You would expect there to be regular references to the River Sid at the Sidmouth Folk Festival – water being very evocative and the themes of waterways a subject of music.
Here are Martin Carthy and Sam Sweeney “rehearsing before their rapturously received collaboration at Sidmouth FolkWeek” in 2017 – “by the rushing waters of the River Sid, performing The Poacher, originally recorded by Martin and Dave Swarbrick on their album Skin And Bone”.
Martin Carthy & Sam Sweeney – The Poacher (Sidmouth FolkWeek 2017) – YouTube
Last year was Sidmouth at seventy — a notable milestone for the folk festival – with a wonderful reference to Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan: “He possibly wrote the line on the banks of the River Sid, which flows into the English Channel at Sidmouth. Certainly ‘Where Sid the sacred rive ran’ doesn’t quite have the same poetic pull, put the town of Sidmouth, overlooking the Jurassic Coast, has its own romanticism.”
This year, as the 2025 Programme tells us, All Saints Church Hall offers concerts, dances and workshops – “including Troubled Waters, a powerful new piece blending storytelling and live music, exploring endangered rivers through myth and legend”.
This is part of the Storytelling & Spoken Word strand of the festival – but unfortunately, there was an event change yesterday which cut the programme somewhat. Nevertheless, the troubled waters session looks interesting [“Boldly leaping salmon, feverish skinny dips, witches’ knickers and highly strung sacred wells…”] and their show will be happening elsewhere in the British Isles, including The Capstone Theatre.
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