Waterson:Carthy Fed by English Roots

Martin Carthy began the English folk quartet Waterson:Carthy’s show at McCabe’s with an old, comical caution against marriage and family titled “Bald Headed End of the Broom.” Of course, the performance itself was a strong endorsement of marriage and family as Carthy anchors the group with his wife, singer Norma Waterson, and their daughter Eliza Carthy.

Despite some good-natured bickering over tuning and such (drawing sighs from accordionist Tim Van Eyken, the group’s lone non-clan member), this is definitely a family that plays together, double-helixed not only to each other, but entwined in hundreds of years of English tradition.

The parents, separately and together, have been leading figures of the English folk revival for some 40 years (he taught “Scarborough Fair” to Paul Simon). And now Eliza, with vibrantly dyed hair and facial piercings, is a rising star of progressive English folk with an affectingly personal new album, “Angels & Cigarettes,” moving in a more pop direction--a side she’ll showcase when she returns with her own band for concerts March 16 at the Getty Museum and March 17 at the Viper Room.

In a time when English folk has been overshadowed by its Celtic cousins from Scotland and Ireland, Friday’s performance was a revelation and reminder. Where Celtic music has been taken over by misty romanticism and New Age gloss, Waterson:Carthy’s traditions are as gritty as the soil of their farm in Yorkshire.

This is all underscored by Martin Carthy’s masterful, staccato guitar style, which provides accent, punctuation and pregnant pauses to his and Waterson’s earthy delivery of these poetic tales, enriched by Eliza’s smoother voice and lilting though robust fiddle. Theirs aren’t songs of myth, but of people--stoic yet passionate, beleaguered yet witty, longing and loving and, whatever era they’re rooted in, very much alive.