Acoustic Festival Day 2, 16th Jan

Acoustic Festival - The Folk House - 16th Jan

As I entered the room on the second day of the Acoustic Festival, I had a feeling today would be bit different to yesterday, which would be hard to beat in anyone's book. The gentle strains of American Country Folk whining, although erring on the better quality side of Country, still made me wonder whether I should just go home and come back for the big acts. I steeled myself for the long haul, picked out a good seat and settled down to get lost in science fiction.

Kizzy Morrel runs a workshop called Studio 7 at the nightclub Lakota where she helps young people to improve their singing and get into recording and performing. This is all fantastic. It's great that she encourages people to do this, and even though she seems to have her favourites who are always out when they do gigs, it's still a very worthwhile project. There is one big problem with all of this though. It's RnB. Not 'proper' rhythm and blues either, but this mediocre tripe we get in the charts�. I won't say any more, except that even though I hated all the songs, these kids are prodigiously talented and one of the 14 yr-old singers had the woman next to me in tears before she got to the bridge (the bridge in the song, and I mean the singer, not the woman got to the bridge� Tsk some people, I don't know...).

The Pindrop Band sing Welsh Folk songs in a jazz style. With a harp. This made for a great blend of musical cultures that worked really well. A lovely singer, and a blessed relief after Kizzy's Kids. The harpist had been guesting with the first band of the day, and we were all going to become very familiar with him as the maverick musician who seemed to be in every band and play about a million instruments.

Steve Hogg has a Handsome Family obsession. Apart from this, he's witty and was joined by the maverick man, who we learned was called Martin (and probably still is), as well as the bass player from the first band who also played the biggest melodica I've ever seen - a two-octave beast. Sometimes ponderous, sometimes uplifting, Steve Hogg has a great voice but didn't really hold it together long enough for me.

Roger Tarry sings songs of beautiful heartbreaking melancholy. It sounds very like Nick Drake, which is probably why he's supporting Keith James on his 'songs of Nick drake' tour. His CD is one of my best purchases of the weekend. Here was someone who really captured the attention of everybody in the room, and woe betide anyone who stuck their head round the door while Roger was playing!

Lara England's accompanist had just got off the plane from hunting bears in Alaska or somewhere. He coped extremely well with her little-girl songs about life, love and relationships and then proceeded to play another set with his own band Minerva. If you like Travis, you'll love Minerva. I don't.

Sadly, that was all I had time for, because when the next band - an 8-something-piece kicked into a full on Country assault I had to leave. There really are some things I just can't stand! I was wracked with guilt at leaving without staying for Caroline Martin so I bought her CD I had a hundred more reasons to stay by the fire, which is fantastic. If you want to read about her, the Bristol Evening Post's reporter seems to have only turned up to see her so you can read his review here.

So how did I cope with having no company for two days? The nice thing about the Folk House is that because everyone sits around tables, there is always respectful silence and you can fully appreciate the music. Not only that, but if anyone comes in, there will always be a few people who turn around to glare at them crossly, thus making sure they won't dare to ruin anyone's experience by climbing through the audience. Saturday was brilliant and Sunday, well there were some good songs and it was worth it just to find out about Roger Tarry.