Honey & the Bear

Well what an amazing evening!
The first thing we all saw as we came upstairs into the folk club wasn’t actually Lucy and Jon. They had assembled all their instruments and equipment on our ‘stage’ then gone out to eat.
The centre stage was occupied by a double bass, at the sides of which stood two guitars, a ukulele and a bouzouki, whilst the floor was covered with a vast collection of wires, footpedals and microphones – a lot of tech which we saw was put to very good use later on.
After our usual floor singers, our guests made their appearance in good time to begin their first set with co-written songs, many of which are on their 2020 and 2026 albums. Their subject matter is interesting and varied, around themes of concern for climate change, the future of the planet, the natural world and the survival of our own species. They also sang more introspective songs which I think we can all relate to, including ‘overcoming struggles, coping with grief and the after affects of shattered dreams’.
Honey and the Bear have a confident and very engaging stage presence, working together extremely well, never seeming to falter in their powerful nuanced voices,  beautiful harmonies and skilled musicianship.  Many of the songs that evening are recorded on two albums, Journey through Roke produced during lockdown in 2020, the newest one, A Wish and a Tide just released this year.
The first song of the evening was indeed from the lockdown album. They wrote and recorded it to keep them going during ‘a very dark, scary and uncertain time in all our lives’.  The Swallow was the story of the swallows nesting in their neighbour’s garden with Lucy on double bass and Jon on guitar. It’s a very sweet up-tempo song with a chorus that is possibly the sound that the swallows make.
This was followed by The Sailor’s Daughter, then a song from their new album called The Air that we Breathe, another lively, well-written song celebrating their involvement in the planting of oak trees along their Suffolk lanes for future generations. Apparently the oaks will provide support for many creatures. Incidentally, the following day I came across a relevant quote posted by Bridget Cameron, ‘Imagine if trees gave off WiFi signals. We would be planting so many trees, and we’d probably save the planet too.  Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe!’
Close to the Edge is based on the Suffolk legend of the merman, who looks up through the water with curiosity about the world, a quirky, interesting song.  The final song of the first set, Tin, Tin was about the invention of the first hovercraft, a prototype made out of coffee tins and cat food tins, by Christopher Cockerell.
The Cruel Mistress from the second set, tells the sad story of the sea’s erosion of the Suffolk coast, which has forced many long-term residents’ homes to be dismantled before they fall into the sea: a rhythmic, haunting song.  Later they sang a spooky song called She Waits in Vain about a woman ghost waiting on the shore for her lover to return from Dunwich, a town which fell into the sea in the thirteenth century. This was followed by Freddie Cooper inspired by the 1996 rescue of the Red House lugger by the Aldeburgh lifeboat crew.  All on board were saved.
The final two songs of the evening, the only ones not written by Lucy and Jon, were Who Knows Where the Time Goes? by Sandy Denny and Caledonia by Dougie McLean.

For those of you who didn’t get to see Honey and the Bear, I would unhesitatingly recommend them. They were wonderful.

Our next guest is Virginia Kettle (with John Kettle) on 7th October

Maureen McGuinness on behalf of Carrington Triangle folk club.