Oysterband & June Tabor perform Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” live at the RNCM Manchester, as part of their “Long Long Goodbye” tour, in October 2024
Oysterband
Review: Oysterband / June Tabor, Bristol Beacon – ‘A hell of a goodbye”
It’s a magical last show from the band that are taking a long, long time to retire
By Gavin McNamara
After 45 years of touring, folk-rockers Oysterband have decided that the time is right to retire. They are, of course, taking a long, long time to say goodbye with a huge tour that spills well into 2025 – and they’re bringing along a special guest too.
The three albums that they have made with June Tabor are absolute cult classics, Tabor adding her depth, her gravitas, her subtleties to a band always best experienced live.
And so it is this evening, on a night of saying goodbye to Oysterband, June Tabor steals the show.
As soon as she steps, haltingly, on to the stage, Tabor is the focal point. On Mississippi Summer the harsh, dust choked fields are evoked with ease, Tabor exuding desperation and defiance as Ian Telfer’s fiddle flickers around her.
That fiddle seems to course through Tabor, sending jolts of energy into her frame: she grows as it plays, becoming an utterly commanding presence. It is, as she says, “one hell of a song”.
There are times when she spits out lyrics, unable to contain the fury that seethes within. On Bonny Bunch of Roses, taken from the classic album Ragged Kingdom, there’s disdain and an almost unspeakable power to her.
She may not move much but when you have a voice that can convey love and hate, joy and dismay in the way that she can, who cares? All the while Oysterband creates a huge storm around her, Sean Randle’s drums the prelude to a deluge.
It speaks volumes that, on their own farewell tour, there are moments when Oysterband leave Tabor on stage to sing solo. Les Baker’s Roseville Fair is entirely unaccompanied, darkly humorous and show-stopping, the story delivered with a wink and a sly grin. Hills of Shiloh, simply performed with Alan Prosser’s acoustic guitar, is heartbreaking, a remembrance of war soaked in emotion.
Perhaps, though, it is when everyone is on stage that the power of these seven brilliant musicians is felt most strongly. Susie Clelland sees the boys in the band massing around Tabor, their voices buoying her up along with some foot-tapping folk-rock.
Trad favourite, John Barleycorn, is muscular, driven by Telfer’s fluid fiddle. Sweet Sixteen is a capella, seven voices swelling, warming, enveloping. It is glorious.
There are contemporary(ish) cover versions too. All Tomorrow’s Parties sees fiddle and cello buzzing and thrumming around Tabor’s skeletal take on the Velvet’s classic. An encore of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit is suitably psychedelic, as forgotten words fall down a swirling rabbit-hole.
It’s Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart that is nothing short of remarkable though. In the hands of June Tabor and Oysterband’s singer, John Jones, it becomes the ultimate lovegonewrong song. It’s even more creepy, even darker, even more restrained than the original and all the better for it.
Tabor, occasionally, takes a break and when she does Oysterband are left to say goodbye in their own way. Where the World Divides, River Runs and Roll Away are wonderfully solid folk stompers, choral harmonies and a beautiful interplay between fiddle and cello effortlessly inspiring grins and handclaps.
Jones’ voice is strong, only wavering when, every now and again, the emotions of farewell get too much. For All That Way For This, the six range across the stage, shuffling drums and mandolin showing that Oysterband are capable of fun as well as heart-string tugging.
By the time Put Out the Lights rolls ‘round there are people in the packed Beacon with tears streaming down their faces. Not only will this be the last time we get to see Oysterband on a Bristol stage but, between Jones and Tabor, every emotion has been comprehensively wrung from every person in the place.
It was a hell of a way to say goodbye.
Source: Review: Oysterband / June Tabor, Bristol Beacon – ‘A hell of a goodbye”
A Gorgeous Re-Issue of June Tabor & Oysterband’s “Ragged Kingdom”
Commemorative vinyl version of doughty road warriors classic collaboration. June Tabor & Oysterband.
the ice queen and the Folk punks
Not really a review, more a pointer to something early for Christmas, even earlier for Samhain or even just for the hell of it. Not previously easily available on vinyl, give or take an extremely limited run by Stamford Audio in 2012, it has long been overdue this sort of prestige release. But, dial back, vinyl was still then on the way out, if not damn near extinct in 2011, when the original CD was released, with neither much demand and certainly little new capability to play in any other format.
An astonishing and surprising recording, it was built on the back of Freedom & Rain, the earlier and equally groundbreaking collaboration between the frosty Ice Queen of folk and the louche progenitors of a Celtic tinged folk-punk, if arriving long after hopes for any follow up had sunk.
a one off, good job, jolly well done…
Freedom & Rain, back in 1990, had been deemed a one-off, a (good) job (jolly) well done and that was that. But the magnetism and friendship endured, so much so that Tabor became quite the regular guest for subsequent tours. This was best demonstrated by the Big Session project, a tour and an album teaming the band with not only Tabor again, but a whole host of others from the then more conventional wing of the folk circuit. (Steve Knightley, Eliza Carthy, Jim Moray, should you be unfamiliar with the associated album, Big Session, Volume 1, released in 2004. It’s good, featuring also input from the warped Americana of Brett and Rennie Sparks, aka The Handsome Family.) Later tours with Tabor have continued, sporadically, with EPs of other joint material duly collected together for release.
timing…is everything…
The timing of this release is twofold. Firstly it is the 85th anniversary, no, not of the band, but of Topic Records, a still burning beacon of the folk tradition, in all it’s splendoured forms. It was they who picked up the gauntlet for the record, first time. Plus, as may not have escaped your notice, Oysterband are hanging up their Doc Martens, after four and a half decades on the road, often more literally than not. This has led to their ongoing Long Long Goodbye Tour.
The first leg was a farewell to the festivals, and we were at many of those this summer, as they gave thanks to the ones long supporting their presence, playing out to packed fields and marquees. Bromyard was particularly memorable. The second leg, starting soon, rekindles the Tabor relationship, before a final leg, stretching on into Europe and next year, for some final band only shows. They should be exciting and memorable, and ATB hope to be there.
what of ragged kingdom?
So, what of Ragged Kingdom? Like Freedom & Rain, it is a set more of covers than Jones/Prosser/Telfer originals, culled freely both from the tradition and from sources quite different. So, alongside such trad.arr. reliables as Bonny Bunch Of Roses and Son David, you get a Shel Silverstein song, a Dylan and Dan Penn’s exquisite Dark End Of The Street.
Not edgy enough? Well how about a Polly Harvey song, That Was My Veil, transformed into both a smoother and a more tribal process, by virtue of Tabor’s dreamy voice and the forthright drums of Dil Davies. And the jewel in the crown of the set, a gloriously chamber vision of Love Will Tear Us Apart. This was to be a second time the Oysters tackled the Joy Division/New Order songbook, the first being Love Vigilantes, on 1989’s Ride. Arguably the pivotal song on the album, it is possibly the best of the 150 plus other cover versions of this song available out there. Their performance, on Jools Holland’s Later, must remain a high water mark, even for that long running show.
chopper’s finale
At a pivotal stage for the band, it was Ray “Chopper” Cooper’s last album with them, his cello an increasingly integral focus, that saw Al Scott, hitherto “only” the band’s producer, drafted in on additional bass and mandolin for the recording, a position he now fully occupies. Otherwise it is the core of John Jones, Alan Prosser and Ian Telfer, always the heart of the band, with, then, as stated, Dil Davies on their somewhat revolving drum stool. Tabor sings as only she can, her frosty hauteur seeming to melt more than a little.
Of course, those, who have seen the Tabor fronted band previously, know just how much a false impression that perception is, revealing herself to be much feistier than expectation might offer. As to whether it is any better than the earlier Freedom & Rain, always a moot point amongst the fanbase; it is certainly different and is a more polished beast. The best answer is to have ’em both!
Source: June Tabor & Oysterband – Ragged Kingdom: Re-issue/Vinyl Release – At The Barrier
Ivor Cutler performs Richard Thompson’s “Wheely Down”
Ivor Cutler’s unique vocalizing makes this cut from The World Is a Wonderful Place, a real treasure.
This song originally appeared on Richard Thompson’s first solo record Henry the Human Fly.
Ian Kearey, founder member of the Oysterband, plays the harmonium and dulcimer.