Chris Brain and Natalie Wildgoose
adjective
1. of or characteristic of the countryside or country life; rustic.
folk music (foʊk ˌmjuː.zɪk)
noun
1. traditional music from a particular country or region, or modern music and songs that are in a similar style.
I’ll commence with a brief primer as Chris may be new territory for many Stubsters - eschewing, as he does, the raucous electric guitar / bass / drums / synth format that we love and, typically, cover within these pages.
Tonight sees the Yorkshire folk troubadour kicking off his tour in support of album #4 – ‘Red Sun Rising’. A place he’s pitched up at via determined DIY graft: self-releasing all four albums on his own Big Sun label, consistent live performances, an impressively curated YouTube channel of him performing live with just an acoustic guitar in various scenic al fresco locations, picking up regular radio play on BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and landing his song ‘Golden Days’ on the soundtrack to Andrew Garfield & Florence Pugh’s romantic drama ‘We Live in Time.‘
The evening opens with a piano and vocal set from North Yorkshire “folk-eccentric” Natalie Wildgoose. A collection of beautifully eerie and timeless sounding songs, many of which were crafted and recorded in remote churches in the Yorkshire Dales. These are delivered in hushed tones, allowing the gentle fragility of the songs to permeate the main room of the Brudenell and captivate the audience within. A regular collaborator of Chris’ she nicely bookends the evening by joining him on stage to perform a duet of ‘Country Life’.
As mentioned, Chris’ stock in trade is acoustic folk but put aside any “hey nonny no” finger in the ear preconceptions; it’s delicately and intricately finger picked guitar, yes, but there’s hooks aplenty. These are tunes that you wake up humming; delightful melodies with a laid-back vibe and soothing vocals. There’s a recurrent theme of nature within the lyrics (hence the dictionary reference at the start) – ‘New Dying Day’, ‘All That Goes Around’ etc. but as Chris notes he’s started writing from a more personal perspective on the new material such as ‘Kinds Of Kindness’ & ‘Still Waiting’.
For the headline set Chris is joined by pedal-steel virtuoso Joe Harvey-White and violinist Owen Spafford (who both feature on the new record), adding depth, tone and texture to the songs which, unsurprisingly, lean heavily on the tracklisting from the new album. They also provide some variety to the set, an example being a cover of Bert Jansch’s ‘Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning’ “because it’s got a pedal steel on it.”
The audience are treated to a few of these laconic punctuations between songs:
Divulging the inspiration for the title track “I was watching Lord of the Rings and Legolas said ‘there’s a red sun rising’ and I thought I’m ‘aving that!”
On playing at the Royal Albert Hall, “I walked on stage, said ‘Ey Up’ and everyone started laughing”
At another point we end up in a GQT (for the R4 fans!) style question and answer session about Chris’ allotment in Meanwood, “What have you got in at the moment?” and details of the new shed coming that’s slightly over the size limits “So we’ll see what happens there”
And despite the merch’ table being heavily laden with CDs, vinyl and T shirts there’s an apology for the lack of handmade pottery “I brought some mugs I’d made to one of my early gigs in case anyone wanted to buy them, and now people sort of expect it at every gig. But I didn’t have any that were good enough”. I suspect the real reason was a lack of space!
This isn’t your average gig, and Chris isn’t your average musician – in any sense of the word. That alone should be enough to put him on your one to keep an eye out for list.
Words and pictures by Rusty Li
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