Bellow World

At one point they take a deep breath and play an almost surreal arrangement of that wonderful song of roguery, Flash Company, that’s so left field – dark modern jazz meets crazy rhythms meets Jon Boden – it’s likely to appal half the people reading this. It’s been sung by many illustrious people down the years, including Norma Waterson and June Tabor, but Boden was inspired by an incorrigible performance by the Gypsy singer Mary Ann Haynes on the EFDSS’s fine A Century Of Song collection and it sounds like a watershed. The moment the Boden & Spiers big band expired and Bellowhead took over.

“She sings it brilliantly,” Boden says of Mary Ann Haynes, “and I just felt that if you were going to give it a backing, this is the sort it should have. It’s the sort of song you feel you should put on dark glasses to listen to, it’s an extreme hangover song. I saw The Black Rider at the Barbican and that was phenomenal – I’ve always been a big Tom Waits fan – and that’s in there too. That sort of thing hasn’t really been tried before with this sort of music, and there may be a reason for that, but I like the way we do it. There’s a bit of grit to it… so yeah, I’m happy with the way we do that song and I’d happily defend it to any purist. How else would you do that song with instruments? Of course, there are other ways of doing it, but it’s a cheerful melody with a dark undercurrent and that’s what we’re trying to put across with it.”

Still, there are self-conscious giggles and dives for the beer when the topic of Flash Company is raised in the bar later with other members of the band. There had, apparently, been animated discussions about whether this ‘showcase’ was the appropriate place to introduce such a radical arrangement, half wondering if people would think they were being wacky for wacky’s sake and they’d clear the place in seconds and the purist folkies would curse them forever.

“Do you think we’ll be reviled?” asks trumpeter Andy Mellon. Very possibly, I say cheerily. I mean, you’ve got a rhythm that seems to have nothing to do with the song Jon is singing and then the brass comes in playing something different again. “Is that what it sounds like?” he replies, seemingly genuinely shocked. “That’s a bit harsh… ” Pete Flood, percussionist extraordinaire, refuses to buy into the wind-up: “Those of us from outside the folk tradition are keen not to do anything that would completely alienate ourselves. Maybe I haven’t immersed myself enough into it yet, but it’s struck me as an outsider coming into it, that there doesn’t seem too much backstabbing. It seems a friendly little scene, which is a real change from playing as a rock drummer in London for ages, where everyone is two-faced and careerist with lots of egos involved.” And he’s quick to point out the Tom Waits influence on Flash Company.