Gig review: Jim Ghedi at The Old Cold Store

If a musician scores a film starring Hugh Jackman, and tours afterwards, expectations might be that he’ll play some particularly grand and impressive venues, but that’s far from the personal philosophy of Sheffield’s Jim Ghedi, a child of DIY folk music in Yorkshire. Tonight, he visits The Old Cold Store to celebrate his soundtrack for The Death of Robin Hood.

The surreal tale of how Jim created his very first film score for a 20-million-dollar Hollywood production is told in the September edition of LeftLion – it begins with something as simple as an Instagram DM from director Michael Sarnoski. What defines that story, however, is how throughout the process Jim honoured his roots, not just as someone from the general birthplace of the Robin Hood myth (Notts-Sheffield rivalry aside). Once he got the gig, he declined to fly to California and composed remotely, drawing on Sheffield’s rich network of musicians, some of whom played medieval instruments like the hurdy-gurdy. The result was a vivid slice of profoundly local, North/Midlands music, which found its way into a production distributed by an international company as big as A24. How about that?

With this background in mind, walking into the venue, on a cool October night, feels all the more special. The Old Cold Store, formerly a storage area for beer, adjoins Castle Rock pub The Vat and Fiddle, which is a short walk from the train station. Now a gigs and private hire venue, it’s got a spacious, gritty, industrial feel, and as you walk in, you get the inner sense that everyone who comes here is always dedicated to, and excited about, whichever event is going on. Suitably, the crowd for this gig is pretty sizeable, so it’s evident that a musician who plays a big role in retelling the Robin Hood myth in a new and creative way is guaranteed, as you’d expect, to get Notts folks out in force.

Support comes from traditional folk duo Joshua Arnold and Therine, who are from the North West of England. They cut a striking image onstage, with Joshua Arnold playing a hurdy gurdy and box cello, and Therine, face nearly concealed by an antlered mask, playing an Indian harmonium (which can be operated with just one hand), a tom, and singing all at once. The interweaving, metallic drones and menacing, nocturnal atmosphere is a great precursor to the, sometimes gothic, intensity of Jim Ghedi’s music. In-between songs, Therine explains the background of some of the more traditional material they’re performing. At one point they do their own version of traditional, Old Scots poem Twa Corbies (that features on Jim Ghedi’s Robin Hood soundtrack): a poem detailing a cheery conversation between two crows pecking at the decaying corpse of a knight. At another, they incorporate a transcript from medieval witch trials that took place in Lancaster. This is the good stuff – about as spooky and traditional as you can get.

After a short break, Jim Ghedi comes onstage with his three-person band. In a folk music context, you might expect a quartet of musicians to sound a little gentler, and more skeletal, but that’s certainly not the case when you go to a Jim Ghedi show, and especially not when you’re listening to tunes from his last album: Wasteland. Songs like Sheaf and Feld, and album title track fill the room, with crashing drums, the dextrous fiddling of violin player David Grubb that at times sounds like a howling gale, and Ghedi’s virtuosic, open-tuned, electric guitar playing, which is the thorny undergrowth, if the songs were metaphorical forests. Sometimes the textures I’m hearing broach ‘post rock’.

Between songs, his onstage banter provides suitable moments of levity and, at times, the music incorporates that levity. From time to time, it’ll just be Ghedi, playing guitar, and Grubb, playing fiddle, with harmonium drones sometimes added by bass player Neal Heppleston, off to the side. What they play together sounds not unlike an Irish reel, only Ghedi’s bluesy, percussive style of playing guitar adds an extra dash of complexity and traces of African music. When it comes to modern folk, it rarely gets more expert than watching these guys do their thing.

Other times, Ghedi’s fearsome and resonant vocals are put at the forefront of two drone-filled tunes from the Robin Hood soundtrack: What Will Become of England, and Lamentations of Round Oak Waters. Often-times, the band will add backing vocals, bringing the music into a sea-shanty-tinged realm, like during Ghedi and the band’s take on a classic, North East mining folk song by Ed Pickford titled Ah Cud Hew. Ghedi prefaces the rendition by mentioning that 2026 is the centenary of the 1926 Miner’s Strike and General Lockout which saw over a million miners, many in south Yorkshire, take industrial action to refuse reductions in pay and conditions. Going off of that, Ghedi mentions how, even today, too many working-class kids across the Midlands and North are tied down and prevented from going into the arts. Our Notts crowd applauds in agreement, and there’s very much a sense of Sheff-Notts solidarity in the air.

Thanking the venue, the promoter, playing their last song, and heading straight to the merch stand, Ghedi and the band tie off a unique and special night, which seems to embody what’s inspiring about the story behind the Robin Hood soundtrack. Even when granted with huge, international opportunities, there’s no need for East Mids or South Yorkshire musicians to spiritually abandon their roots. Almost always, keeping a close-knit set of local collaborators around you, and playing small local venues where audiences will be attentive is exactly what will keep you at the top of your game.

Jim Ghedi played the Old Cold Store on 3 October