30th Shetland Folk Festival
Aith Public Hall, Saturday 1 May 2010
The packed public hall in the village of Aith, huddled at the head of a voe on the western side of the Mainland and around 21 miles out of Lerwick played host to this event.
Local band Kansa were first on stage, the tight harmonies of Karlyn Grains and Norma Wishart worked well on Tim O’Brien’s Look Down That Lonesome Road enhanced by the skilful intertwining of Angelina Baker from the fiddle of Stewart Grains.
One of the pleasures of the Shetland Folk Festival programming is that the visitor often sees the same artist in different setting. So it was with Eva Hren and Sladcore whose performance was altogether more relaxed than the previous evening.
Local lad Terry Balfour provided variety with a solo set of his own indie-inspired acoustic songs before Bódega took the stage. Driven by Ross Couper’s powerful fiddle and Tia Files’ inventive guitarwork, Bódega delivered a dynamic and varied performance. The set moved comfortably between classic and modern, starting with well a delivered Peurt-a-Beul, through to a jig set from the prolific pen of Tia Files which itself grew from a delicate guitar and harp duo to a complex full blown hooley. A touching rendition of another Tim O’Brien song Lost Little Children hinted at further potential in Norrie McIver’s vocal skills and a sensitive side to Ross Couper’s fiddle.
Despite a number of personnel changes, The Foghorn Stringband stick to the oldtime formula that earned them an enviable reputation as the best in that particular business. Around the core duo of Caleb Klauder and Stephen "Sammy" Lind, the refreshed line-up includes the talent of French Canadian bassist Nadine Landry whose Cajun influences brought a new dimension and whose contribution made the classic Shake Sugaree the highlight of the set. The limitations of the ‘round the mike’ format, so popular among stringbands, were clear this evening with guitar and mandolin sadly virtually lost in the mix.
Royal British Legion Lerwick, Afternoon Concert Sunday 2 May 2010
By the third day of the festival the word Shetlag had entered common usage. Morga, despite playing through the previous night at the Festival club and apologising for having had no sleep at all, showed that the best cure for Shetlag is more tunes, played faster. Recalling the great Irish bands of the seventies, the staple fare of jigs, slides and reels was punctuated by barndance tunes written by Irish imigrants in the 1930's. The button accordion of Barry Brady, full of delightfully deft flicks and fills worked well alongside Danny Diamond's fiddle while [the] Jonas Fromseier's work on tenor banjo and particularly Greek bouzouki added an interesting quality. McDermott's Reels showed the tight interplay between the band, the melody handed easily from instrument to instrument, with the bodhran of Dominic Keogh keeping the whole in order.
The profile of Swedish sister trio Baskery has grown since their appearances at the Celtic Connections festival and with their raw energy and direct lyrics, the appeal is plain to see. Greta Bondesson's overdriven six string bottleneck guitar-banjo gives the band its a unique sound and her simultaneous work on the kick drum, harmonica and vocals marks her out as a superb musician and the core of the band. Some moments of tight vocal harmony called to mind that other great sister trio The Roches but at other times the delivery became decidedly ragged as rock-chick posturing took precedence over playing. Baskery have the potential to push back the some of the mustier boundaries of folk music, or to storm the stages of the summer rock festivals. Trying to do both would be a mistake.