"Live in Lichfield" review...

This rather nice review – translated from the original German – of the recent “Live in Lichfield” EP was published a few days ago on the Vanbauseneick website.
 
Many thanks to Matthias Bosenick.
 

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Beau – Live In Lichfield – Fruits De Mer Records 2025

Published on October 14, 2025

 

By Matthias Bosenick (October 14, 2025)

Playing his twelve-string guitar alone, Beau, alias Trevor Midgley from Leeds, performed some of his folk songs at the Lichfield Festival in 2012. This was the first gig promoted by the Fruits De Mer label, and the label is now expressing its gratitude by releasing four tracks from this performance on eight-inch vinyl. Beau also gained notoriety because, in 1969, he was one of the first artists to release on Dandelion Records—John Peel's label.

 

Listening to this recording, you'd imagine yourself in a pub: English-style folk, performed solely on guitar, in a restrained but emphatic mid-range voice—the classic guitarist who accompanies drunkenness, you might think—but Beau doesn't bring infectious, participatory music here. His songs are reflective, internalized, in typical English style, with what feels like an endless number of verses—which isn't true—and accompanied by a crystal-clear guitar, which he pushes into the background of his vocals as needed or energetically brings to the fore as a focal point. Although he doesn't generate any ostentatious gimmicks, he doesn't simply strum the instrument either. Beau demands that you listen, and the audience obeys enthusiastically.

 

Lichfield, West Midlands, Staffordshire—you have to be familiar with that area, and that's not even close to Walton-on-Thames, where the Fruits De Mer label is based. That's where Beau, now 79, performed 13 years ago. The man is not that well known on the continent, although his 1969 single "1917 Revolution" was the second release on John Peel's Dandelion label. The song sounds not dissimilar to those on "Live In Lichfield", and there is a certain consistency to that.

 

However, his obviously best known song, "The Roses Of Eyam", was recorded in 1975 under the alias John Trevor and only released it in 2007. Today it is available via Cold Spring Records, the industrial neofolk label. Cherry Red is the other label that is concerned with his oeuvre, a more wavy environment. Now the psychedelic artists Fruits de Mer, and despite the various genres, his music has changed nothing: simply a man with his twelve-string, singing English folk songs.