Not a naked lady in sight #2

Sunday evening – Swarb’s Lazarus

This time I brought my bicycle!

Dave Swarbrick was introduced to a packed and wildly enthusiastic audience as ‘a living legend – with the emphasis on the living!’ This refers to the publication of his obituary a few years ago by a well-known broadsheet of a conservative leaning. Actually he was very ill, and has since had a lung transplant. Just getting up on stage was an effort, a painful sight compared to the energy he had when I saw him play, somewhere or other, something or other years ago.

But once he started playing that fiddle…



Yes, this is theoretically a technically hopeless photo, but it does capture the energy of the man. I would say he plays the fiddle like a god, but as it is the devil who is the one who plays the fiddle, that might be a better comparison!

Lots of proper photos at http://www.swarbslazarus.com/. Look at the biographies too to get an idea of the influence Swarb, Kevin Dempsey and Maartin Allcock have had on folk music.

It was like a greenhouse in the tent, and this might be why only two people got up and danced. Oddly they were people I felt I’d seen before at festivals: the girl in the middle of the audience flailing her arms out of rhythm who doesn’t stop when the band does, and the intense and staring man who dances slowly at the front in a kind of tai chi fashion.

The gig finished with a standing ovation, spot-on at 7.30pm ('so the neighbours don't complain' as Swarb said gruffly 'you know what I think about the neighbours!'). Then I cycled home, uneventfully, thinking nostalgically of past festivals. Anybody fancy going to Cropredy?