London collective Broadside Hacks have done sterling work in broadening the narratives surrounding traditional music, helping to transform ‘folk’ from something safe and secure, into something a little freer. It’s all done in faithful homage to some of the greats, however, and over the weekend Broadside Hacks presented a three-day celebration of seminal London folk club Les Cousins.
The timely weekend-long batch of folk festivities was broadly based around a corner of Central London steeped in Bohemia, with St Giles Church – who welcomed artists for two evenings of music – sitting mere yards away from The Lower Third, a building that once housed the legendary 12 Bar club, scene of a live album from legendary guitarist Bert Jansch.
Indeed, there was a touch of inter-generational support to the weekend as a whole. The magnetic Bridget St John of course played the original Les Cousins, while Rose Simpson from the Incredible String Band conjured visions of those epic all-nights at the hallowed 60s venue.
Over at the Flitcroft Street Gallery, a finely laid out exhibition profiled the history of the club itself, with portraits of some of the legends who passed through those doors. Some – like Paul Simon – went on to mega-fame, while others remained more niche, but no less crucial. The scope of the line-ups at Les Cousins – those in-the-know pronounced it as ‘Lez Cousins’ in an Anglophone style – remains imposing, and the exhibition managed to find room for membership cards (with its trademark wheel insignia) and original guitars from both John Martyn and Bert Jansch.
CLASH caught the music on a special Sunday service at the exhibition, and its laid-back feel perfectly reflected those hazy 60s days. Avice Caro captured something ephemeral in her performance with guitarist Alfie Johns, while Robin Adams ably reached back to the mythology of Les Cousins itself.
A solo set from Iona Zajac managed to blend filthy dreams about Billy Connolly with the kind of spectral acid folk Vashti Bunyan once called her own, while Dariush Kanani blended stunning technical skills on the guitar with wry, humorous observations about some of those 60s acoustic heroes.
It was left to Chris Brain to close the evening, but the sense of collaborative creativity made a lingering impression. With everything from broadsheet articles to box sets and a walk-on roll in a David Mitchell novel – Utopia Avenue, if you fancy picking it up – Les Cousins seems to be en vogue in a manner it hasn’t seen since the closing of the psychedelic folk era. The wheel, it seems, keeps on turning.
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