Reviews
Artist:Tanglefoot
Venue:Bournemouth Folk Club
Town:Bournemouth
Date:01/06/08
Sunday night, once again found me at Bournemouth Folk Club. Top of tonight's bill was a Canadian band, Tanglefoot, towards the end of their extensive tour of the UK.
Tanglefoot, have some twenty odd years and half a dozen or so albums behind them. They were Best Vocal Group in the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Awards and have had one of their cds, "The Music In The Wood" taken into space aboard the space shuttle Endeavor back in April 2001.
As we would discover later, the band has been through several changes over the years, people leaving and coming back again, new musicians joining. Rhythm guitarist, Steve Ritchie, was there at the start, Bob, the keyboard player, had a massive three weeks with the band as regular keyboard player and Steve's brother, Rob, couldn't make the tour.
I'd missed the support due to my late running and was there in time to visit the bar before Tanglefoot started the first of their two sets that evening. To be honest, I have to say, two songs into their set, I was feeling decidedly under-whelmed.
In fairness to the band, that might have been because hirsute, standup bass player, Al Parrish had popped a string on his bass, but I was also struggling with the slightly twee and almost cliché posturing. It, briefly sounded like cod Canadiana, if there's such a word. I was half expecting them to break into "The Lumberjack Song", they didn't.
It wasn't until a pause after that second song, when Steve and Al went into raconteur mode, whilst Al changed the broken string, that I realised I wasn't hear for a gig, this was going to be a show.
It's not something you get a sense of from the band's cd, but this wasn't just about performing, it was a performance. Once that clicked the whole set took on a completely different persona.
Tanglefoot are a band that are proud of their country and tradition. They want to evangelise it's attitude and it's people. They do a song about a band foreclosing on the farm that had been in the Ritchie family since 1875, "When Dad And Uncle Archie Lost The Farm".
The introduction was almost as long as the song, which was more upbeat and witty than I'd been expecting, but between the intro and the song, you probably understood more about the problems of rural Canada than you would have in an hour's documentary, and been more entertained.
The precursor also made an interesting point, which may explain the difference between Canada and the UK. 'You think a hundred miles is a long distance. We think a hundred years is a long time.'
The pattern had been set for the evening. Across both sets the band played we found out more about Canada, it's people and what informed the national persona than you would have thought possible.
The songs were strongly written, they represented the mood. Steve, Al and multi instrumentalist, Terry Young also provided most of the vocal, but all contributed to various harmonies within the songs. One of the most stunning pieces of the evening was performed in front of the stage as five piece harmony, without microphones.
Fittingly the song was about environmental issues and how using things a little less can make all the difference. It was greeted with rapturous applause.
Terry then appeared to make a heartfelt plea for the environment, make people thing more about the weight they carried in their cars. It turned into a shameless plug when he added, 'We've got a lot of cds and dvds that we're driving around. You can do your bit for the environment by buying one this evening.'
Fiddle/viola player Sandra Swannell got to introduce a song about a woman that built her own bridge across a river so she could get the ingredients for maple syrup without risking dropping them wading the river.
Tanglefoot saved the best for last, with a song about a local festival in a village that's been declared a world heritage site, "Lunenburg Skies". A great way to sign off what had been a highly entertaining evening.
Pictures Paul Savine