THIS weekend I am in the Midlands at the absolutely bostin Black Country Folk Festival at Himley Hall, near the equally bostin Enville Brewery which makes my favourite ever beer, Enville Ginger. (“Bostin” is the local equivalent to the southern epithet “the dog’s bollocks,” by the way. Translation: brilliant and then some.)

I love language, accents and dialects and the fact that, despite the homogenising effect of modern mainstream media, these can still change so much in a relatively short distance.

It’s 50 miles from the striking vocal inflections of new Black Country ambassador, Kingswinford’s superb singer/songwriter Jess Silk, to the impenetrable Gloucestershire twang of my late uncle Maurice from Chalford Hill near Stroud, who died last Tuesday aged 89. (Rest in peace, Mar.)  But accent-wise, it’s a different world, and long may it remain so.

It is my first folk festival for years and I am very pleased to be invited: my vast quantities of gigs every year feature very few in the “folk” genre.

Everything about a substantial part of what I do (my songs about radical history, my fiddle, crumhorns, cornamuse, recorders, mandola) screams “folk music” — but because I began with the label “punk poet” and only put my finger in my ear to get the wax out, the traditional folk scene appears scared of me.

It’s very silly, but there you go. I’m “genre fluid” these days and that’s that. 

It is the untraditional, innovative end of “folk music” which I love the most, and the rest of today’s contribution is devoted to fantastic new releases by three of my very favourite practitioners.

Let’s start with Blyth Power. Soaring, melody-sodden, lyrically superlative trainspotter folk music written by trainspotter folk, or one such, singer/drummer Joseph Porter.

They have been around for ever, reference everything from the role of stag hunting in George IV’s love life to chess openings to living in squats and idolising Crass (an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping) to the collapse of actually existing socialism — Pandora’s People, their finest-ever song.  

And, obviously, diesel locomotives. (Lots thereof: they are named after one.) Their songs are replete with historical and mythological imagery, their albums all sound like a cross between Steeleye Span, the Clash, the Rubettes, the York Waits and Hans Eisler, and they’re one of my favourite bands of all time. 

They have never had even a smidgeon of the success they deserve, but are completely undeterred — Joseph has actually written a song about how undeterred they are.

And they’ve just done another brilliant album, The Power Behind The Throne, which among a host of riches features their second best-ever song, Mosley Or Slump, which, like the finest one mentioned above, tears at this old Marxist’s heartstrings.  

It was inspired by a piece of surviving 1930s graffiti Joseph saw in Bermondsey in his squatting youth, and nails far-right ideologues and their hapless cap-doffing dupes then and now: “I know how it looks/But I was only warming my hands/While they were burning the books.” 

Seven Summers describes the 1980s London of that squatting, trainspotting youth, Harrowing of Hell hands the Dragon victory over St George, and so it goes on. Another masterpiece. 

Leyton Orient’s house band Steve White and the Protest Family, truly radical folk with fire in their souls (Steve’s a fireman, it’s logical) deliver the goods with Trickledown Town, a ranting, dancing howl of rage at the state of the Tory nation — as they say in the title track, only shit trickles down in Trickledown Town.

Put Up Shut Up Britain sums it up. The royal family get nailed, the “anti-woke” right-wing media get nailed and a host of downtrodden characters get upbeat support.

But my favourite track is The Gable — Steve’s beloved Orient meet T.Rex and Get It On, as they did superbly last season winning League Two, otherwise known as Division Four. 

And a word of praise for Who Could Live In A House Like This? a brilliantly tuneful and hard-hitting violin-fuelled folk-pop album from Stephen Foster-Pilkington, long in the making, full of memorable tunes and based around a simple theme: the housing crisis, which Stephen has experienced first hand. Really worth a listen…

Blyth Power, Steve White and the Protest Family and Foster-Pilkington are all available on Bandcamp.