Later that evening Julie Felix would allude to the charm of the Nonesuch Folk Club. "I began in places like these," she thanked the tightly packed and very appreciative audience. The Nonesuch reminds me of my visit to the Hambledon Folk Club. Not only is it full of warm and generous people but it is also set in a real old pub. Not a brewery lick of paint anywhere. Host to the Nonesuch nearly every week of the year plus a Mummers play every Christmas.
Julie Felix's two sets were supported by an abundance of local musicians. I missed many of the second half peformances due to interviewing Julie Felix but if the first half talent was anything to go by they must have been equally fine. Pete and Dave were perfect openers, strong vocals plus solid guitar work. All Strung Up completed the first half floor spots plying Greensleeves with hammered dulcimer and something like looked like an autoharp played with a small bow. If a ghost of a medieval minstrel had floated out of the wall I wouldn't have blinked an eyelid.
It was, however, a young guitarist who drew my breath. I was not alone. His performance captured the room. Chris Whitfield performed three instrumentals, one American and two English folk songs. The first "Bob's Your Uncle" he embellished with knocks on the soundboard and a feel for the guitar which belied his years. The second tune, an English country dance was equally masterful. Organiser Terry Pearson echoed the feelings of the room when he asked him to play one more. Phew . . .
The Nonesuch had been packed since the evening began. Early attendance had been recommended as every ticket for tonight had been sold. Since eight o'clock musicians and non musicians had made their way up the back stairs of the pub. All were fitting themselves around the array of instruments that occupied any spare space that was left.
Terry Pearson came to the front of the audience reassuring everyone that "Julie Felix was indeed with us" and he asked for a round of applause for the singer as he looked across at a door to the side of the room. On cue the door opened and a smiling Julie Felix entered the room dressed in a bright loose smock.
The first set began with an unaccompanied Song of the Wandering Angus by William Butler Yeats which some of the audience joined in to sing. Then from the work of a late poet to one that is still alive. Julie Felix picked up her guitar to sing Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' sounding like a documentary of the last four decades.
Julie Felix continued by singing some songs which were steeped in her Mexican/American routes. One concerned the death of her father, another was the song sung with her sister Maria Elena at his graveside. The tone here was sombre, she sang in Spanish, the delicacy of her voice stilled the room. There was also another Mexican influenced song followed by a song of farewell. It all seemed to suggest a way the singer had coped with the loss of a parent.
The set ended with two very different songs. One seemed to be about the changes that came to the American West on which she sang "Now that the buffalo are gone". The final song concentrated on the issue of the Nuclear Arms Race. Julie Felix invited the audience to sing along with the chorus on Nuclear Free Zone. She spoke of the bravery of New Zealand in standing up to tremendous political pressure when they declared New Zealand "A Nuclear Free Zone".
Her introduction included a story about singing the song in a Northern folk club. "I noticed people getting awkward and not singing and some people getting up to go to the bar and then someone told me that Sellafield was just down the road and most of the people there tonight worked down there . . ."
Short of a nuclear reprocessing plant nearby, nobody squirmed in their seat tonight and the sang along on the chorus as they had done all evening.
Julie Felix opened her second set with a song she had a hit with in the 70s, El Condor Pasa followed by Leonard Cohen's Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye. Both songs having the folk club singing along in spirited fashion. The set switched from 'serious' songs to one called Hota Chocolata. The singer mentioned in her introduction a little known fact, as though she were on the Frost Report again, about a Swedish word from which the term "Well Oiled" derives. Fascinating. Then she turned the audience into a rhumba rhythm section on the choruses. It was infectious as Julie Felix took the club through their paces teaching them to whistle the opening line through their teeth. It went:
"Ha, Ha, Ha, Chit, Chit, Chit, Chocalata
pick it up and put it down."and it sounded a lot funkier than it is written.
Julie Felix then performed 'a positive relationship' song she'd written against the tide of sad love songs that everyone seems to write. She followed it with Paxton's Last Thing On My Mind which Julie Felix had recorded on her 1964 Decca album. The song always rises the passion in folk club audiences and tonight the Nonesuch sang on every verse and chorus. She followed it with Some Day Soon and a song which indicated the path spiritual path her life has taken since the sixties.
The song about the healing Goddess reminded me of D. H. Lawrence's Mornings In Mexico as it evoked the spirit of religions that are as old as the earth itself. A belief in the seasons, the ecology and well being of the mother earth as opposed to the let it rip ideology that has grabbed the 20th Century. As if to underline the song Julie Felix ended with a stark version of Bob Dylan's Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. Like putting a full stop to her point.
The Nonesuch Folk Club broke into applause and there was just time for one encore. She invited the audience to come to the Festival Hall for her appearance there on June 19th on the eve of her 60th birthday. She thanked everyone for giving the evening the feel of a folk club as they were when she had started in the sixties. Then Julie Felix sang a song unaccompanied. Wild Mountain Thyme. Perfect choice.
Mike Plumbley
Julie Felix homepage
Julie Felix interview at the Nonesuch Folk Club