Captivating Celtic
FESTIVAL: Celtic Connections
MALCOLM BURNS tells us who's the cream of the Celtic music crop.
Glasgow's annual Celtic Connections Festival runs until February 4 and features an array of international talent.
This year, new artistic director Donald Shaw has kept the winning formula fresh and successful by combining new blood and old favourites.
Heeliegoleerie, Danny award winners at last year's Celtic Connections Open Stage, are a neat young trio. Fiddler Eilidh Steel composes many of their tunes. Mark Neal plays guitar and cittern and sings and Ali MacLeod beats rhythm on the djembe.
In a neat and friendly touch, aiming at a front room atmosphere, the band present the audience with chocolate digestive biscuits to eat during their set at the Piping Centre on Wednesday.
Their music is polished but far from sterile - a jazzy, syncopated, percussive guitar accompanies several quick medleys of reels. Neal has a faraway look while playing slower numbers such as The Lonely Whaler and also as he accompanies Steel's lyrical fiddle melody in Tune for Keith and Mary, written for a silver wedding.
There's an air of expectancy as guests John Doyle and Anna Massie take the stage. Highly regarded Dublin-born guitarist Doyle has been a star for over a decade, first in top Irish-US band Solas. Doyle's teaming with former Scottish Young Traditional Musician of the Year, multi-instrumentalist Massie, promises much.
Fortunately, the pair wear their virtuosity lightly and weave a captivating sound.
Left-handed Doyle opens on guitar, looking intense, but the music is relaxing. Massie follows him into the tune, initially pensive, her guitar soft.
Doyle moves into a jig and Massie accompanies, now smiling. Then she picks up the lead with him playing hard and fast against her.
Massie plays fiddle as Doyle sings I Know My Love - learned from Cork singer Jimmy Crowley - and he laughs as he falters on the second verse. She continues on the fiddle, leading with a set of marches and jigs to which he adds his trademark rhythm-doubling style and swooping bass harmonies.
"God help us with this one," jokes Doyle as they launch into a fiendishly complex version of O'Carolan's Draught, a breathtaking guitar duet which the pair conclude with a triumphant flourish.
A couple of numbers further and the pair have exhausted their planned set list, but they continue in busking mode, each calling out tunes and keys for the other to follow.
In a final set of tunes, Massie leads with guitar in the air In Dispraise of Whisky.
Wild applause forces an encore and they play a fascinating version of Wild Colonial Boy - not at all the usual pub chant. Doyle jokes: "We'll do whatever. It's a recipe for chaos." But they pull off a brilliant, blinding finale. And they make it sound so easy.
The Celtic Club, held every night during the festival at the city's Holiday Inn, is a hot ticket. For only £3.50 on a week-night, it's surely the best value in town.
Deep in the bowels of the hotel, the club kicks off well after the formal shows at around 11.30pm and the party rolls till the wee small hours.
There's no billing - you could see any of the top acts here, all doing a turn and mixing it up with each other, literally making musical Celtic Connections.
With the bar open until the bitter end, informal music sessions kicking off all around and even a stall selling aromatic curries, the club is the engine room of the festival.
Hosts Gibb Todd and Doris Rougvie sing and introduce the changing acts each night.
US folk singer Jim Page isn't on the official line-up, but plays at the club fresh from an anti-war demo in Edinburgh. He performs his well-known adaptation of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land as an anti-Bush anthem and Anna Mae, about the murder of Native American movement activist Anne Mae Pictou Aquash in 1976, as well as a version of Talking Glasgow Blues. Page is touring around southern Britain until February 4 and is well worth checking out.
Uncle Earl is an all-female band from the US that plays a compelling brand of downhome old-time pre-bluegrass string band music.
The fiddle, banjo, guitar and mandolin are augmented by a cracking double bass player. In keeping with the connections theme, they get what seems like half the club, all the other performers - among them US banjo legend Bela Fleck - up on stage to join them. The other half are up dancing. If anyone in London fancies a hoedown tonight, they are playing the Spitz in Spitalfields.
Galician band Berroguetto bring a jazzy, sometimes Gypsy, sometimes Arabic feel to the club. The band combines a driving guitar sound, backed with fiddle, accordion and bodhran-like drum, to accompany their charismatic female singer, whose guttural words are reminiscent of Gaelic mouth music. Perhaps another Celtic Connection? Then, the singer takes up her Galician pipes and more dancing ensues.
Next up are the Tim Edey Trio, featuring the breathtaking New Zealand harmonica virtuoso Brendan Power and British bodhran player Lucy Randall. Tim himself is a master of the melodeon, among many instruments, and he regularly plays with Celtic supergroup Session A9, which also features festival artistic director Donald Shaw. Their set features a guest spot by fine Irish singer Brendan Begley.
And so it goes on. The Celtic Club continues in this vein every night during the festival.
When Brian McNeill of Battlefield Band fame introduces Dick Gaughan, who, in turn, introduces Archie Fisher, all in the first half-hour, you cannot deny that you are in the presence of singers of "songs of conscience," which was the name this spectaclar show at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Tuesday.
McNeill and Gaughan even play an "instrumental of conscience," Hamish Henderson's Refusal, named for the late great man's principled rejection of an OBE - and perhaps it is a sly dig at Fisher, who was named MBE this new year.
Even in this exalted company, however, some of the newest and truest songs of conscience come from Dublin singer Mick Hanly.
Highlights are Cold Cold World, about hypocritical neighbours in a winter freeze, and, especially, Shellakabookee Boy, an intensely complex, personal song about his US stepson, who became a marine and took part in the assault on Fallujah in Iraq.
Against such concentrated anguish, Cape Breton singer Gordie Sampson's Nashville excursions sound painfully light.
British socialist singer Roy Bailey injects some more conscience music, including a thoughtful rendition of Leon Rosselson's Palaces of Gold.
Tom Paxton takes the stage saying: "It's nice to be home again. I'm proud of my Scottish roots."
The mix is conscientiously light - a couple of drinking songs, a couple of lullabies written for his daughters over 30 years ago, then Marry Me Again, for his wife - until he stops to consider his start in the folk business, when the record labels told him: "You're not going anywhere, you have no focus, singing children's songs, love songs and those communistic songs."
Tom says: "Well, I think I was going somewhere. I'm here with you now. Anyway, here's a new song. About Iraq."
And he launches into an anti-war anthem: "Some might call it folly. Some might call it self-defence. Some might take it further. But today, sad to say, I call it murder."
Then, the rest all join Paxton onstage, apart from Gaughan, who's nipped off to another gig. As the whole company finish with a run through The Last Thing on My Mind, The Broom O'The Cowdenknowes and Ramblin' Boy, it all feels like a rather grand old folk club.
And there's more. The festival continues with dozens of gigs plus workshops and more right up to Sunday February 4. Take a look at the box on the left for highlights.
And there's more
Here are some picks from the rest of Celtic Connections.
SATURDAY
Lisa Knapp and Maeve Mackinnon
2pm at the Piping Centre
Maeve is not only a rising young Gaelic singer, but her political family background means she's a Morning Star supporter too.
SUNDAY JANUARY 28
Songs of Conscience with Odetta and Thea Gilmore
7.30pm at the Royal Concert Hall
An all-female bill supporting a folk legend in a second show under this banner.
Young Traditional Musician of the Year Final 2007
5pm at City Halls
Six fine young musicians bid for this very prestigious award.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2
Rosanne Cash
7.30pm at the Royal Concert Hall
Daughter of Johnny and a star in her own right.
Back of the Moon /D'imh/Buille
8pm at the Royal Concert Hall
A powerful triple bill.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4
Kathleen MacInnes
8pm at the Piping Centre
A beautiful Gaelic voice.
ON EVERY DAY
Danny Kyle's Open Stage
5pm at the Royal Concert Hall
Named in memory of a favourite Scottish folk proselytiser, this free daily show is your chance to catch tomorrow's stars today as up-and-coming acts compete for a coveted Danny award and a support slot on next year's festival.
Unfortunately, some other highlights, such as John Martyn's performance of his classic album Solid Air on Monday January 29 and The Peatbog Faeries gig on Friday February 2, have sold out well in advance.
Box office: (0141) 353-8000.
WEB LINK:www.celticconnections.com
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