Mike and Laura Plumbley take Martin and Barney the dog on a day trip to the Isle of Wight
Movers and Shakers
Small children encircle JC and Angelina Grimshaw. The tiniest of them all is sat on the floor knocking a pair of alphabet squares together in a wood block rhythm to the music. A young boy has strapped his plastic guitar on and is apeing JC's dancing fretwork. Father, John Rufus Grimshaw has arrived and is lapping up the middle set which features a tea chest bass and a guy on harmonica. It is all blinding stuff.
After one o'clock JC and Angelina had eased themselves into Sunday afternoon with some relaxed standards and originals. The Jimmy Rodgers tune fitted the laconic air perfectly. They went all over throughout the afternoon, country blues, jazz standards, juke joint stompers and all places in between. A veritable trawl through the history of American music, Mamie Smith, Jimmy Rodgers to Sweet Georgia Brown. Lots of Angelina's self penned stuff too, like Mountain Eagles.
A new one of JC's knocked me over. Middle set of the afternoon JC opens with a song that is an absolute diamond. There is a great chorus in it about living your life like the roll of a dice. Sounds like JC was trailing Kerouac and Cassidy's tailpipe.
Angelina returns and the duo announce their darkly classic masterpiece The Ballad of Rod Garfield. Rod Garfield is still down under playing Crocodile Dundee in Australia. "He's probably drunk" reckons JC. Like the song that preceded it this one also sends the shivers down the spine. Remember the first time I heard it in a bleary Irish pub in Basingstoke, blew me away. Still does. The rolling lope of it, JC and Angelina's twin vocal chorus casting a light as clear as a kerosene lamp in a Mississippi night. And that bloody great line 'It may sound country but it comes from blues'.
Then the Cavalry arrived. A young harmonica player then this guy on tea chest bass. Yep a real tea chest, broom handle and thick string and did it wallop.
The light out of the Ryde Castle window was starting to turn so with a singer filling in on the break we left to tour the Isle of Wight with Martin and Barney the dog. Took the coast road out to Seaview, around St. Helens, Bembridge, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor out to the Undercliffe and down the Military Road towards Compton as the light faded to black. We turned for Afton at Freshwater Bay to head back through Calbourne and Carisbrooke down into Newport. Martin was well impressed with the Isle of Wight on this his first real look around.
As Pete Turner reminds us in his introduction, Jerry Cahill's been amazing us since those days in the early 1970s when he'd come with his Spanish guitar to the Chequers Folk Club in Rookley to mesh Flamenco with Mississippi Delta blues.
Seems a few years ago now that I headed up on Ilkley Moor to locate Islander Jerry Cahill, guitarist extraordinaire. Now he's before a Medina Theatre audience and enthralling them like he did me that day. Engaging them in idle chat, actually terrified inside he'll tell me afterwards but enthralling his audience when he sits down to play.
It is as a diverse set of instrumentals as he played me on that cold Yorkshire afternoon in 1995. Scottish folk songs, one from Dollar Brand ('. . . calls himself Abdullah Ibrahim now,' informs Jerry) and the sonic stuff of Jerrys (Hour of the Pearl, Sunset over DBs, Transiberia), where he bounces the rhythms at the speakers and they throw them back. Folk, jazz, classical, forget the labels just get hung in it all. As this audience did. There were more people who wanted Jerry Cahill's Armchair Traveller CD than he had copies for.
It was testimony to how Jerry went down with the audience that two musicians playing with Vikki Clayton, Fred T. Baker and Chris Conway were up the back applauding at the end with the rest.
After the twenty minute bar break Vikki Clayton Band take the stage. Her music tonight has a jazzy, understated texture to it. Chris Conway plays keyboards or electric guitar which fitted the character of the music to a T and wisecracks with the audience. Fred 'T'. Baker plays bass in a league of his own. Melodic like Steve Swallow, bulbous like Phil Lesh.
Listening and watching Clive Bunker play drums is rather like watching a ballet dancer performing a work of art. There he sits with one of those Arabic round caps on his head cajoling soundscapes from his drumset. He left his sticks on the floor for one song and proceeded to do an opening roll with the back of his hands, then played the whole set like a bunch of congas. Deft, dancer like, just sheer artistry.
Vikki Clayton connected with the audience instantly with her warm rapport. She had an electric fan in front of her which blew her long blonde hair all over the place as she sang. There were obvious Sandy Denny influences in her voice but to label her as a Sandy Denny copyist would be a mistake. Her voice is less a tribute more a reflection of her style.My favourite songs were White Dress, a Swarbrick/Ralph McTell song in which she encouraged the audience to join in on. "I love it when the men sing: 'I'll wear a white dress and come dance with you tonight,' " she laughs. The other song was the closer Movers and Shakers which it surely did. The words of a poet had been put to song by Vikki Clayton and the band truly painted another masterpiece on it.
The encore was Who Knows Where The Time Goes which always goes down well on this diamond Wight island. Afterwards Fred T. Baker and Chris Conway came to the back of the auditorium to congratulate Jerry Cahill for his set. The musicians pack up in the now empty auditorium. Time now to thank them for their music and get another story for our Afton 1970 diary from Clive Bunker: 'We were waiting for our plane home, it comes in, swoops down across the airstrip, misses it, goes over a hedge and turns upside down in a field. We went back on the ferry after that.'
And so did we. Laura, Barney the dog, Martin and I got back into the car and made for the midnight Fishbourne ferry. Another fine day of music on this Island we hold dear.
Mike Plumbley