Kelly and Woolley
Album: Papers In My Shoe
Label: Clunk & Rattle
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.kellyandwoolley.co.uk/

Matt Kelly and Gary Woolley are long-standing folkies from Cambridge and Hertford. On first encounter, a CD primarily of Cajun music from these guys might not sound like an enthralling prospect, but this is a lively CD, played with feeling and gusto, and if some of the playing feels like it's from south of Watford rather than the Mason-Dixon line, well, that's where they're from.

Their accents certainly pass muster, to my Caledonian ear, on the Cajun traditional songs, and their own contributions "The Train Never Stops" (Woolley) and "When I Was Young" (Kelly) are not bad at all, the former especially recalling a stripped-down Levellers.

Their version of "Jock o' Hazeldean" (based on the Dick Gaughan version) features a nicely sliding fiddle. Likewise their version of Nic Jones' interpretation of "Farewell to the Gold" is a more than respectable tilt at a master's windmill. Kelly and Wooley are sessioneers of long-standing, and this disc suggests that an evening in their company over a pint or three would not be wasted.

Harry Thomson