Bellow World

They’ve lost Benji. People are hanging on phones, looking anxiously at watches, running around bumping into each other, carrying equipment on to the Scala stage. “He’ll be here in a minute,” says Kate Longmate calmly, she of the bright red hair and the immaculate game plan of all matters Bellowhead. “He’s been held up in traffic but he’s close now, he’ll be here in a minute,” she assures the Bellowheadians as they frantically throw together a soundcheck, a major operation in itself.

Benji Kirkpatrick does indeed pull up a few minutes later causing havoc in the fearsome rush hour traffic that’s rapidly turning Kings Cross into a giant car park. The word instantly echoes through the complex innards of the Scala. “He’s here, Benji’s here!” and assorted Bellowheads come trundling from all corners of the place, leaping down stairs to come to the aid of the party. They tumble into the street, descend on Benji, hauling instruments and bags from the boot amid garbled explanations from Benji about his kid’s birthday party, the nightmare journey he’s had and where the hell is he going to leave the car where it won’t be carried off into the night either by traffic wardens or local lowlifes.

Crowds are already starting to queue round the block outside when a puffing Benji reappears to have his own soundcheck between brief spurts of banter and breathless greetings among his colleagues. “They’re queueing, I can’t believe they're queueing to get in,” says a disembodied band member from behind a pile of speakers. “This is folk music, this is London…”

Folk music, but not as we know it. Putting Bellowhead on stage – any stage – is a major logistical operation. There’s hundreds of them for one thing and they all live in different parts of the country and play a myriad of awkwardly shaped instruments. So even if you get them together on a stage at the same time, mixing all those conflicting instruments into anything other than a musical train crash is enough to send sound engineers to the funny farm. And if 10 musicians wielding all manner of brass, string and percussion instruments wasn’t challenge enough, the silly buggers have now gone and added an 11th. A piccolo player maybe? A bodhran? A melodica? No, course not, a bloody sousaphone player! How big’s a sousaphone? Titanic, that’s what.