"The Shed. The best
lean to
I've ever been to"
Ayup never goes
reviewing. So who was that wandering lost amongst the
sheep farms of Brawby? Was it? Never!!
_____________________
The wonderful thing
about a truly uplifting live event is that you can't see
it coming. Gigs, concerts, shows, plays, are put on in
all sorts of expectant spaces. Squatted in old ambulance
stations on forgotten South London arteries. Staged within
grand old Opera Houses dripping with opulence on Unter
Der Linden or Operngasse. Sunk deep inside stinking inner
city basement night-spots. The venue itself rarely plays
a part directly in this experience. Not at first.
I'm walking down a country lane in the
Rydale Valley miles from anywhere looking for The Shed.
A venue. I've been walking for nearly a mile without a
single car passing. Pheasants burst into life along darkened
hedgerows, and flap away grumbling at the intrusion. It's
very quiet and peaceful. Farm buildings rustle with livestock
settling down for the night and yawning barns cast deep
shadows on the road. No streetlights. No signs of life.
Finally Brawby Village
Hall. A tiny two windowed building behind a
picket fence. The first man I see is Simon Thackray, the
man behind the phenomenon that would unfold inside the
hall's dark doorway. It was then that I realise that the
quiet was deceptive and all sense of scale fell away.
A room full of laughter and candlelight and a band of
sorts on stage. I was late. Well, if you can be late in
a place like this. Lets just say I was lagging behind.
I squeezed in at the back. The man on stage
was already in full flow. Rory Motion is already a legend
round these parts, of course . He has a rare ability to
talk to an audience and to move like a chameleon through
all sorts of guises. There he is already slipping in some
sly Doors reference into the first of many road songs.
A Woodie Guthrie who never got further than mid Wales,
a heart firmly rooted in Yorkshire tarmac.
His poems, songs and observations,
I know already, are very East Yorkshire. As a wezzie whose
childhood was punctuated by the annual eastern pilgrimage
up the A64 to Scarborough I'm a latecomer to all this.
I'm lost without a bus route, a coal tip or a foundry.
Hopeless without football or a rugger posts framing the
landscape. Here Rory and his band speak of heartland Yorkshire.
The one people fight battles for. The Yorkshire you can
lose yourself in even if you know where you're going.
Where local buses are bound for glory, on a higher spiritual
plain, as rare as diamonds. Never just going down't shops.
Then man on stage is suddenly Captain Beefheart
letting the note float. Then he's Bob Dylan with a Butterwick
Girl on his mind. Then he's off on some existential odyssey
out in the far east. Norfolk. Then he's back home playing
his dad's steam-driven Fender Tadcaster. We're with him
all the way. Finally he leaves us with his own spin on
Albert and the Lion - a gleeful romp round the back tents
of Glastonbury with our Albert getting freaked out - and
the evening is over.
I talk to folk
and it seems that what Rory has got going here is no fluke.
It happens time and time again. Here is a little stone
building with a great big heart. It leaves you feeling
good about the place you are and who you are. There's
a very special warmth emanating from somewhere and it's
felt by artist and audience who seem to know just what
a remarkable place The Shed is. It's not a feeling easily
forgotten. You want to come back.
Later, as the hall sheds the last of the
revellers and gets used to being a village hall again
I'm left marvelling at the capacity for music and poetry
and laughter to lift the spirit. Wondering about how a
great event can occur anywhere at all if people put their
minds to it. I left with the tiny stone building that
is Brawby Village Hall - Shed for a night, grand capacity
70 - back where it was before. I wandered out into the
quiet night air. In the middle of nowhere and the centre
of the universe.
Serves me right for having that final glass
of Newky for the road. By gum it were dark out.
_____________________
"You can tell
a Yorkshireman...
But you can't tell him MUCH..."
RORY MOTION
Baby
Bird 
