Tim Hughes catches up with ex-Bellowhead multi-instrumentalist Paul Sartin who is on the road with Yuletide party show Belshazzar’s Feast

SOME artists really come into their own at Christmas. Think of Slade, Wizzard, Jona Lewie... The same can be said for folk duo Belshazzar’s Feast.

The project of fiddle and oboe player Paul Sartin and accordionist Paul Hutchinson, Belshazzar’s Feast convene every Yuletide for a rip-roaring night of English roots music, which is as festive as turkey, crackers and rowing relatives.

The act, named after the decadent Coregent of Babylon and his hedonistic final repast, is the perfect inspiration for a fun-loving celebration of the finer things in life – with the emphasis on Bacchanalian excess. And their spiritual home is the tiny village of Nettlebed, in the heart of the Oxfordshire Chilterns, between Wallingford and Henley.

For many a year, they have celebrated Christmas with a lively show at the Nettlebed Folk Club, which is where we’ll find them this Monday.

“We are the perfect act for Christmas,” says singer composer and multi-instrumentalist Paul Sartin.

“This is a good time to be doing what we are doing. We are like a cabaret act for people who are out for a party and want to let their hair down. It’s an annual visit and lots of people we know go down – which means we have to keep changing the set and remember not to tell the same jokes.

“It’s always nice to go back to somewhere with which you are familiar, especially with our semi-nomadic lifestyles. Nettlebed is also when Paul and I have our own ‘work do’ – we go to the pub next door for Christmas dinner.”

The starting point for Belshazzar’s Feast is traditional folk, but the music incorporates classical, jazz, pop and music hall, along with plenty of jokes. It’s a cracking combination which saw the pair nominated for the Best Duo Award at the 2010 BBC Folk Awards.

“It’s English folk music... on cider... if folk music isn’t on cider already!” laughs Paul. “It’s very light hearted. We are rooted in English traditional folk music, but that’s where it stops. We throw in whatever we can find and make it a cabaret. There are some serious numbers but we make entertaining.”

Banter is a big part of the show. “I’m a bit of a straight man to Paul, without being too in-your-face. Our personas are as different as our musical styles; we complement each other.”

This instalment of their annual festive tour (they also take their duo out on the road in May for a more spring-like collection of songs), follows a dramatic year for Paul, who is perhaps best known as a member of folk supergroup Bellowhead, who went their separate ways after playing a final gig at Oxford Town Hall on May Day.

Formed in Oxford 13 years ago, for the inaugural Oxford Folk Festival, the 11-piece avant-folk band went on to redefine the genre.

Their five studio albums sold more than 250,000 copies, while their third LP, Hedonism, was recorded at Abbey Road studios and is the highest selling independently released folk album of all time. Their trophy cabinet includes two silver discs, and eight BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and they have graced stages everywhere from our very own Truck Festival to Glastonbury and the Royal Albert Hall.

The group disbanded when one of its founder members, Jon Boden, decided to leave to pursue a solo career.

“I have mixed feelings about Bellowhead,” says Paul. “I am not going to pretend I don’t miss some of it, and there is nothing like playing in front of thousands of people. It was also good for the bank balance. But more than anything I miss my friends.”

“I wasn’t expecting it to end like it did, and I was surprised – though I won’t miss sleeping on the tour bus with 17 people, as that was not conducive to my mental health.”

He adds: “It has been a very strange year, but all good things have to come to an end and it’s best that it finished when it did, rather than dragging on longer. On the last couple of tours we were partied out and the novelty had worn off. Still, it was an amazing thing to have done, and I’m very pleased, and proud, to have done it. Now I want to do my own thing though,” he says.

That includes a new project The Transports, a re-telling of Peter Bellamy’s folk ballads about a family escaping poverty and criminality by sailing away for a new life in Australia. Paul is musical director of the project, which features former Bellowhead artist Rachael McShane, The Young’uns, Nancy Kerr, Greg Russell, Matthew Crampton and Paul’s other band Faustus.

“We have revamped it and given it a modern twist with reference to the issues of migration we are seeing at the moment,” he says. “It has an amazing cast of people and we’ll be touring in January and February. there is no Oxford date, unfortunately, but we will be at The Stables in Wavendon, in Milton Keynes, which isn’t too far.

Like Bellowhead, Belshazzar’s Feast has its roots in Oxfordshire, the seeds for the band planted while playing a session with a now-defunct folk group in a trailer in Cumnor – owned by Oxford sound engineer and former owner of the Zodiac club (now the O2 Academy) Nick Moorbath.

It was there he met Hutchinson, whose own credits include Hoover the Dog, Karen Tweed, The Playford Liberation Front and the Pagoda Project.

Sartin’s Oxford roots go deep. In the early 90s he took up a Choral Scholarship at Magdalen College – appearing on the CS Lewis biopic Shadowlands. He balanced that with classical oboe, close-harmony singing with the ensemble Men Only, and folk sessions at the Bullingdon Arms and The Elm Tree, in Cowley Road.

He became a Lay Clerk at Christ Church Cathedral, staying for five years and travelling to Lebanon, Brazil and Japan. He recorded with the composer Howard Goodall on the themes music for Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. He has also performed in Tim Healey’s old-music group Magpie Lane, recorded an album of Dickensian music, sung with acapella quartet Mouth and Trousers.

On top of that, he has a Masters in Traditional Music, edited Bellowhead’s songbook for Faber Music, continues to work on old manuscripts and has passed on his knowledge to the next generation of musicians at St Edward’s School in Woodstock Road, north Oxford.

He worked on The Seven Joys of Mary for the Choir of Somerville College, and his composition for Streetwise Opera, The Hartlepool Monkey, was nominated for a British Composer Award.

More unexpected is his contribution to the world of rock – working with Ride’s Loz Colbert and the rock band Enter Shikari.

Few are as much fun as the traditional festive shows, however.

“For decades people were quite serious about traditional music, and because it was under threat, they treated it with kid gloves.

“We are different. We treat it with Marigolds!”

  • Belshazzar’s Feast play Nettlebed Folk Club, near Wallingford, on Monday. For tickets go to nettlebedfolkclub.co.uk