Love Folk Festival – The Atkinson, Southport – 9th-10th February 2024

The small, seaside festival that continually punches above it’s weight delivered another knockout weekend. This year the heavyweights turned out to be two northern girls, who left even the most trad folk fans in a state of wonderment.

If you’ve not sampled the delights of the Love Folk Festival, held annually near Valentines day at the superb Atkinson Arts Centre, Southport, then consider a trip in 2025. An indoor festival, where the stages are a massive 15 seconds apart, offers a high quality catalogue of musicians, a good array of local ales and a comfortable, indoor venue. The music is carefully curated by both The Atkinson and FATEA Magazine, so you’ll always be sure of seeing big names as well as some first-rate up and coming talent, this year was no exception.

The two stars of this years offering were undoubtedly Frankie Archer and Nati (fresh from Celtic Connections), but more on them later.

The festival is formed of the Studio stage, with cabaret seating as well as a traditional, seated balcony and the more informal (and free) Busk Folk stage held in the theatre bar. The music plays on Friday evening and in the afternoon and evening of Saturday, giving you plenty of time on Sunday to recover from any over-indulgence. The acts alternate between the Studio and the bar, so it’s possible to watch just about every minute of the performances.

The festival has made the point of ‘promoting’ one of the previous year’s Busk Folk acts to the main studio, to play opening sets on both days. This year that honour fell to Frankie Archer – and my word, what a year she has had since making her slightly nervous debut last year. Since appearing at Love Folk in 2023 it’s fair to say that Frankie has been in a bit of a whirlwind, winning the Christian Raphael Prize at the Cambridge Folk Festival, featuring on the Radio 2 Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe as well as a TV performance with Jools Holland.

Any nerves that were present last year were thoroughly banished and Frankie’s two performances were nothing short of a revelation, For my money, Frankie is the most exciting thing to have happened in music; not just folk music, in the last 20 years, innovation and imagination combine with tradition to make something really rather exciting. We got a relatively brief glimpse of her genius on the Friday night, then were treated to a longer set on Saturday.

Frankie re-imagines traditional folk tunes from her native Consett and County Durham, but this isn’t modernisation for the sake of modernity, this takes folk, gives it a damned good shake, adds some witchcraft from her synthesizer (which includes live samples from the audience, as well as loops and organic samples recorded around her home) and produces a sound that is both contemporary and timeless, haunting yet comforting. The level of imagination and innovation is humbling, from a homemade theramin to a copper wire that created a musical closed circuit when Frankie touched hands with an audience member. All this technological wizardry adds to these reimagined, simple northern tunes played on fiddle and sung with a very pure voice. 

What Frankie produces is the ultimate 21st century folk twist, which promotes our traditions and tunes to a completely new audience – you sometimes hear the phrase ‘Nu-Folk’ banded around, well this is it. Frankie ended her set with Fisherlad , which starts out relatively traditionally, but builds quickly and ends with a full on raving banger, equally at home at the Atkinson, the Berghain or a viral hit on TikTok.

The Magpie Arc headlined Friday night and had the arguably, unenviable task of following on from Frankie, but this isn’t referred to as a ‘Supergroup’ for nothing. What is really great about this band though is that there’s no one that ‘sticks out’ – they’re all top-class acts in their own rights, but there are no egos and they meld together seamlessly to produce a sound most definitely at the folk-rock end of things, pretty bluesy at times and a great way to finish a Friday night of live music. With Glamour In The Grey one of our Albums of the Year in 2022, they’re currently on tour and we’ll be reporting in full from The Met later this month.

Saturday’s festivities started in the bar, with John Reed performing a delightful and traditional set to those bright and early souls who were keen to get the day started. John deserves a special mention as he is a volunteer who rigged and sound-engineered all the acts in the bar, to the point where the only act that he saw in the Studio were the Saturday headliners Merry Hell (of which he greatly approved). 

The Busk Folk acts were as high a standard as ever, with many hundreds applying for the coveted and very limited slots. We were treated to Scottish conservatoire graduands Eleanor Dunsdon and Gregor Black – who somehow managed to combine two of the least transportable instruments into one set (drum kit and harp) however, we are glad that they did as the sound they created was amazing. Also performing on the Busk Folk stage were Roary Skaista, who gives a joyful yet vulnerable performance promoting love, acceptance and diversity and Elsi, fresh from her triumph at the Cambridge Folk Festival, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of her this year and beyond.

Saturday held even more treats in store within the Studio, with Chris Fox finally making it onto the Love Folk stage. Chris had been booked to perform in 2020, but apparently something got in the way that year and the festival was cancelled. I had been really looking forward to seeing Chris live and I was not disappointed. Chris came to us, fresh from supporting the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (maybe). Chris’ deep, bluesy voice was a real pleasure to listen to and his lyrics were heartfelt and mature, again we were treated to an artist who uses the loop pedal very effectively to create a full band sound from just one man and his guitar. Of particular note was his tune Little Brown Sparrow, a tale about a homeless lady, that concludes with an absolute sucker punch of a final lyric.

Iona Lane took to the stage to conclude the first half of Saturday’s musical offerings with her beautifully gentle and poetic songs, strongly influenced by nature and her love of the world.

What felt like the entirety of the audience then decamped to the Southport Market for some much-needed sustenance, most sated, some disappointed, then ventured back to the studio for what turned out to be the festival crescendo.

Harp And A Monkey continued the theme of telling old tales in an inventive way and gave a really entertaining set on a wide variety of instruments, telling a variety of stories – from Mole Catchers, to Manchester pubs where you really shouldn’t meet a future spouse, to a fantastic little song that eludes to a potential new name for the band.

The penultimate act was Nati. As well as her recent Celtic Connections set, we had first seen Nati at Beardy Folk Festival 2023 and both Tony Birch (FATEA) and myself had immediately told Neil King (FATEA and Love Folk curator/advisor) that he simply HAD to recommend Nati for Love Folk 2024. Neil didn’t need telling of course, as he has over 35 years of experience and expertise in these matters, The Atkinson didn’t need any convincing either and so the Love Folk audience was treated to a performance that they will remember for a very long time.

Self proclaimed short, Brave impersonator Nati is a force of nature, a truly natural performer with one of the finest voices that you’ll hear, accomplished guitar and a witty charisma that fills the auditorium. Nati had the audience, staff, volunteers and crew hanging on her every word from her opening note to her final chord. I can’t do her justice here with my rudimentary grasp of the written word, it’s that simple.

Saturday at Love Folk 2024 was headlined by Merry Hell, who right now appear to have the folk world in the palms of their numerous hands. Not content with supporting The Lathums at the Castlefield Bowl in 2023, they also had the many thousands of Cropredy aficionados swaying with wild abandon – someone should probably issue a health and safety announcement, it’s getting pretty uproarious out there!

But just before Merry Hell could be introduced to the stage by FATEA’s Neil King, he was usurped by John Reed – but all was well. Little did Neil know but a plan had been hatched to present him with an award to mark his 35 years running FATEA Magazine, 35 years of giving artists a voice – Well done Neil and thank you from all of us for all that you do to support music and musicians. A thoroughly embarrassed Neil left the stage to be replaced by Merry Hell.

Merry Hell combined many of their old favourites with just the right amount of new material, although saddened that the Three Little Lions had apparently been left in the cattery, this was more than compensated for by the inclusion of Bob Kettle’s latest masterpiece Army Of Vagabonds, this song is an absolute triumph. I had a sneak preview a few months back in the Hell’s rehearsals, and then an amazing live performance at the Liverpool Philharmonic MerryFest, but then it disappeared for a few, very long months. Thankfully it reappeared in all its glory on Saturday night alongside other new material Pick Yourself Up and Louder Than War.

As the Bakers Daughter and Let The Music Speak rang out across the Studio, Love Folk 2024 drew to a fantastic, joyous conclusion, you won’t find a better way to spend a couple of days in February – see you next year?

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