THE Platform timetable at Pocklington Arts Centre's annual festival of music, comedy and beers at The Old Station began and ended with American country singer-songwriters, Lucinda Williams and Gretchen Peters. Chalk and cheese characters maybe, but equally concerned at the new intolerant age of Brexit and Trump.

At 63, Lucinda Williams is the crash-and-burn, Keith Richards end of cool, a rock chick in black jacket and jeans, huge crucifix tugging at her neck, Louisiana drawl stretching like a Dali painting, with a songwriting gift that grows ever sharper as the years pass, much as Springsteen, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen still have more to say.

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Lucinda Williams

Williams has hit another peak with her double album The Ghosts Of Highway 20, whose mature songs were sprinkled liberally through Tuesday's set in the summer heat, intertwined with such career landmarks as Car Wheels On A Gravel Road and Drunken Angel.

The chat between songs was amusing, spiky and revelatory, her enjoyment so apparent, her appreciation of her audience so contrasting with her Grand Opera House gig in 2013, as she laid the ghost of that strange, strange night in York, with sublime versions of Bitter Memory and Foolishness, a demolition of Donald Trump and a magnificent band.

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Crissie Rhodes of The Shires, performing at the Platform Festival. Picture: Tim Nicholson

The Platform Saturday had bands and blossoming acts playing in perpetual motion on Platforms One, Two and Three (outdoors), an admirable feat of organisation by Janet Farmer, James Duffy and all the staff on a hot, hot day. You had to arrive early to catch country pop's rising English stars The Shires, showcasing songs from their imminent second Nashville album alongside last year's big and bouncy hits.

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Joe Dunwell of The Dunwells. Picture: Tim Nicholson

Platform One then became the Yorkshire Platform for the spiralling choruses of the American-honed Leeds band The Dunwells and the star-in-waiting Jack Sedman, fronting Bridlington's Seafret with vocal grace, charm and the looks that usually lead to mass exposure, here working off the hooks of guitarist and keyboards player Harry Draper. Bigger stages surely await.

Danny & The Champions Of The World won gongs galore at the first British Americana awards and Danny George Wilson has one of those bands, like Rockpile, Dr Feelgood or The Blockheads, that are better still when playing live, their blues burning fiercely.

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Badly Drawn Boy in his Boris Johnson T-shirt. Picture: Tim Nicholson

Badly Drawn Boy had specially made a Boris Johnson T-shirt for his solo set on guitar and piano, calling him an imbecile in an evening slot with plenty of political pep; pride at musicians seeking peace and harmony; a protest song ten years in the making, The Race Is Run; and a Bob Dylan cover, I'll Keep it With Mine. He may have unnerved some with his bluntness, but good, we need such voices right now.

Gretchen Peters and her band ended the night with a more controlled reaction to the world around us, expressing surprise at the Brexit vote of a country noted for its stability, while finding love as the unifying force that must prevail. How right she is.