Review: Bert Jansch, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 5th September 2006
I spent large self-indulgent chunks of my teenage years with my nose firmly raised to the sounds screeching across my peers’ airwaves – Nirvana, The Pixies, The Stone Roses, et al – for in those times I was a Folkie. I owned rock records. My heart has always been loud, torn, frayed, growling, just a tad sweaty and rather unshaven. It was my head that saved up for two months to buy an Anne Briggs compilation. At fifteen I was the only kid I knew to have an a cappella record (accept for that ginger kid that was in to the Flying Pickets), I was the only kid to have an Incredible String Band album (much to the general relief of my mates), and I was the only kid to have Bert Jansch records. Jansch is one of those musicians that effortlessly crosses the constantly blurring borders of music, but he does it without moving an inch from his roots – he makes modernism come to him. As cutting edge music gradually becomes a genre of its own that incorporates all technical characteristics of the genres it is leaving behind, he continues to wander around the country with his guitar, a stool, and his raw, ageless talent. He is one of the finest guitarists you are ever likely to see, stretching the instrument to its limits, showing how fresh and interesting it can sound in this dour age of self-satisfied nostalgic post-punk post-brit pop pounding hangover drawl. His voice has that classic untrained folk lilt to it, encased in emotion, sometimes breaking, always swimming within the verse, carried by the lapping waves of ballads, the heavy tides of the blues. He is so unassuming on stage, hushed between songs, as if you are visiting him in his home at Christmas and he humbly decides to play a few tunes in front of an open fire after the cold meat and pickles.
To describe seeing Jansch perform would be impossible in one word, but as close as I can get is "privilege". It is a feeling that has been echoed by such great artists as Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Beth Orton and many others who have all appeared on record with their hero as well as on live occasions. His influence on these artists, who in turn have been incredibly influential themselves, is only now, in the last decade or so, getting the column inches it deserves in the mainstream musical press. And if it encourages people to go and see him, it can only be a good thing, as you will be seeing something beyond a regular musical experience. When you see Jansch perform a traditional song in such an intimate atmosphere as this, say "Blackwater Side", you are seeing what simply has to be the finest rendition of a mesmerising ballad that is over two hundred years old. You cannot call this a cover version. It is something far more profound. Rather, it is to bare witness to the emotions of the ballad writer as he sat upon the heath with his broken heart, and it is being presented to you with such sincerity that those centuries vanish. Only humanity remains. That is the power of music when in the hands of genius.