Review: Road Not Taken, Downend Folk Club – ‘The band remind us how important a community is’

Bellowhead stalwart and Downend Folk Club friend, Paul Sartin, tragically died on Wednesday leaving a delightfully clever, oddly amusing, oboe shaped hole in the world. This is also the last (for the time being, they say) gig for headliners Road Not Taken.

Road Not Taken and the wonderful Bella Gaffney remind us how brilliant a sing-along feels, how important a community is, how healing a damn good song can be.

Bella Gaffney is a member of The Magpies, the Americana/Celtic-y/folkish three piece that played here not too long ago. Back then she supplied sunburnt vocals and sublime harmonies; today the stage is all hers. Stepping out on her own you can see the John Martyn and Richard Thompson influences just a little more clearly, especially in her guitar playing that’s full of tricks and cleverness.

Martyn’s Seven Black Roses starts proceedings and is sublime. A self-effacing dry Yorkshire wit hides a gorgeous, earthy voice but each passing song forces it to the surface. By the time she shreds a Zepplin-esque Hangman (also known as Gallows Pole) there’s no doubt that, with or without The Magpies, Gaffney is “alright”.

New single, Blood in the Earth, is a contemplative, sensitive, bluegrass-y meditation on climate change and Australian devastation. There’s that lovely voice, a social conscience and a great song.

If Downend Folk Club has a house band then Road Not Taken are probably it. They played their earliest gigs here, have launched albums here and Club founder, Ant Miles, plays guitar and sometimes sings with them too. They are welcomed as hometown heroes, playing to a home crowd.

Not that there is the slightest chance of them missing. This show is deep in extra time of their final tour and you can tell. Songs have been polished and honed, onstage banter is that of four friends that get on famously and everything is just right.

Hares on The Mountain, My Love is a Red, Red Rose and The Blacksmith are all cast iron folk favourites, played by hundreds of folk bands in hundreds of folk clubs. In the hands of Road Not Taken you remember why those songs are so loved.

Anita Dobson has a voice as pure and crystalline as blown Bristol Blue glass, it’s infused with melancholy and longing, a beautiful focal point around which the rest of the band easily swirl. Claire Hamlen gently agitates that swirl with her wonderfully understated fiddle playing, never taking centre stage but casting delicate garlands across the songs.

In Joe Hamlen and Ant Miles, the band have twin multi-instrumental mischief makers. Banjo, harmonium, guitars, bass and a piano are passed around with glee, adding colour and splashes of oddness; spooky drones, high hammerings and muted sighs.

It is when Miles takes his place at the church organ, literally pulling out all of the stops, and Hamlen unfurls a plaintive trumpet that you realise that Road Not Taken are way more than an ordinary folk club band.

Harry Belafonte’s Scarlet Ribbons becomes an enormous, pulsing, lush epic of a thing. They make a huge field of sound, both uplifting and unbearably sad.

Just like any band that finds a home in the folk world, Road Not Taken are absolute masters of tweaking the familiar. Plenty of trad-arr tunes are given their gentle, cob-webby dusting but it’s some of the contemporary songs that shine.

James Keelaghan’s Cold Missouri Waters is spine-tingling with its acapella outro, Suzanne Vega’s The Queen and The Soldier delightfully haunting and their own The White Gown is a modern folk song with traditional sensibilities.

If there was sadness in the air then both Bella Gaffney and Road Not Taken soften the edges and quietly remind us that things will always be OK. Those things lost will be remembered and gently celebrated.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read next:

• Venue of the Month: The Mothers’ Ruin
• The venue for folk, roots and acoustic music hidden in a suburb of Bristol
• Review: boci, The Jam Jar – ‘The ability to turn pain into art is a truly special skill’

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