Cambridge 2000

(Excerpt from the FATEA website on Cambridge Folk Festival)

After catching up with news of the crew at the Club Tent, it's time to settle down and catch the vibe of the first act, Suntrap.

Unlike many of their contemporaries, Suntrap are a songs lead band, rather than tunes.  Consisting of multi-instrumentalist Sara Byers, fiddler Mary Wilson and the powerfully voiced Paul Hoad, who also plays a pretty mean guitar, Suntrap kick started the 36th Charles Wells Cambridge Folk Festival perfectly.

Suntrap write most of their own material and place it in a setting that draws heavily on the English song tradition.  Excellent vocal interplay from all members of the band adds inflections into the layers of the sound that the three of them are generating.

The crowd obviously warm to them quickly and its not long before the band are feeding off it.  Most of the songs get a bit of an introduction before the band dive in.  The songs' themes are mainly contemporary which not only provides a nice contrast to the more traditional side of the backing, but also allow the band to go off at more of a tangent than you can get away with on purely traditional songs.

The constant changing of instruments allow the band to get in more variations along the same theme, delivering a set that reflected many different strengths and emotions without ever sounding cluttered.  More importantly Suntrap delivered the songs with enough of a spiky edge that allowed them to steer well clear of the tweeness that can sometimes slip into English folk music.

All too soon it's over.  Forty minutes have just flown by.  It's really refreshing to hear an up and coming band that is so song driven without taking it down the singer/songwriter path.