Hodmadoddery, once described by Bristol's leading folk blogger (i.e me) as "two men with guitars who sing folksongs" presented a set guaranteed to please all the traddy folkies in the bar (i.e me). When First I Came To Caledonia; John Barleycorn; that one which starts out as King George Commands and We Obey and end up as Spanish Ladies; a really powerful Shoals of Herring. (But then you can hardly get Shoals of Herring wrong, can you?) The loud hairy one strums while the quieter balder one plucks, but there is clever, even witty stuff not drawing attention to itself. Tony goes all Spanish Guitar in Spanish Ladies. Steve introduces Fair Annie (surely the most beautiful song ever written about father-daughter incest) as "copied from Martin Simpson copying from Peter Bellamy" and sure enough Tony's fretwork really is lovingly copied from Martin Simpson. Particularly notable was a very decent Black Waterside, with creditable tinkly guitar that genuinely evoked the ghost of Pentangle.
As well as any ghost can be evoked on a Sunday afternoon in a bar on Stokes Croft where no-one is actually listening.
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