Jim Moray – Lichfield Festival – 18th July 2026

RAISING THE BAR

Funny old circus is Lichfield Festival. Very much in the vein of Edinburgh, and I don’t mean the fringe, it tends more to high culture than my usual domain, yet always popping in some top notch folk, jazz and what gets best called, at least nowadays, world. Earlier in the week it was Kate Rusby at the Cathedral with, tonight, this bonsai city’s second best stained glass acting as a frame for the newly appointed Professor of Folk at Leeds Conservatoire. (OK, unlike the cathedral, it is at the back of the hall, but still well worth a gander.) The Hub, at the now deconsecrated St Mary’s Church, in Lichfield’s market square just gets better and better as a venue, raising the bar for the city, and proving popular both with punters and performers.

A FOREMOST CHAMPION

Jim Moray is a Staffordshire boy, and is a frequent visitor to the city. Indeed, we caught him, with False Lights, back in 2023. With a recent album garnishing praise here, he promised a set of songs old and new, from across his career, ahead of revising that comment: “actually, they are all old, if sometimes revised and reset“.

This is true, as he has been one of the foremost champions of the tradition, apropos the source material he so meticulously sources, whilst also being one of the prime advocates of ushering in the new technologies to loves to embed the old songs into. Although, to be fair, some are actually new, to this century and decade, although, lyrics aside, you would be hard put to tell ’em apart, so true he is to the received format of Child and Roud.

ELECTRICKERY

Starting prompt on 8, it was he and just he that strode on stage, blinking, although a drum kit lay enticingly house right, at the back. Gizmo in hand, this looked more like a pager or a card machine, but, as he deftly pressed buttons, so the sound looped back and forth, providing a bevy of Morays and drone chords to billow around his initially unaccompanied voice. Clever stuff, needing no small amount of concentration and disconnect, he didn’t drop a note awry, and the magic seemed just that. The song, Lemady, is one he has been refining and redesigning in perpetuity; check out the differences between it on his debut release, in 2002 and 21 years later, on Beflean, since when it continues to evolve.

Electrickery then put aside, at least for now, an acoustic guitar was all he then needed to give a yearning version of Jock O’Hazledean, dedicated to Dick Gaughan. Not for the last time, he mentioned the sterling ongoing efforts to bring the long vaulted back catalogue of Gaughan. and many his 60’s and 70’s peers, back into availability, citing these the records he grew up with, in his parent’s collection.

Onward through his epic Lord Douglas, mashing elements drawn from both sides of the pond, before plying an instrumental medley of two dances from Lichfield’s own morris tradition, Vandals of Hammerwich, just up the road, and Ring O’Bells. The title track from his first album, Sweet England, led into his own Sounds Of Earth. Despite it’s tale being so defiantly late 20th century, Moray’s skill is to word it and phrase it one exactly the same rhythm and cadences of something centuries older.

CHOIR OF MORAYS

Guitar gave way to keyboard, for the next selection of songs, his elegant rearrangement of the otherwise bluegrass, Train To The Island and then Fortune Turns The Wheel. The latter, the closing track on Gallants, there relies on the massed voices of the Trans Choir for its impact, but Moray plus gizmo was more than up to that, as a bank of cross vocal range Morays wellied in alongside him. Pretty tremendous and a good place to pause, he promising to be back, with his band, after 15.

MEET THE BAND

Duly refreshed by the eagerly anticipated Titanic cherry porter, a bottle that adds much to the pleasure of this venue, being one of the few places that seem to stock it, it was then back to my seat to see who would be with the singer tonight. It seems mishap had overtaken the bassist, courtesy a fractured collarbone, so the band consisted solely of Stuart Provan a drummer long associated with Moray, familiar from False Lights. And if acoustic guitar, voice and drums might sound a little odd and a little thin, worry not, it doesn’t and didn’t, Provan providing way more than any basic boom tish, using brushes, sticks and mallets to coax every nuance out of his play. Flora, a favourite form the new album, opened the second half and we were away.

Sticking mainly with newer songs, there was still time for Jim Jones amongst the newer material. As ever, Moray’s scholarship shone through, not only describing the full lineage of the song and its discovery; his evident passion was infectious, the background as exciting, well, nearly, as the actual song. Spencer The Rover is a song many know and associate with John Martyn. Moray was able to explain why it has taken him so long to cover it, feeling it not a young man’s song, needing, now, awww from audience, a sad Dad delivery.

DELICIOUS JANGLE

A move to keyboard proved perhaps the only jar between Moray and Provan. Moray’s style for a re-working of William Of Barbary was already so percussive in piano chords as to render the drums intrusive. But such then was the delicacy of percussion provided for Omie Wise, one of those haunting boy meets girl, boy murders girl ballads that feature so frequently in the tradition, that all was instantly forgiven. For this, Moray had switched to the shiny silver electric guitar that had longingly appealing from the back of the stage. With lovely tone to it, Moray luxuriated in the delicious jangle it provided.

2016’s Upcetera was getting quite a good showing from the songs chosen, and it was another from this album, Edward Of The Lowlands Low, up next. A song that is what one might call typical Moray, it allows him to eke every drop of the sorrowed angst his voice so naturally exudes. But a swift glance at my watch revealed the show was nearly done. Earlier fingers crossed then prove their worth as it was with a personal favourite that the duo finished.

Crossing The Bar, originally a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, was always the showstopper in the False Lights canon, and it was thus a delight to see it could carry just as much impact from just two musicians. OK, two musicians plus gizmo. He said it was the last song and, true to his word, it was, with encores neither offered nor given. But, after a showcase of that quality, it would have been churlish to complain.

Great venue, great performer(s), great night. Good old Lichfield!

Jim Moray: Website

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