Grace Petrie
Petrie's fierce musical stand for the things that she feels passionate about has triumphantly fired the bellies of another festival audience.
NNF
The middle weekend of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival is traditionally dominated by The Garden Party, held over two days in Norwich's Chapelfield Gardens. Maybe it is the legacy of the pandemic that still haunts, but I had to admit to being slightly underwhelmed by this year's planned events. However, I was here primarily to see Grace Petrie, the Leicester-raised political folk singer who I came across six years ago, and who left on me a lasting impression.
Back in the Summer of 2016 I attended my first ever folk festival, where Petrie graced a woodland stage, and wowed an entire audience with her heartfelt songs and unapologetic manifesto. I remember writing on my blog at the time “ Petrie is just the rocket that Jeremy Corbyn needs to cement and reunite the Labour Party. If she could win me over (a lapsed middle class property-owning socialist with savings in the bank), she could sort out anyone, with her uncompromisingly direct, yet personable and well-humoured assault on our consciences”.
Well, events on the General Election front may not have gone as Petrie and I might have hoped (as she self-deprecatingly admits in the Adnams Spiegeltent tonight when introducing 'The Losing Side'), but she and her music have gone from strength to strength. Her latest album 'Connectivity' reached number 37 on the UK album charts, and several songs from it featured in her Spiegeltent set.
She is accompanied on stage by Ben Moss on violin, mandolin and squeezebox, but also sings spine-tingling acapella on 'A Young Woman's Tale' (from the 'Queer As Folk' album) and 'Galway', (another song from 'Connectivity'). She seems bemused by how BBC Radio 2 wanted her to drop the 'dick' word from 'The Last Man On Earth' during her session with Jo Whiley (so doesn't tonight), but is heartwarmingly sentimental about 'Ivy', the song written about her niece. And 'IKEA' is a wonderful, metaphor-filled trolley about single life and relationships.
Petrie's presence is magnetically good-humoured, even when asking for the smoke machine to be turned off, or dealing with a couple of over-loud voices emanating from the Spiegeltent booths. But it is her fierce sense of justice in songs like 'Fairwell to Welfare' and 'Black Tie' that really sharpen and strengthen her armoury.
Even an earnest plea to buy merch nestles comfortably alongside her anti-capitalist credentials as she returns for a rousing encore. “By night or day, by road or rail”- we all join in for the anthemic 'Northbound' from her 2020 'Queer As Folk' album, before spilling out into the night and readying ourselves for the next Festival events in our diary.
Petrie's fierce musical stand for the things that she feels passionate about has triumphantly fired the bellies of another festival audience.
