Calico Jack's is a small jewel in the festival calendar, held somewhere in the rural nether lands of Northwich in Cheshire, it's a nice mix of bluegrass and country music, there's no stalls, one chippie van, real flushing toilets and it's all for charity.
This year the British Heart Foundation will benefit from the takings and the various raffles and auctions that went on during the weekend, which kicked off on Friday night with a line dancing extragavaganza. We didn't arrive until the Saturday afternoon, but thank goodness we did, because we were just in time to catch duo Breeze and Wilson who played a great acoustic set of country and blues, finishing with "our most cheerful song" which was "Papa loves Mama" - in which betrayed trucker husband murders wife and lover by driving his rig into the motel..... A nice touch was the introduction of Toby Wilson's young son for one number, following a Wilson family tradition - long may they run!
Gary and Vera Aspey followed - a husband and wife duo who have been part of the Calico Jack family for years. The act was largely singalongs and lavatorial humour, and featured one particularly fine song "Fat Slag Alice" - a real treat of a take on mining songs.
Scott D Thompson played a nervous solo set that got better as he went along - nervous because he was recording the set to use on a live CD, but he has a powerful voice and made a good fist of the U2 hit "With or without you" amongst his own stuff, which was good enough, but perhaps not my taste. The standard "Summertime" was a highlight, as was his encore Pink Floyd's "Comortably Numb".
Then we got to the "main event" of the evening - Baker's Fabulous Boys in top form - lots of dancing, great music - Russ Williams on vocals on Mandolin - in open neck shirt and taupe suit destroyed his voice while brother Stewart kept things sane on guitar, Lorraine danced about playing her bass and singing, and new recruit (not sure whether this is a permanent arrangement or not) John Dowling joined in with the banjo. The band seem to love playing, they are always full on and tonight was no exception. John Dowling's presence gave them a new dimension and this revealed itself in a fun version of the evergreen (that's code for rapidly becoming the banjo equivalent of "Smoke on the Water", shortly to be banned in all music shops...) "Duelin' Banjos" - fun because the audience became the second banjo, singing in response to John's part (air-banjo's much in evidence) - it went down rather well, as did the rest of the set which included "Caroline" (yes the Quo one), "Ace of Spades" and the grand finale - which may or may not be "Good Morning Captain" - I'm not sure because Russ doesn't so much sing it as try to extract his voice box using sound - I'll try and find out anyway - if you've seen them, you'll know - maybe you can tell me? (Now think it may be Bowie's "Good Morning Girl") - If you havn't seen them - try and find them, it's well worth it.
John Dowling also managed to squeeze in a couple of notes of "Duelin' Banjos) into one of the other tunes which a few us managed to respond to - another tradition starting?
After that we sat down again and festival organiser Ken's band Calico Jack saw the night out with their own mix of country and blue grass, the chill out session!
Sunday was even more laid back as folk drifted home - the weather got damper, the music carried on - it's a lovely little festival and a lot of money was raised - and as the old saying goes "A good time was had by all"
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