Battlefield Bluegrass Festival Archives

Hosmer Mountain Boys play Battlefield Bluegrass in England

Hosmer Mountain Boys at the 2024 Battlefield Bluegrass Festival – photo © Laura Nailor

New England’s Hosmer Mountain Boys had the chance this summer to perform in Old England, at the Battlefield Bluegrass Festival in Northampton, located in central England.

The four piece band, with guest Silas Powell on mandolin, consists of experienced grassers Cathy Day on fiddle and Tom Bowman on bass, along with fairly new professionals Keegan Day on guitar, and Simon Brogie on banjo. Powell, the only non-New Englander, is from West Virginia.

Though they are a new band, the Hosmer Mountain Boys focus on music from a different era, traditional bluegrass, which is part of what attracted them to festival organizers in Naseby. Festival manager Brian Dowdall and the British Bluegrass Music Association arranged their flights, and even found loaner instruments for the band to use so they wouldn’t need to arrange for transport of their own.

Battlefield ran from July 18-21, and the Americans arrived to play on the 19th, and were immediately impressed that the festival crew had placed a large American flag at their camp site, which made them feel warmly welcomed. Ten UK bands were on the bill, plus the Hosmer Mountain Boys, and a picking contest, workshops, and plenty of jamming. The only thing that set it apart from a typical US bluegrass festival was the smaller size, sold out at 200 attendees, and of course, the accents.

Cathy shared a few words about their trip, and how lovely everyone was.

“We arrived Friday July 18 at 8:00 a.m. in London, and a volunteer from the festival (Steve Wooldrige) drove us two hours north through the countryside to the Naseby Battlefield area where the festival was held. Needless to say, we were all excited to be driving on the windy roads on the left side of oncoming traffic. Brian Dowdall arrange for all loaner instruments for us to make our trip even easier! The instruments were all stellar. He had previously asked us specific details in what we would like and he found perfect matches!

We playedon Friday, closing out the night with an hour long set. We also closed out Saturday night and played a 30 minute gospel set on Sunday morning, then packed up and rode back to London. It was a three day whirlwind which was the perfect way to get our first experience overseas.

The people were just like home, welcoming, generous, and friendly. We picked both nights until 5:00 a.m. with the festival goers. I could go on and on about all the special and unique moments.”

The band also mentioned that just as they hit the stage on Friday night, the sound system crashed, so they had to play their set unamplified. Fortunately, everything was working again by the time music started on Saturday.

Congratulations to the Hosmer Mountain Boys on their first UK trip, and to Battlefield Bluegrass for a successful event.

More artists showcasing at the Battlefield Bluegrass Festival

In August we featured some of the bands that performed at the recent Battlefield Bluegrass Festival, Naseby, Northamptonshire.

This instalment presents five other British groups showcasing their talents during the weekend event in July.

Essex-born Dave Morris grew up in a family where music played a very significant part, and he sang in a choir while at school. During the early 1960s his two brothers, Glyn and Trevor, formed one of the first bluegrass bands in the country. They toured the UK regularly, played at the Folk Voice festivals at Cecil Sharp House and (in the guise of High Country) were the support band for the Kentucky Colonels UK tour. Also, they received good exposure on local and national radio including BBC’s Country Meets Folk and Country Style.

After a few breaks the Morris Boys re-emerged to play at the final Edale festival and its swansong in Nottingham.

The band members playing their version of Will There Be A Rainbow, recorded by The Kentucky Travelers in 1959, were Dave Morris (vocals and guitar); Richard Partridge, who has played with the New Essex Bluegrass Band and currently is a member of Monroe’s Revenge and The Lairds Barn Dance Band (vocals and fiddle); Hilary Gowen (banjo); Jack Baker, deputising for regular mandolin player Bob Hooper; and Gill Smith (bass).

The London-based traditional bluegrass band, The Vanguards, take their musical inspiration from the originators of bluegrass music. Instrumentally, they seek to create a sound which blends the mandolin style of Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley’s banjo sound, and the fiddle playing of Kenny Baker.

Jack Baker (lead vocals and mandolin), Chris Lord, from Croydon, (bass vocals and banjo) and Laura Nailor (tenor vocals and fiddle) met at jam sessions and have been playing together for about seven years. The band was formed a year later. They participated in the first Battlefield Bluegrass Festival and released an eponymous nine-track album in October 2016.

Baker, Lord, and Nailor are joined by other regular members Alex Clarke (baritone vocals and guitar), and Pete Thomas, who has been playing the bass since his early teens.

It is another band that uses just one mike.

Moon Turns To Blue, New Camptown Races, Neil Young’s Barstool Blues and Katy Daly.

The Grove Band’s name originates from The Grove Inn in Leeds, where the Leeds Bluegrass Club has been based for the last 33 years.

The band consists of bluegrass stalwart and long-time member of Generation Gap (formed in the late 1980s), and prior to that the Chevin Ramblers, Kevin Garratt (vocals, guitar and reso-guitar),; Kevin’s son Neil Garratt (vocals and guitar), whose early bluegrass experience came in the mid-1990s with his father in Second Generation; former student of Percussion Performance at the Leeds College of Music, Peter Earle (bass), who became interested in bluegrass music in 2005 and dabbled with the banjo before switching to bass; Alistair McIlroy (vocals, banjo and guitar); and Matt Nelson (mandolin). All of these last three were regular attendees at the Leeds Bluegrass Club and having jammed together, became the de facto house band with the Garratts.

Their set included Eric Andersen’s Close The Door Lightly and the beautiful love song Magnolia Wind that Guy Clark wrote – with Shawn Camp – for his wife Susanna.

The Leen Valley Band is so called after an area to the north-west of the city of Nottingham through which a tributary of the River Trent flows.

Originally called The Leen Valley Boys, they started off based in Nottingham about 2001. The name was changed when Angie (Kryzanowska), widow of the celebrated Thaddeus Kaye, joined them on bass in mid-2004, in a period during which there were several band changes.

Mike Wareham (vocals, guitar and harmonica) and Adam Newman-Taylor (vocals, banjo, reso-guitar, and guitar) had been playing together since the early 1970s in a band called the Dunes Boys. The duo often used to jam with the Kayes.

As a trio with Wareham, Angie Kaye and Newman-Taylor, the band recorded an album, Leen Valley Junction, about 2006/2007.

Guy Rogers joined the band playing mandolin, banjo, guitar and vocals in early 2019, which is when the band in its current format first played at the Battlefield Bluegrass Festival.

The Leen Valley Band plays a mixture of bluegrass, old time, Gospel and honky-tonk music with some self-penned material provided by Guy Rogers. Influences range from the Stanley Brothers to the Carter Family to Hank Williams.

Here is an example; their interpretation of Honky Tonk Blues from the last named ….

Offering something different were the One Tree Hillbillies, a popular five-piece bluegrass band from Essex, with a varied repertoire of bluegrass music, Gospel and rockabilly. Taking their name from the infamous/supposedly haunted One Tree Hill in Basildon, the band was formed in the early 2000s following one of the regular Monday night sessions in nearby Ingatestone.

Apart from regular performances at many of the UK’s bluegrass festivals, the band plays most Monday evenings in pubs in the Brentwood and Ingatestone area.

Hippy Joe Hymas (mandolin), who has recorded with English banjo ace Leon Hunt, as well as with Hayseed Dixie, the self-dubbed ‘rockgrass’ group of which he has been a member since January 2014; superb fiddler Alex Mihailovic whose influences include the New Lost City Ramblers; Dave Wilcox (banjo), who has his roots in folk music, notably Pete Seeger; Gill Smith, who was drafted in to play bass about 15 years ago and is drawn to songs in minor keys by the likes of Hazel Dickens and Kate Wolf; and Keith Smith (guitar), a follower of the flat-picking style of Doc Watson.

Here are two samples from the band; some rockabilly from the Saturday Night Concert …

and Texas Eagle

The 2022 Battlefield Bluegrass Festival is scheduled to take place at the Naseby Village Hall, Newlands, Naseby, Northamptonshire, from Thursday, July 21st through to Sunday, July 25^th.

The Battlefield Bluegrass Festival is back

The pandemic has had and is still having a considerable effect on people’s lives and lifestyle with many performance arts, including bluegrass music, severely restricted with no audiences for well over a year.

As the impact of COVID-19 appears to be under greater control (at least in some places), ‘live’ performance with people allowed to attend festivals and concerts are becoming more commonplace. That is the case in the UK just as much as it has been in the US and other countries where bluegrass music is popular.

One such event was the Battlefield Bluegrass Festival, Naseby, Northamptonshire, originally scheduled for May, that took place from July 22 to 26, 2021.

The concerts featured a variety of bands, among these were …

The Fountaineers, a quartet from Glasgow, that plays a mix of bluegrass and roots music. They formed through a shared love of bluegrass music in the summer of 2020, as a result of socially distanced interactions during lockdown. Their shared musical heroes include Flatt & Scruggs, Alison Krauss & Union Station, and Tony Rice.

The band released their debut single – the Mandolin Orange song Old Ties and Companions – in September 2020, are working on an EP, to be available soon, and will showcase virtually as part of the international offering at the 2021 IBMA Bluegrass Ramble.

For their appearance at Naseby only three of the group – Michael Wright (vocals and guitar); the classically trained Jeri Foreman, from Australia, (vocals and fiddle); and Callum Morton-Teng (mandolin), a graduate of the prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he spent some time in America during an exchange program studying under the mandolin legend Adam Steffey at ETSU – participated, offering their version of Ridge Road Gravel (Norman Blake and Tony Rice) and Done Gone.

The Bow-Legged Skeeter has been a five-piece band since 2010, with some personnel changes along the way. The band name comes phrase from an old-time fiddle tutor, heard at a Sore Fingers music camp.

The band members – Richard Filleul (vocals and guitar); Pete Minkey (vocals and mandolin); Lindsey Cole, who has been singing for eight years, (vocals and bass), Tim Hextall (fiddle) and, guesting on banjo, Richard Holland (due to Mick Franks being unavailable) – are based across adjoining counties Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire, in southern England.

Their set included When You Go Out Walking (Lonesome River Band) and the classic Carolina Mountain Home.

Brian Dowdall, The Rocky Road Pilgrims’ guitarist, founded the Battlefield Bluegrass Festival after driving through Naseby, a few miles south of where he lives, and noticed the village hall and wide expanse of grassland alongside; somewhere ideal for such an event.

His bluegrass odyssey includes playing in The Double Eagle Band (with Tom Wolf) in the early 1980s, performing at the Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival, recording with Foxchase Bluegrass Band before forming his current band.

Other members are Richard Loeber (tenor vocals and bass); Peter Viner (banjo); Richard Partridge (fiddle), who, like Embery, was a part of what is considered to have been the strongest line-up of Monroe’s Revenge, and more recently the bass player for the New Essex Bluegrass Band; and Phillip Lewis (mandolin).

While initially established as a bluegrass Gospel group, the host band’s set included another classic Lester Flatt/Earl Scruggs’ song On my Mind….

The Welshpool, mid-Wales-based close-harmony duo, Willow Station – Luke Day and Jordan Lea – was formed around January 2021, about 15 years after they first met. They never actually sang together until they did so spontaneously in local bars from around eight years ago. Having found shared musical interests with Day, a big Johnny Cash fan before gravitating to bluegrass music, and Lea, a life-long Patsy Cline fan. She’s a Grade 8 singer and has many years of experience singing in a variety of genres, including Motown, northern soul, and, most notably, country music, although no stranger to bluegrass music.

Already a proficient picker of Irish traditional tunes, Day first heard Tony Rice around the age of 18 and has since devoted 10 years to learning his style and the wider bluegrass vocabulary.

The band name is a combination of the word “willow” from the Patsy Cline song, Walking After Midnight, and “station,” which is where they first met. It acknowledges the Skaggs and Rice recording of the Carter Family song Bury Me Beneath The Weeping Willow also.

In this video the duo showcases its harmonic skills with their version of Jimmy Martin’s Hold Watcha Got.

Banjo Bounce, based around Winchester, Hampshire, consists of Richard Holland (banjo), and singer-songwriter Rick Tarrant (guitar) who, over 25 years ago, both played in the band Contraband. They are fellow veteran s of North Drive. Holland,s influences include Earl Scruggs, Ron Block, and a local picker, Richard Collins, while Tarrant’s principal influences are Doc Watson and Tony Rice.

This clip shows the duo performing their version of Johnny Bond’s I Wonder Where You Are Tonight.

Opening the evening concert were the winners of the single mike competition, The Boatswain Brothers (The Boatswain Brothers and the Pitch Hill Boys) and friends – 16-year-old Oscar (banjo) and Harley Boatswain (the 14-year- old guitarist). Together they play a variety of instruments – banjo, guitar, mandolin, bass, violin, and piano. Influenced by the Scotch-Irish and American folk tunes that their grandfather would play on the piano with his country dance band, the brothers have played music together from a vey early age.

They attended the Naseby Festival for fun and when they realised there was a competition, they put together a scratch band by touring the tents recruiting willing individuals, who assisted during their stage performance also. The impromptu band featured veteran Dick Embery, substituting for the brothers’ regular bass player Alfie Clarke, Pez Rylance (mandolin), and the outstanding Jimmy Van Lin ‘The Funky Fiddler,’ currently with The Biggin Hillbillies and Captain Swing.

Their 25-minute set included their versions of Della Mae, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Rock Salt and Nails, Cripple Creek, Dear Old Dixie and for the rousing encore, Rollin’ In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.

Molly and the Blackbriar Band started in the Wallington (south London) area about seven years ago.

Molly Lucey – a powerful singer from County Cork in Ireland – is a great fan of country music, Texas swing, as well as bluegrass music. Accompanying her are Mike Artes (vocals and guitar) a long-standing member of the UK bluegrass music family, having played bass with Orange Blossom Sound, who in the 1960s and 1970s were very successful with appearances on radio, TV, and at many of the top venues of the day, and two LPs; Dick Embery (bass), another well-established musician on the UK bluegrass scene, having played in bands with most of the current top performers, including a stint with Monroe’s Revenge; Jimmy Van Lin (vocals and fiddle); and Hilary Gowen (banjo), an enthusiastic newcomer to the bluegrass world.

Shame on You is a Western Swing song written by Spade Cooley and became his signature song ….

The New Essex Bluegrass Band was formed in 1994 as a quartet, and added a fiddle player in 2005. From the outset they adopted the single microphone for their stage sound. They appeared throughout Britain as well as a few countries in Europe. The band played together for the last time at The Orwell Bluegrass Festival in May 2019.

However, co-founders Paul Brewer (guitar) and Terry Hymers (mandolin) have continued to perform together, keeping the name current by dubbing themselves the New Essex Bluegrass Brothers.

Their set featured James B. Coats’ The Sweetest Gift and Steve Earle’s I Am Just A Pilgrim.

Sence Valley, from Leicestershire, is another lockdown band formed by good friends and two near neighbors whom Guy Rogers, guitarist in the band, has known through teaching for 15 years; songwriter Darren Jones (bass); and Ben Storer (reso-guitar).

Multi-instrumentalist Rogers has been performing acoustic music for over 40 years, with 15 years’ experience singing lead and harmony vocals and playing mandolin and guitar in the award-winning Down County Boys. He has taught both banjo and guitar at Sore Fingers Summer School and has for many years served as a BBMA representative.

Sing Me A Love Song was penned by Rogers.

Other bands that performed during the concerts included the Morris Boys, The Dog House Ramblers, The Vanguards, The Grove Band, Leen Valley, and One Tree Hillbillies.

Video credits: Geoff Clements (backporchpicker).

The performances of so many talented young pickers and singers bodes well for the future of bluegrass music in the UK.

The first Battlefield Bluegrass Festival took place in May 2016 and, as well as UK acts, it included the Schutt Family Band from France and the Stroatklinkers from The Netherlands. In subsequent years, as sponsorship was available, the international representation included the fabulous Purple Hulls, from Texas; G’Runs & Roses, and Ralph Schut and Radek Vancat from the Czech Republic; Matt and Ruben and the Truffle Valley Boys from Italy.

Listed in the Doomsday Book, Naseby is famous as being close to the site of an English Civil War battle. The Battle of Naseby took place on 14 June, 1645, during the English Civil War. In the area called Broad Moor, a short distance north of the village, the Royalist forces, commanded by King Charles I, battled the Roundhead army commanded by Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron. The battle resulted in a decisive Royalist defeat.