When my wife & I attended the Steeleye concert in Oxford in April 2004 it was the first time I’d seen them since my student days. In the early 80s I moved abroad and settled down near Hamburg in Northern Germany. On returning home after that concert our 15 year-old son Alexander decided that “next time” he wanted to come as well (or was that due to our enthusiasm for the Chinese restaurant in Oxford the evening before the concert?).

When the dates for the “Winter” tour appeared back in September we wondered how we could make it. Luckily Air Berlin had opened up the route between Hamburg & Manchester vastly undercutting Lufthansa and making the whole thing financially possible. Hence our choice of venue fell on Buxton on the edge of Derbyshire’s Peak District (one hour’s drive from my mother’s house near Knutsford i.e. the overnight stay was taken care of). Once we had got the “OK” to take Alex off school we booked air tickets, concert tickets, hire car etc. Alex proceeded to play my Steeleye CDs in order to be familiar with at least some of the program (Ken’s play list helped here).

The drive to Buxton was an adventure in itself – across the “Cat and Fiddle” pass with snow at the roadside and thick fog. What an excellent choice the Buxton Opera House turned out to be. A beautiful “small” theatre (originally built 1903) which we were told seated around 1000. My wife was most impressed.

We sat in the stalls just over half-way back and had an excellent view. Shortly after 7:30 the band walked on to the usual polite applause. First off: Van Dieman's Land followed by Cold Haily Windy Night sung by Rick. The concert went from one highlight to the next with a number of titles from the recent albums Winter and They Called Her Babylon together with a smattering of oldies. Ken’s Unconquered Sun was excellent and fitted well to the fact that we were just one day away from the Winter Solstice. My wife very much liked I Live not Where I Love sung by Maddy with Peter’s violin and Ken’s acoustic guitar “talking” to each other. Personally I would have left London out – it was never one of my favourites & IMHO there are better songs on Rocket Cottage. The first half ended with the superb a cappella Bright Morning Star.

Steeleye manage this excellent combination of titles with the full band and those with just 2 members. An example of the latter being Peter’s superb playing and Maddy’s singing of the Great Silkie of Sules Skerry (back in April they performed Betsy Bell and Mary Gray in a similar way). The “Big Ballad” of Tam Lin held us all enthralled.

As with the Oxford concert at the end the audience woke up with loud calls for MORE! The band obliged with See Amid the Winters Snow and All Around My Hat and were brought back for Gaudete as the second encore.

All band members are excellent musicians and one cannot single one out without being unreasonably unfair to the others. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts! Our son liked the more rocky numbers especially with Ken “the guitarist is cool” & Rick.

After the lights went up the audience trouped slowly out (just one small doorway to exit through). We were still waiting to exit when Ken appeared with a glass of wine in his hand. We complimented him on Unconquered Sun and Ken said he believed that it had been a full-house that evening (as had the previous night). Ken persuaded another guest to take a photo of us all.

When we got to the Foyer (still with Ken) not only were a number of people patiently stood waiting (this is Britain!) to have their CDs and DVDs autographed but also Rick was there signing away. Shortly after that Maddy joined. All three patiently autographed and had their photos taken despite the fact that they must have been tired towards the end of the tour. Hats-off – all three remained in the Foyer until the last guest departed.

One small point – on clicking through the photos in the camera of Maddy & ourselves she saw that we had some taken during the concert – she became quite agitated saying that someone in the third row (we were in the 10^th) had taken photos and despite the flash being disabled the cameras send out a strong white light when focusing and this really disturbed her – the equivalent of someone shouting out in the middle of a song. So one has to take this into consideration in the future.

It was a long way to travel for a concert (and a Christmas pudding to take back) but well worth it. Back home Alex was faced with the task of trying to explain the style of music to his friends! How do you explain to the unbelieving that you attended a rock concert plus electric violin, the songs were about fairies & seals and where the final encore was sung in Latin? If we keep having to travel to two Steeleye concerts a year I’ll soon be broke – but what a way to go!

^{Howard E. Mills
2004}