Sadly I missed the Boat Band performing at the Extravaganza in Failsworth last Sunday, but listening to the recordings of this band shows their mastery of an eclectic repertory of Cajun, Cheshire, Cornish and Cumbrian influences (and that's just the letter 'C'!).

Anyway the latest issue of eds (the magazine of the english folk dance and song society) has a review of the CD A Trip to the Lakes of traditional Cumbrian tunes. This was recorded by the Boat Band for the 1st Duddon Valley Folk Festival 2001, held to cheer everyone up in those dark days when foot-and-mouth disease raged.

To quote from the review by Felicity Greenland: "I love this album for its wacky flashes...and great under-and-over percussion which...emanates palpably from a deep community heart with a tipsy love for its music that is at once both wise old chuckle and youthful glee.

I've listened to the CD too and found that the tunes are a lively and jolly treatment of numbers from an authentic and rich Cumbrian tradition. As the review mentions, some of vigour this tradition as it existed in the 1950's can be heard on the recent Veteran CD Pass The Jug Around, and it is lovely to hear some of the tunes and songs from those recordings given new life by the Boat Band. Greg Stephens has dedicated the CD to the memory of "the heroic fiddlers of the past" especially William Irwin of Langdale, as well as Henry Stables, Matthew Betham and William Docker.

The Boat Band are definitely not spurious performers; they play real music with skill and great good humour. As Felicity Greenland says of the Lakeland CD "It has a nutty jollity that will make children dance....

The Boat Band may be based in inland Stoke, but they turn up in some unlikely places playing music for enjoyment. For me this CD best shows their roots in a vigourous but not very well known tradition - that of Cumbria.