“Who did we play this with?” asks John Kirkpatrick at the start of Seventeen Come Sunday. “Was it the Fairports? The Strawbs?” No. Every folk-rock anorak will know that the answer is Steeleye Span, and that both Kirkpatrick and Martin Carthy were members of the band in the late 1970s. Carthy is famous for memorable collaborations, either with his wife, Norma Waterson, his daughter Eliza or the great Dave Swarbrick, but Kirkpatrick has also played an important part in his history. They have worked together on projects including Brass Monkey, where they were joined by trumpet and saxophone, and now they’re on tour as a duo.
Their Cecil Sharp House show was a virtuoso affair in which the veteran guitar hero and squeezebox star took occasional solo spots but mostly played together with the ease of old friends. They opened with an instrumental, White Fryer’s Hornpipe, then moved on to bleak tales of treachery and downfall from the Brass Monkey repertoire. They performed The Flash Lad as a duet, before Carthy sang Limbo, the story of a London debtors’ prison, and Kirkpatrick showed his storytelling skills on Riding Down to Portsmouth, the story of a deceived sailor. Kirkpatrick switched between melodeon, accordion and concertina, while Carthy moved between mandolin and guitar, his sparse, rhythmic playing interspersed with the occasional solo, as on his fine treatment of Georgie.
The traditional songs were mixed with more recent instrumentals. There were two sturdy tunes written by Swarbrick, one named after Carthy and the second in memory of Sandy Denny’s husband, the musician Trevor Lucas, while Kirkpatrick’s Boudicca was a reminder that his squeezebox style could switch from jaunty accompaniment to atmospheric, brooding work for the theatre.
- At the Greystones, Sheffield, 19 February. Box office: 0114-266 5599. Then touring until 28 February.
