youth, and at the Barbican in London. So there is a certain academic cast to the band. Frank Moon, the fourth member of the band also teaches, has probably played in more bands in Birmingham than anyone else (of course, maybe you know better) .and is an examiner; and they all teach workshops too.

“Joe and I do a workshop called Folkworld in Devon, which is rather fun. Joe led a group at the Last Night of the School proms, with Music For Youth. They let me play cowbell…  The workshops are all about live music and getting kids going, getting them really excited about music. We don’t use any notated music at all. No music stands… everyone’s standing up ”

Tom’s background includes the excellent Old Dance School, who are also about to release a new CD, and session work with Katrina Gilmore and Jamie Roberts, TG Collective… and a lot of jazz. In fact, many of the nufolk musicians I’ve talked to recently are also seriously into jazz. So this is where I shot myself down in flames: 

Why do you think the Folk scene is so much healthier than the jazz scene?

"Oooh. That’s an interesting one. It depends on how you define ‘healthy’. The jazz scene in Birmingham is amazing; there are so many people playing. It’s harder to create a full-time career out of it." 

Who would you cite as doing really interesting jazz in Birmingham at the moment?

“Michael Fletcher is really good. He runs a night at the Spotted Dog in Digbeth, every Tuesday. The bands that he gets up, every week, are fantastic. He’s a really good example of a graduate musician (from Birmingham Conservatoire) who’s doing really well. And Soweto Kinch, obviously. He’s someone who has managed to have a bit more mainstream success.… “

UFQ’s Birmingham CD launch gig is right at the beginning of the March tour, March 3rd at The Yardbird. While you’re waiting, here’s something from 'Off Beaten Tracks' to whet your appetite.

Rosiña's Story by The Urban Folk Quartet

On Saturday 3rd March, UFQ played a scorching and very showy set at the Yardbird in Birmingham. The crowd? seething and seriously up for it. You don't get that too often with Folk music. Great skill and musicianship I expected, and got; what really knocked me out was the old-fashioned showbiz savvy they built into their show. Haven't seen that since Horslips, ages ago..

  
TG Collective

TG Collective: Barker, Pursglove, Fekete, Slater and Jones

About a month later, the first official CD outing from the TG collective arrives: It’s called ‘Release the Penguins’, and TGC have also kindly allowed me to include some material from it.

The kernel of TGC - Sam Slater and Jamie Fekete - were two thirds of Trio Gitano; when   Sophia Johnson, departed for Western Swing and Country with Toy Hearts, Slater and Fekete settled into a more flexible line-up as TG Collective. 

You’ve got a lot of different people working with you in the Collective. That implies flexibility.

“It’s fairly settled”, explained Sam Slater this week. “We are six musicians. Occasionally we’ll get special guests in, and have fixed deps when we need them.  Depending on our set and venue, we also sometimes perform with Ana Garcia, a great flamenco dancer.”

There’s a degree of musical promiscuity in Birmingham, where people fly from band to band, infecting each other with musical ideas…

“It’s true! There’s a lot of cross-breeding going on.”

And how is it that the Folk/NuFolk/Experimental sector, which you are seen to be part of, is so much more prominent  than Jazz? What’s your take?

“I suppose Folk has always been popular and perceived as more accessible for audiences, from the fifties folk revival onwards… And Jazz has (often unfairly) sometimes got ‘that’ image if people don't know much about it. If you sell yourself solely as a ‘jazz band’, it has to be different. It can’t be just another standard bebop tune if you're trying to do something new.  And you have to be an incredible instrumentalist.  In Birmingham it’s actually going rather well, with the Spotted Dog sessions, Cobweb Collective stuff, Harmonic Festival and Birmingham Jazz.  I don't think we're particularly 'folky', but folk (especially some festivals) now seems to encompass a lot of broader styles all with their own followings – you can include singer-songwriters, world music, and an awful lot more. Even the Destroyers can find a place there”

TG Collective - On The Run

After all this time, this is a first album for TGC. The album was recorded in a cottage in Shropshire, with two London-based engineers, Joe Peat and Alex Merola, both friends of the band, using portable kit.

“They took all the gear in; you could work to your own hours. If you wanted to do something at 2 in the morning, you could. It was a really nice vibe. Most of the material was put down there, with a couple of overdubs in London. It feels… right.  Alex is Uruguyan, so has a different perspective on things, and that added to the mix.  Him and Joe were just as important as musicians in the band, and now do our live sound as well.  Gypsy Jazz is one element, Flamencos’ a second, and Contemporary Classical another ”

And there I was thinking I was going to write up experimental Folk….

“Of course! But it’s quite hard to put your finger on it and say this is what we are”

It’s been a long time coming.

“Yes. We didn’t finish with Trio until 2006, and the Collective didn’t start until later that year. It’s been a while.  It took a year or two until we settled on a line-up that we were happy with. Logistically, recording was tricky. Various band members – there’s that promiscuity thing again - had other projects and family obligations.”

Percussion is a newer element. Players who are part of the collective include Tom Chapman (see above) from UFQ and Joelle Barker from ADO and half a dozen other outfits. Louis Robinson of the Destroyers takes a key role; Percy Pursglove - Jazz lecturer at Birmingham Conservatoire - is now a fixture on trumpet and double bass. 

Release the Penguins - TG Collective  

All this is making me think about the role of the Conservatoire in supplying players, teachers, mentors and musos who have chosen to live and work in town. And the next steps for TGC?

“After taking god knows how many years to produce this album, finances permitting, we’ve certainly got another couple we’d like to do pretty soon. We quite like the idea of having a couple of full band pieces, and then me and Jamie working up two-guitar pieces, but with different guest players on Kora, Sitar… a different recording direction”

Links:
Urban Folk Quartet site  
TG Collective site 

Fantastic: Jo Hamilton and Urban Folk Quartet debut

Only slightly put off by a snotty post in today's Guardian about the decline of blogs, I'm happily resuming blogging here after managing to revive/retrieve my logins so I can post again. Lovely (and free) though this service is, you wind up going round in circles when Google sends retrieval information to your gmail address... which shares the same login as your blogger page.
No matter - I'm happy to be behind the tech curve. This month, I caught the full debut gig of the jaw-droppingly skilled Urban Folk Quartet at the Crown in Moseley. They don't sing; they play, and how. Birmingham has a wealth of fantastic bands, and this is just the latest development in the folk/world/jazz field. These bands swap musicians with wanton promiscuity - I could have sworn I'd seen the cajón player before. Two fiddles, bursts of mandolin and breathtaking guitar work, percussion and rhythm, and a crowd that went berserk. Lovely. See them soon.
UFQ supported the fantastic Jo Hamilton at her album launch gig a few weeks back. I've seen her twice since then, and she has blown me away each time. Watch out for a video podcast, which I'll post details on soon. On it, I had the extraordinary good fortune to interview her as she sang live in the studio, with a small band. it was thrilling to see her perfom live at close quarters, and to be able to talk to her, immediately, off the back of the peformances. Jo is super-smart, witty and sensitive; she has terrific songs; for me, the interviewing of an artist doesn't get much better than this.