From its humble beginnings, Moseley Folk Festival is beginning to attract high profile artists. Jon Perks meets the organiser.
In its first four years, Moseley Folk Festival has welcomed the likes of Jethro Tull, The Bees, Jose Gonzalez, Fairport Convention, Saint Etienne, Beth Orton and Seth Lakeman to its intimate park surroundings.
Not bad for ‘a village fête’.
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Next month Moseley Folk continues in a similarly impressive vein with The Divine Comedy, Turin Brakes and Donovan just three of the artists set to play.
How an event that’s capped at 2,000 people per day and is still in its figurative short trousers manages to draw such artists even baffles organiser Carl Gervis.
A hobbyist promoter who used to organise the occasional dance event in the city, Gervis now oversees both Moseley Folk and its younger sibling, the Mostly Jazz Festival, which had its birth last month.
“If you’d told me in 2006 some of the bands we’ve had on since, I would have fainted,” says Carl. “It’s still a bit of a ‘scratch my head, what’s going on’ situation – it’s unbelievable we’ve got Donovan.
“We’ve slowly chipped away at him,” he laughs. “It’s a little bit about being stupid or naive and approaching these people; half of them have said ‘no, don’t be so silly, we’re not coming to play your village fête...’
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“We had that with Beth Orton [last year]; her agent kept saying ‘no, no, no’ and I didn’t take no for an answer – he said no four times.
“I found out Beth Orton’s brother’s number off a contact and phoned her brother up and said ‘I’m not taking no for answer, we love her’ and in the end she came and said ‘my agent told me this was a village fête and tried to stop me coming, and it’s one of the best things I’ve been to in my life.”
Plenty of others agree with Beth; the beautiful private park tucked away off the main road in Moseley will be once again packed with contented faces over the first weekend of September. And once again the line-up cleverly combines influential ‘old heads’ (Donovan, John Renbourn), modern day contemporary artists (Fyfe Dangerfield, The Low Anthem) and what Carl calls ‘future contemporary people’ (eg Johnny Flynn) – as well as a string of local up and coming bands such as Northfield’s Goodnight Lenin.
It’s not only the music that makes the folk festival, however:
“The venue was the key, the seed,” says Carl. “Dave Alexander did a festival there called L’Esprit Manouche and I also run a marquee company as my day job and he hired some marquees off me, so it was seeing what Dave did that was the real seed.
“When Dave couldn’t do it any more as it wasn’t financially viable, that was the inspiration; I just thought ‘what a sad thing for Moseley to have lost a great festival in that venue... what would be good in there?’
“I was listening to a lot of folk music at the time, but it wasn’t like I thought ‘oh this is a scene happening here’ – we booked the park and started putting together the bill and then we realised there was something with this music – it was a bit of a case of being of its time.”
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He adds: “I think at the same time I found myself sitting at the Custard Factory at half five in the morning thinking ‘I’m not getting any younger, I don’t listen to this bloody rubbish music – why am I still sitting here when I could be in my bed?’ and I was really disenchanted with the Birmingham dance scene and what I was doing. I thought ‘this is silly – I should promote music that I actually listen to rather than what’s trendy.’”
The first four years have thrown up plenty of memorable moments for Carl – Jose Gonzalez covering Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart during his headline slot two years ago just one of them.
“I’m probably getting a lot of magical moments from watching YouTube clips, cos you are running around and don’t always get chance to sit and relax; I’m looking forward to the High Llamas this year, it’s a bit of a selfish booking on my behalf – and of course seeing Donovan play.
“We could legally fit more people in the park, but we’re not about that,” says Carl.“We cap it off at 2,000 people a day and it gives people space to sit down, relax, have a bit of a picnic... it does get fullish, but we don’t want to squeeze any more in or it’ll end up like Reading.
“Sometimes you just need to lie on the grass...”