Tom Napper & Tom Bliss @ Cock & Bottle (Bradford)
By John Hepworth
With this year's move to a new home, the world's oldest folk club is suddenly closer to Leeds than ever before, just when folk music is elbowing its way back into the general consciousness. At Bradford's Cock and Bottle on Barkerend Road, the Topic looks in good fettle for its 50th year, and on Thursday a crowded room was eager for the dual-purpose concert by Leeds duo Tom Napper & Tom Bliss. They weren't only here to remind us what a relaxed and brilliant live act they are, but to launch Bliss' solo album Mixed Moss. Thoughts that this might be achieved by one Tom swinging a bottle of something at the smoothly curving side of the other proved to be empty speculation, but the evening had plenty of other sea-going connections in deftly performed tunes with guitar, banjo and mandolin plus compellingly sung marine story songs among other items from the established Bliss and Napper repertoire.
Formal unveiling of the new CD was held back until after the break, with the audience still mellow from a sparkling first set, then in a state of anticipation made all the stronger by MC Gerry Cooper's recollection of strange goings-on in Cullercoats some decades ago, when Scottish guitar virtuoso Bert Jansch had gone out for chips mid-gig, never to return. Would a suddenly sidelined Napper do likewise? An imaginative observer might have sensed the lyric pen of Tom Bliss twitching like a diviner's rod even as the tale was being told.
Amidst the decorated glass of a classic Victorian pub, listeners enjoyed a floor spot from the club's organiser, much-travelled singer in various tongues John Waller; they paid close attention to high class vocal harmony from Useless Annie (what totally justified self-confidence there is behind that playfully ironic anagram of Elaine and Sue's names); and a very warm reception went to two good bouts of featured support from Ian Hill, who neither limited himself to one instrument, nor to one language, nor even, when singing in English to one regional flavour. Ian's CD was on sale and comes with the production skills of Alistair Russell, the man who co-produced Tom Bliss's Mixed Moss. Tom told us that about four-fifths of his album is solo in the strict sense, elsewhere showing the welcome presence of notable local guests including Maggie Boyle, Patsy Matheson and Bryony Griffith.
One of the more recent indicators that folk is no longer something to be shy about came from Billy Bragg this week, when he told a Radio 4 interviewer that the Arctic Monkeys are really a type of folk act. However it may be, will they ever answer our yearnings for a vigorous but lilting socio-architectural ballad? And if they did, it could hardly match 'Silken Leather' - a mill-owning story of lost inheritance by way of flamboyant philanthropy - which went straight to the hearts of many a Bradfordian at the Topic tonight.
