Watch: Father and daughter Martin and Eliza Carthy are back at the Brighton Festival

“We had a project called the East project bubbling under for some time,” Eliza says, “and I just wanted to stage it bigger. It was commissioned by the Norfolk and Norwich Festival and we did something in Norwich Cathedral and Brighton offered us the chance to expand the show. Wilko was there and he was a proper gentleman. We also had Kenneth Cranham and the East Band and it was just a great night.

“I wanted to celebrate my dad and one of the great things about my dad is that he never retreads old ground so I thought the best way that we could celebrate somebody who has performed for more than 60 years is to do a completely new show. He is someone that has never rested on his laurels and he would certainly have enough laurels to rest on but he just never would. He is just always thirsty. He believes that musicians should never retire.

“So now we're going to be doing this show and we've introduced some Waterson Carthy music into the show since my mum passed away (the singer and songwriter Norma Waterson, 1939-2022, best known as one of the original members of The Watersons). So we are going to be doing some of the stuff we used to do and we're also working with the Copper Family.”

It's going to be a great collection of friends and family just right for our times: “Everybody needs support. I think everybody now is feeling the need to connect. And I certainly want to be on stage with people I love. It’s the pandemic really. It does feel different now. The pandemic changed things. I've been a teacher since then. I took on board teaching in my local school.”

And things remain different still with the music industry as a whole: “We have had a couple of really nice tours but I do think everybody is still finding their feet. A lot of the gigs we were doing have been rescheduled and so there's still a lot of re-routing all over the place but I do think that people are still a bit nervous about going out. It's a question of coaxing people back into the live music space. I think people got so used to watching live streams of gigs that if you say there's a gig people are like ‘Are you live streaming it?’ and I just think ‘No, I want you to travel 20 minutes to come and see it rather than sit there in your pants and watch me at home!’”

The Brighton gig is part of the Different Folks weekend, a weekend of contemporary and curated folk music

Saturday, May 20: 11am: Perspectives on Tradition (Talk). Join Stick In The Wheel for a talk about their project Perspectives on Tradition, where contemporary musicians delve into the national folk arts archive at Cecil Sharp House to explore traditional music.

3pm: Laura Groves + Angeline Morrison. Laura Groves is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. Angeline Morrison is a singer and multi-instrumentalist.

Sunday, May 21, 3pm: Shirley Collins and the Lodestar Band, Rattle on the Stovepipe and Brighton Morris. 8pm: Stick in the Wheel supported by Fire in her Eyes.

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