The Hack-Poets Guild – that’s Lisa Knapp, Nathaniel Mann and Marry Waterson – have been busy putting the broadside ballad in the spotlight. The last night of the group’s debut tour began with a video interview establishing the history of the printed ballad sheet, before the band took the stage to showcase the depth and breadth of the stories within – which they matched with an inventive musical approach.
Already covering a fearsome range of ‘conventional’ instruments, the trio – joined by cellist Barney Morse-Brown and percussionist Laurence Hunt – punctuated their set with some rather more unusual ones: none more symbolic than the actual printing press, clunked and clanked magnificently in the show’s opening number. Elsewhere we were treated to the soft flutters and coos of a remarkable pigeon-aping device, and the violent smashings of a hemp breaker. At one point the trio – possessors of wildly differing and delightfully complementary vocal styles – sang through a voice-altering phone app. History felt very much alive – and relevant.
The broadsides are invaluable windows into the past, rich unreliable histories at times poetic, harrowing, funny, morbid and celebratory. Among the many riches, I loved the Knapp-led Birds of Harmony and Daring Highwayman, while Waterson’s a capella version of Welcome Sailor was warm and romantic. The inclusion in the set (and on the group’s album, Blackletter Garland) of songs called Be Kind to Each Other and Meat for Worms reflected the Guild’s range.
The group were clearly passionate about their source material, giving the sense that they’d only scratched the surface of the broadsides made available to them by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The tour, like the show, has seemed to fly by and the group still feels new – let’s hope they’re soon again delving into the archives to bring us more.
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