A lot of what is done in music and why music happens - is to do with Family. That could mean escaping the one you are landed with to create or discover a new one with your friends and associates or, even better, it can mean extending the one you are part of - making it bigger and stronger. Family, the Leicester band fronted by blues soul shouter Roger Chapman (right up there with such homebred white boy soul singing contemporaries as Van Morrison, Eric Burdon and Joe Cocker), were one of my favourites back in the mid 70s. I have been playing them a lot recently (though the compilation I have doesn’t include Weaver’s Answer something that needs rectifying). But Family’s masterful hit tune, My Friend The Sun, played loud on the internal ipod (the one in the DNA) when the sun split the skies over a Dartmoor Tor on July 8th – the morning after the 070707 party hosted by Geoff and Graham and Robin the night before. That sunrise, those moors, the mists crawling over them it, a vision of wonder highlighted what a special world there is out there in Devon heaven. And it put a cap on a really wonderful day and night of music . At a secret Devon location invited revellers were given a glimpse of the magic at the heart of the county. Geoff is my pal Lakeman, a squeeze box playing journalist who is father of Sam, Seth and Sean, father in law of Cara Dillon and pals with such astonishing local – and on the bill – talent as flatpicking guitar genius Chris Newman and his harp playing genius partner Maire Ni Chathasaigh (herself the spawn of a celebrated West Cork musical family) There were special guests – including a terrific end of the night, mayhem inducing, tribute band the Rolling Stoned (THE tribute band, with Mick , Brian and Keef but no Ronnie and, very cleverly, Ian Stewart on piano), Mark from The Levellers, the dangerously heady local brew Jail Ale, a ram and a pig roast (with Fish chips and ice cream for afters). What a party … and what music. Mister Newman clean blew my head off with his pace and mastery and performance. A real player’s player and the guitar just a year old from India, specially made for him. In the queue for the chip van Chris explained how , when it arrived, he let it sit, unplayed, for 6 months “the wood is still alive, growing.” Magic! And the harp always soars in expert hands like Maire’s and .Cara, as Geoff correctly pointed out, is an angelic voice wonder and then Geoff’s pal and party host Graham Lobb’s daughter turned in a fantastic vocal performance no one even seemed to know she was capable of. Legendary Britfolk guitarist Nic Jones, unable to play now but still a music fan who, not surprisingly, is moving to Geoff’s village, was truly smitten. And then Seth’s band, musically directed by Sean, better than ever. One of the greatest rhythm sections anywhere and a real link to a primal throbbing rock n rolling Buddy Holly Everly Bros source pool going on in the guitar exchanges. The new album – done and dusted already – will be HAWT! Early in the afternoon Geoff’s trio had played 20s and 30s jazz of the Cole Porter variety. The way Geoff regards the outfit as a bit of fun, kind of sinking into the shadows while his sons take the heat, is fair enough but the immensity of his musical soul came later, long after the revellers had gone and Sean and Seth had packed up to go to play a festival in Oxford. Geoff was in the round with a collection of session players, an impressive Sandeman hat on his head, the various autoharpists and Goddknowswhatists round about came to a lull and… with the beer and the cheer all a sloshing from side to side something was eased out of the box and from his mouth came this bellowing yawl coaxed forth on the wings of the squeeze box, a full ballad (was it Jim Jones, Botany Bay?the Jail Ale, I fear, had taken away certain journalistic principles) ensued. Tghere was hardly anyone there so how do you quantify compare or eulogise over a performance like that. It just was what it transcendentally was. The ever living past in the ever present now. I could see what Sean meant sometime ago when told me that for him and his brother the important thing was to stay as true to music and themselves and their spirit as their father had. In musical life the genetic circle remaining unbroken produces many powerful moments - Noel G singing for his mammy on Live Forever. Jimi Hendrix dancing mother, dead shortly after his birth, but from picture evidence alone the evident source of his cosmic fire. John Lennon’s ukelele playing mother, the loss of whom must have been assuaged by the discovery of Paul McCartney’s music mad dad (who had piped the radio right into his son’s bedroom) and so on and on. Family - there’s no getting away from it, its what music is all about whether it be the B Boys getting down with their posse or Roger Chapman’s dulcet tones declaring… “I know that you’re lonely come in from the cold….” And let’s just leave Marvin Gaye and his old man out of this, OK?
