Eric Bogle/Southwell Folk Festival

At bloody last, the deep joy of having a half-decent musical event on my own muddy doorstep!. It’s five years since I re-located to the god-forsaken East Midlands and, in that time, I’ve struggled manfully to get a handle on anything vaguely interesting or musically inspirational happening in the region. But the Gate To Southwell Folk Festival, now in its third year, is beginning to make amends. Hardly a new concept – apparently there have been music-fuelled, beer-crazed, Morris-dancing, spiritual processions from Nottingham to Southwell since 1109 – but it’s now got the ambition and ambience of a miniature Glastonbury, offering a heady mix of well-established acts, decent ale and vibrant newcomers. Alongside the likes of Celtic “supergroup” Moonlighting (featuring members of Altan and the Julie Fowlis Band), Eliza Carthy, BBC Folk Awards reigning champs Lau and the impressive Worldy Seckou Keita Quintet, there’s plenty of fresh talent on offer. For example, the 18-year-old twin Carrivick Sisters from South Devon peformed with the style and harmonies of young McGarrigles, while Ewan McLennan’s passionate re-telling of ‘Joe Hill’ and other traditional and working class songs definitely marked him out as a protest singer with a future. Most important of all, in my humble opinion, was the appearance of Eric Bogle in the main marquee at 2pm on a thunderstruck Sunday afternoon. Bogle – in tandem with fellow beardy-baldy John Munro on mandolin, guitar and harmonies – is sadly on his final UK tour as a musician, before retiring back to his adopted Australia. Like many Bogle admirers, I first encountered his songwriting skills through classic poetic tracks such as ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ (about Gallipoli), through versions of his songs by The Pogues and Billy Bragg, and particularly via the Men They Couldn’t Hang’s cover of ‘Green Fields Of France’ (aka ‘No Man’s Land’). Here, on stage in Southwell, as the D-Day Commemorations took place across the channel in Normandy, Bogle’s clear emotional delivery of these anti-war anthems proved extremely moving and poignant.   Although he lightens his set with comedic moments such as ‘Endangered Species’ -charting the historical evolution of the white anglo saxon male from hunting the sabre-toothed tiger to pushing trolleys in Tesco’s – it’s Bogle’s more political material that still shines through; ‘A Reason For It All’, triggered by the news that a woman’s body lay undetected in a Sydney house for over a year, bitterly attacks the breakdown of urban social structures.  Perhaps the tell-tale indication of Bogle’s imminent retirement was the track ‘Tired’, which lyrically passed on the mantle of protest singer and anti-war campaigner to the next generation of firebrands.  Nevertheless, he’s touring throughout these islands until September, saving his last UK breath for an emotional Custer’s Last Stand-style return to his birthplace in Peebles in Scotland just prior to his 65th birthday.  As his appearance at the Southwell Folk Festival proved, it’s important to catch this fine songwriter and positive performer while you still can.