Live review: Static Roots Festival, Oberhausen, Germany: 7th-8th July 2023

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While Blabber’n’Smoke didn’t make it to this year’s Static Roots Festival, organised by our good friend Dietmar Liebecke, another good friend, Ken Beveridge did attend and he has graciously allowed us to post his thoughts on the weekend here…

The temperature is high as I walk the last few yards of my stroll from my hotel to the building that is hosting Static Roots 2023. It was only going to get hotter and hotter as the two days of the festival grew from hot, to sweltering to finally off the thermometer, as act after brilliant act raised not only the musical bar but the soaring heat of brilliance. Greetings are exchanged with organiser Dietmar Liebecke and MC Jeff Robson plus sundry friends from Glasgow, Kilkenny, Morecambe, Germany, Spain and more.

The first act to grace the stage were One Eleven Heavy, a band of mixed nationalities but with a sound that comes straight from the heart of Americana. A blistering set of psychedelic tinged rock numbers with hints of Little Feat, Santana, Steely Dan and The Grateful Dead. A marvellous opening act featuring great, tuneful songs and outstanding solos from all members of the band and a great start to the weekend.

Next to greet the audience is the waif-like Evangeline Gentle. A Canadian singer (via Peterhead). Evangeline played this festival last year accompanied by a band. This time she appears solo, which, for me suited her songs far better. She sings with an openness and honesty that catches you by the gut and transports you into her own emotional landscape. Fantastic songs from a fantastic singer.

This year’s act playing in the esteemed ‘Willie Meighan’ spot is Rowan, a three piece Irish-based (obviously) band, who, to me, were more ‘indie’ than Americana but, hey, none the worse for that. Both rocky and jingly-jangly they inhabited the stage as well as any of their coveted-spot predecessors such as the Midnight Union Band or The Barflies.

And so the stage is set for the evening’s final. Appearing for their third Static Roots in a row is the mighty and wonderful Cordovas. I heard someone mention a new-to-me ‘genre’ last week – Alternative Country Rock – a title that so aptly describes this band. From start to finish they play hi-energy, guitar-driven songs that have the crowd on their feet throughout. The two main men, Joe Firstman and Lucca Soria sound like they could have played for The Allman Brothers. A great finale to a wonderful day.

The next day begins with a super Dutch trio of female singers performing exquisite acapella harmonies. Woolf began their set a trifle nervously, but once they hit their stride, they had the whole audience in raptures. A fine, gentle start to the day.

Time to notch the gears up, if only slightly. The next act on stage were the husband and wife team of Mikaela and Jordan Burchill playing under the band name Beth / / James. Yet another tremendous duo playing exactly the sort of songs you would expect from a pair of singers from Austin, Texas. Their set is peppered with country-tinged ballads and rockers alike. Their obvious love of each other is evident in every song they perform. None more so than their final effort – a very special rendering of The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Dow‘. A perfect end to a really super set.

Singer song-writer Dylan Earl is next up. Dylan hails from Arkansas, USA, and his country-tinged set reflect his strong passion for his homelands. Fresh from well received sets at Black Deer and Maverick festivals he is in superb story telling form.

This festival is one that just keeps giving and giving. With nary a moment to have a break for a bite to eat, a beer or a blether, the crowd are back in place to listen to the next performers, the upbeat and irrepressible The Hello Darlins. This Canadian band cover the whole gamut of whatever we know as Americana: a bit of blues here, a bit of old-time country there, some 1972 Laurel Canyon inspired songs over there. They play with great zest and enjoyment and have in Candace Lacina, a whole-hearted, stir-them-up dynamo of a front woman, who is amongst the best I have encountered. A very special set, in particular their blistering rendition of Neil Young’s Helpless.

So where to next? We have been to Ireland; we have been to Canada; we have looked in on America; enjoyed a trip into The Netherlands; how about some Norwegian. Please welcome Malin Pettersen.

Malin has broadened her range since I last saw her in Hackney two or three years ago. Both her peaceful easy voice and her songwriting have grown much stronger and more diverse. No longer constrained by genre she treats the audience to a pot-pourri of love ballads, R&B influenced rockers and the set is topped off by the marvellous Cry If I Want To.

An accident with a beer glass, the requirement to take in some solids and having seen them quite a few times before meant I missed the next act, Ferris & Sylvester. However, by all accounts they were excellent.

And so we reach the last act of this already fabulous festival. The mighty John Blek & The Rats. No strangers to The Static Roots audience, John and his band perform a tour-de-force of a set. With rocking blues, gospel-tinged sing-alongs and thought-provoking ballads; Blek has the audience in the palm of his hands. The resurrected Rats maintain a high-intensity back drop to a superb show-stopping performance. The highlight of the Festival; a festival where the bar was already set at an exceptionally high level.

For your writer, Static Roots forms part of a trilogy of events, including The Rambling Roots festival in High Wycombe and The Kilkenny Rhythm and Roots Festival. At all three the standard just keeps improving and improving. This year’s Static Roots line up was just incredible given the number of ‘unknown’ to me acts. It can only go onwards and upwards. I suggest that you book your tickets for 2024 now.

Thanks to Ken Beveridge for the words and thanks also to Pit Schultz for allowing us to share his pictures. And here’s a pic of Ken selling his book to Blabber’n’Smoke a few years back.

The Primevals. The Dividing Line. Triple Wide Records.

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40 years on from their formation, Glasgow’s The Primevals remain committed to their original sins – a love of garage rock and the scuzzy underbelly of psychedelia along with hints of free jazz and kraut rock- on their latest release The Dividing Line. It’s the seventh album they’ve released since their relaunch in 2011 and, as with its predecessors, it  shows that the band are more than happy to grow old disgracefully with no gentle slipping into the night for them.

The album opens with a throbbing bass line and electric piano on The Drop, immediately reminding one of The Doors although Morrison and his chums never sounded as ferocious as this. They return to The Doors influence on Suckin’ On Nothing Street although here it’s the more poetic side of Morrison which is envisaged. Being The Primevals they can’t resist taking the song into a nihilistic underground and while singer Michael Rooney turns in his finest Morrison croon on the quieter moments (and just about admits to stealing the melody) a gargantuan riff dominates the song.

There’s a Beefheartian soul surely within the pumping pomp of Sonic Highway with Rooney wailing away about a beast on the loose as the band play like a Martian blues band high on whatever Martians get high on. Drifting Away is more straightforward as it’s propelled by the barrelling rhythm section with the guitars set to stun and Hang Loose hits you in a similar manner with the band whipping up a mighty storm fuelled by a stone cold solid organ groove and more guitars than you could shake a stick at. Grit & Grime opens this groove up somewhat with thrashed acoustic guitars and a massed vocal chorus popping up amidst the musical mayhem while Rest In Power, an obituary for a departed comrade, allows guitarists Tom Rafferty and Martyn Rodger to indulge in a brief moment of Eastern mysticism. As for the oblique title of WTFHTU, a truly demented rocker, listen closely to the freaky coda at the end for all to be revealed.

High Street is a rare moment of biography from Rooney as he recalls his Glasgow upbringing, close to a prison which was the scene of an infamous shoot out (years before he was around mind you). If you want to really want know who influenced him then listen to the litany of sixties icons he references here. Most striking is the apocalyptic creep of The Will Of The People, a close companion to the claustrophobic songs of Second Nature, the band’s pandemic album. Here they prowl and snarl with poisonous guitars snaking around the gritty urban background. The album closes with some Farfisa pumped garage rock on Walking At Night with all cylinders on fire. Here they approach the feral ferocity of The Gun Club on a grand close to what is another mighty album from The Primevals.

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Zach Aaron. This Lovely War

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An actual rodeo riding cowboy, Zach Aaron thrilled us back in 2020 with his album Fill Dirt Wanted to the extent that it was one of our favourite albums of that year. While that album mixed his Texas roots with some Oklahoma dirt (with a Woody Guthrie influence well to the fore) along with a fine dash of dark humour, his new album, This Lovely War, cleaves more to the folky singer songwriter tradition of Guy Clark and John Prine while Terry Allen hides in the wings. It’s a more full bodied disc with Fill Dirt Wanted’s spare instrumentation replaced by full band set ups laying the bed rock for Aaron’s sardonic songs.

The album opens on a grand note with Aaron and stumblebum accompaniment – plucked banjo and squirreling guitars – regretting the march of progress which has cast aside western traditions on May The Iron Horse Get Fed. Nostalgic and suffused with regret, the song captures some of that longing for simpler times which fed much of Bogdanovich’s Last Picture Show. Whether the protagonist of the next song, Fall Down Drunk, is a victim of this is perhaps moot but he’s certainly down in his cups as Aaron delivers a magnificent portrait of a drunk who see-saws between despair and hope, gulping down last orders while reckoning that Jesus could save him if “he could only get him on the phone.” It’s a classic George Jones like beer stained confessional and Aaron delivers it perfectly, reminding one of Sturgill Simpson’s reclamation of classic country mores. Closely allied is the tremulous It’s You, a more redemptive song which finds Aaron rising from the gutter having found a soul mate who will take him forward from his Kristofferson like Sunday morning comedowns. It’s followed by the sweet keening sounds of Songbird which suggests that the lovers can rise above their problems with Aaron giving the song a touch of classic Willie Nelson circa Red Headed Stranger vibe.

Elsewhere, Aaron digs into history on the dark waltz of Someone’s Got To Bleed, the dainty two step instrumentation something of a danse macabre on this bloody tale. Lightening the mood there’s Aaron’s version of Marty Robbins’ Cowboy In A Continental Suit, a fine western morality tale based on a rodeo and Aaron closes the album with another rodeo tale. Latigo Joe is a talking blues about a cowboy convict offered a chance to ride a wild horse which ends in his swift demise.  It’s a throwback to the type of song which typified the excellence of Fill Dirt Wanted and it’s the topping here on another excellent album from Zach Aaron.

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