Blue Rose Code/ Norrie McCulloch. Fallen Angels Club. Drygate Glasgow Thursday 3rd December

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The hipster craft beer domain that is Tenants’ fine addition to Glasgow’s East End was pretty packed on Thursday night as fans of Blue Rose Code flocked to Drygate for the official (north of the border) unveiling of Grateful, the single that is formal notification of a new Blue Rose Code album due in the New Year. East and west were united here as the Edinburgh folk were through in droves joining the Glaswegians in what was something of a celebration, for once a hashtag (#grateful) taking on a real presence.

Ross Wilson who is Blue Rose Code was joined tonight by Wrenne on vocals, John Lowrie, keyboard, Wild Lyle Watt, guitar, Nico Bruce, double bass and Colin Steele on trumpet. A superb outfit, they came across as a whirlwind on the driving opener, In The Morning, Steele giving notice that his trumpet was going to be to the fore tonight before a mesmerising segue into Silent Drums, Watt’s guitar scattering notes galore. A fine reading of Hugh MacDiarmid’s poem Scotland followed before Wilson dipped into the new album for a glorious and rousing love song which displayed the chemistry between him and Wrenne as they vocally sparred. A fluid line-up, the band alternated between their full set up to a trio with some songs featuring Wilson alone on stage. Favourites such as True Ways Of Knowing, Come The Springtime and Pokesdown Waltz had the audience in thrall with the set closer I See The Light summoning up a fine communal sense of Celtic soul.

For an encore Wilson paid tribute to the late Michael Marra and his hometown for the night with a moving rendition of Mother Glasgow before welcoming another of his band of brothers, Angus Lyons, on stage for a heartfelt and very moving Grateful. It was a triumphant show with Wilson scattering all notions of east and west aside. Edina or Mother Glasgow, we’re essentially all the same and the crowd beamed with pride for this erstwhile son of Scotland who is invigorating, soulful and above all else a magnificent writer and performer.

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There was excellent support in the form of Norrie McCulloch, another artist on the verge of releasing a new album, the follow up to his excellent Old Lovers Junkyard. With Iain Sloan of The Wynntown Marshals on pedal steel and Dave McGowan from Belle and Sebastian/Teenage Fanclub on double bass McCulloch slipped comfortably into his set with the mellow Still Looking For You, his harmonica and the pedal steel yearning while Call Me Home featured a fine solo from Sloan. The trio conjured a wonderful bucolic sound buoyed by McGowan’s burbling bass lines with the steel guitar the sugar topping on the already sweet melodies. There were several songs from the forthcoming album, These Mountain Blues, including New Joke and the title song that reaffirmed this writer’s belief that McCulloch is currently one of our finest writers, his Ayrshire roots and working class background woven into superior countrified folk songs.

Blue Rose Code. Grateful EP.

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We’ve been eagerly awaiting the new album from Blue Rose Code and this week a taster was unveiled in the shape of a four song EP, Grateful, in anticipation of And Lo! The Bird Is On The Wing which will be released in January with a launch show at Celtic Connections. Following on from the acclaimed The Ballads Of Peckham Rye, Grateful is further evidence of Ross Wilson’s magisterial song writing while the performances are simply stunning.

The title song is a sumptuous slow-paced celebration of life with Wilson crooning in best John Martyn style over stately piano and keening pedal steel, his voice superbly buttressed by the graceful presence of Gospel singers, The McCrary Sisters. It weeps and exults equally and bodes well for the new album. A video of the song has been released comprising snippets sent to Wilson by fans who were asked to record their reasons for being grateful: it’s quite moving.

Midnight’s Mass In Suffolk’s Breast has a Christmas theme and its spritely pace with no sleigh bells in sight is reason enough to welcome it but again Wilson comes up with a winner. The jazz tinged folk verses recall Robert Kirby’s arrangements for Nick Drake especially on the piano playing while the chorus soars with celebration. My Heart, The Sun is a remix by James Yuill (who remixed Blue Rose Code’s Whitechapel some years ago), its throbbing beat and synthed sounds showcasing Wilson’s eclectic tastes while his words remain poetic. The EP closes with a magnificent performance of In The Morning recorded live for Radio Scotland’s Roddy Hart show. Playing as a six piece with piano, cello, drums, double bass and guitars the piece billows gently along on a perfect breeze of Celtic folk, it ripples and eddies wonderfully and captures well the live Blue Rose Code experience.

A fine taster then for the forthcoming album, the EP is available here and Blue Rose Code are launching it with shows in London and Glasgow on the 2nd and 3rd of December. All tour dates are here

 

Jim Dead & The Doubters. Pray For Rain

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Been a while since we heard from Jim Dead, Glasgow’s premier purveyor of dry gulch rock. His last missive from the missions was  I’m Not Lost back in 2013 where he and his compadre Craig Hughes plugged in with a crackling intensity. On Pray For Rain Dead has resurrected his occassional backing band The Doubters (on this occasion comprised of Stuart Begley on guitar; Frankie Coia on bass and Tommy Clark on drums ) and with his new posse in tow seems to have been spending some time in a bar with a jukebox populated with early ZZ Top and Creedence discs. It’s a cantankerous listen, scribbled with quarrelling guitars and a heavy bass/drum thud, Dead’s voice wailing like a biblical prophet. While his previous releases have always had a whiff of Morricone inspired dusty vistas here the gloves are off and the band are howling at the moon.

One of the highlights of Dead’s previous full length album, Ten Fires, was the loping death sentence of John Landstrom Must Die and it’s this song that is the template for Pray For Rain. Dead and Begley’s guitars spar throughout be it the on the jagged juggernaut that is the opening song, Wooden Kimono, the sludge ridden blues riff of the title song or the evil slide opening to You Coulda Said, the latter especially invigorating. There’s evidence of Dead’s allegiance to metal with Lovesick Blues sounding like an unholy marriage of Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer as Dead screams, “You don’t love me, I don’t like me too” over an almighty riff. And overall the riff is king here as Dead & The Doubters demolish the melodies on their steamroller ride with May The Road Rise an almighty example.

There are glimpses of Dead’s earlier incarnations. Crows On The Wire is a jaunty country rock romp (although it’s wired to the moon with its zinging guitar lines) and Home returns to his role as a shamanistic weatherman singing, “There’s a wind coming in from the west, woman by my side says she knows best. It’s taken all I have just to find a place where I can stop and have a rest.” It opens up with a resigned air, slowly jangled guitar over a slow beat before an excellent fuzzed guitar solo weighs in. This yin/yan dynamic persists throughout the song with Dead sounding increasingly desperate. The album closes with the slow burn of I’m Not Lost (a song that wasn’t on the EP of the same name) that harks back to the Neil Young like epics of Ten Fires. A seven minute long miasma of thrashing and squalling guitars with a Crazy Horse backbeat it pummels the listener into surrender.

Jim Dead & The Doubters will be playing at the album release show at the 13th Note in Glasgow on Friday 4th December with support from Craig Hughes’ Dog Howl Moon. If Dead can summon up the intensity he’s captured here it should be a fine night.

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Joe Nisbet Jr. The Gospel According To Mr. Niz.

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Listening to The McCrary Sisters’ vocals on the new single from Blue Rose Code reminded me of their blistering show back in August at Perth’s Southern Fried Festival. This also reminded me of the stellar work carried out by their Scottish band and in particular the guitar work of Joe Nisbet Jr, guitar work which had also graced Ag’s Connolly’s show a few days earlier. Nisbet is a bit of a hidden treasure. He’s worked extensively with The Proclaimers and China Crisis and is the regular go to player for Dick Gaughan and Justin Currie. He’s the one bending the strings and playing those country licks on Ags Connolly’s excellent album How About Now and was up on stage with Dougie McLean for the closing song of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Caledonia.

Seems like Mr. Nisbet and his buddy, bass player Nico Bruce, are like a Scots version of the wrecking crew, laying down some wicked music but forever in the background. I was intrigued to discover then that he had released an album at the back end of 2013 called The Gospel According To Mr. Niz, a copy of which he gracefully provided Blabber’n’Smoke with. The intrigue grew when some Googling unveiled the story behind the album of which he says, “Took 4 days to record but had been 30 years in the making.” It turns out that Joe Nisbet Sr. was an evangelical preacher and when Joe Jr. was a kid he accompanied his dad on a two-month tour of the American South with pop preaching each night accompanied by Gospel choirs. This, says Nisbet, was, “the beginning of a lifelong fascination with the classic sound of the black gospel quintets of the 40’s and 50’s.” It abided during his tenures with China Crisis and The Proclaimers but when Justin Currie persuaded Nisbet to add his vocals on Currie’s songs and then to sing himself he was finally able to make his own Gospel record which we will now delve into.

The Gospel According to Mr. Niz has 13 songs, the majority based on vocal quartet songs from the 40s and 50s with two covers  of Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi Fred McDowell. There are no choirs or harmonies here however with Nisbet handling the vocals himself. For a guitarist who doesn’t sing he does a fine job here, his voice at times recalling John Mayall in the late sixties proving that white men can sing the blues even though the accent is sometimes not spot on. However and remarkably there are times when he almost reminds one of a young Elvis crooning the gospel, most notably on Maybe It’s You and Peace In The Valley. It’s a stripped back album, the basic set up being Nisbet on guitar, Nico Bruce on double bass and drums from Keith Burns while Neil Weir adds trumpet on occasion. Producer Phil Cunningham (of Hogmanay fame) captures the bare sound as if they were in the Sun studios, the bass snapping and slapping, the guitar threshing like Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s. There are moments however when Nisbet’s guitar wizardry is astounding, the shimmering effects on Walk With Me up there with Ry Cooder’s brooding soundtrack work.

Nisbet, not an evangelist himself, takes liberties throughout, changing and adding lyrics to suit his take on these songs. The listening experience is greatly enhanced by his notes on the songs which are enlightening and witty such as his comment on his pulverising version of I John which he says, “opens with John the Divine on Patmos and ends with Robert Fripp in Berlin.” His rendition of Joe Louis which incorporates The Walls Of Jericho as originally sung by the Dixieaires is a delight and the one occasion here when he’s compelled to add some harmonies.  While songs such as Samson & Delilah, I Am A Pilgrim and Peace In The Valley will be familiar to many I’m sure that aficionados of gospel music will find that Nesbit has delivered a very singular take on the genre, a take that is inspiring and a great listen.

I’m sure there’s more to tell here, the image of a wee Edinburgh lad in tented prayer meetings in the rural South 30 years ago surely deserves some inquiry, a sure fire documentary for the Beeb perhaps. Anyway, I’ll leave it to Mr. Nesbit Jr. to tell it more eloquently than I can manage.

Buy The Gospel According To Mr. Niz here

Donna Ulisse. Hard Cry Moon.

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Bluegrass singer/songwriter Donna Ulisse’s latest album, Hard Cry Moon is a wonderfully down-home piece of work. Dedicated to her grandfathers, one Italian, one American, she sings about her memories of these men on several of the songs here while the remainder are effectively tinted with nostalgia. Conjuring up a more innocent time Ulisse and her players (Casey Campbell, mandolin; Dennis Crouch, upright bass; Stuart Duncan, fiddle and Scott Vestal on banjo) weave together a wonderfully delicate tapestry of sounds with her voice evocative and warm. Assisting her on harmonies is husband Rick Stanley, cousin of the famed duo Carter and Ralph.

The album opens with the spritely Black Train which positively belts along in true bluegrass style with some scintillating instrumental breaks. Ulisse then delivers the first of her eulogies here with Working On the C&O describing her grandfather’s 50 years working on the railroad,  initially as a “gandy dancer.” She explains this term in the liner notes and the song is a fine example of honouring and remembering a generation who worked harder than most of us could ever imagine. Her liner notes also explain her ode to her Italian “papa” who died when she was aged just seven, her abiding memories of him belonging to time spent in his well tended garden. The song, Papa’s Garden is a heart tugging piece which one could well imagine Dolly Parton singing sharing as it does Parton’s love of family narrative. In between there’s a fine song, We’re Gonna Find A Preacher which one imagines is Ulisse’s idea of romance around her grandparents’ time and which is delivered with a fine patina evoking old times, the fiddle sawing away over plinking guitar and banjo as the couple “with his daddy’s suit and my mama’s gown” plan to elope.

There’s more memories on It Could have Been The Mandolin where Ulisse sings about the joys of hearing Bluegrass on the radio while she covers Whispering Pines, a song she has long loved. Elsewhere she just delivers some excellent songs such as the very fine title song which has the makings of a classic heartbreak song. Away from the comfort of the majority of the album there’s a sense of danger on the spooky The River’s Running Free while Ain’t That A Pity is a rapid fire bluegrass workout. The album ends with the very gentle I’ll Sleep In Peace at Night with Ulisse joined on harmonies by Fayssoux McLean, a veteran of Emmylou Harris sessions.

While Hard Cry Moon is a fine example of the bluegrass Ulisse there’s space here to mention an album she slipped out earlier this year called The Songwriter In Me. Issued in conjunction with a book she’s written about her song writing it consists of demos which are in stark contrast to her fully realised projects. It’s a riveting listen and places Ulisse firmly in the tradition of singers and writers such as Diana Jones and is well worth checking out.

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Brent Best. Your Dog, Champ. At The Helm Records/Last Chance Records

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There was an interesting buzz amongst some of the online Americana community when news of this album’s release was announced earlier this year. Naturally folk were keen to hear Brent Best again after a five year layoff, after all his band, Slobberbone were up there with the Drive By Truckers as an ass kicking roots rock outfit with author Stephen King name checking them as one of his favourites. In addition there was a degree of relief with the album having been crowd funded some years back with some folk fearing that the disc was destined to join the realms of fabled “lost” records. Truth was that Best was beset by a series of calamities that would have derailed anyone and by the time he was back on his feet he and his label, Last Chance Records, went out of their way to contact the original funders with Best penning an open letter explaining the five year wait and asking lost backers to contact him. Released a few months ago in the States Your Dog, Champ, it’s fair to say, more than repaid the wait with the reviews generous in their acclaim. The UK release is the first fruit of a promising collaboration between US label Last Chance and Brighton based At The Helm Records with some further delights promised.

First thing to say about the album is that it’s not the old rambunctious swagger of Slobberbone with Best admitting that when he started recording he “proceeded to furiously overdub the shit out of them (the songs), overcooking them within an inch of their life.” He’d been living with these songs for a while and it seems that only when he had got himself settled that he was able to fully realise his vision, re-recording the songs and then getting some simpatico players in to fine tune them. The end result is one of those albums which wears a patina of dust with some gnarly roots digging deep. A combination of dark ballads, acoustic based with pedal steel and fiddle accoutrements, and growling electric workouts all graced with Best’s grumbled vocals, it’s an album that impresses more and more on repeated listening, the lyrics repaying close attention as Best travels down a dark highway, the sort of album that fans of Neil Young have probably given up on ever hearing again from Shakey.
The album opens with the breezy soft country rock of Daddy Was A Liar, a deceptively upbeat song with a dark underbelly which opens with a bagful of kittens drowned and ends with an infant suffering the same fate. No such deception on the following Good Man Now with Best opening the song with the blunt, “Mama you always told me that the only good man was a dead man.” A grim tale of patricide with soaring pedal steel and screeching violin the song swings from slow ballad to ballsy rock in dramatic fashion. This howl of a violin is used again on the claustrophobic clutter of Tangled, the “heaviest song” here; crunching guitars over a rumbling bass line, splashing cymbals and a deep spiralling guitar solo make for a fine sonic soup with Best responding to himself on the chorus via overdubs sounding like REM on Quaaludes.

For the remainder Best adopts a sound not dissimilar to that of Uncle Tupelo, a dry alt-country manner driving the songs. His portraits of characters and situations on Aunt Ramona, Career Day and Robert Cole (songs he says that almost wrote themselves) are keen observations delivered in finest “No Depression” style although there is some tenderness in here as well such as on the mandolin and fiddle laced Queen Bee. He bares his soul on the weeping ballad Clotine, a love song of sorts (that could provide several months’ work for a psychoanalyst) it’s beautifully crafted and flows with a wonderful sense of regret and longing.

The album ends with the plaintive It Is You, another gem with Best’s words and gruff voice perfectly offset by his very fine players, the fiddle emotive, pedal steel gently caressing while his harmonica solo is a model of perfection. Throughout the album the musicians (including Ralph White of the Bad Livers on fiddle, Petra Kelly on violin, Andy Rodgers, Boxcar Bandits, on banjo, Scott Danborn from Centromatic on piano, Burton Lee pedal steel, Grady Don Sandlin drums, Drew Phelps bass and Claude Bernand from the Gourds on accordion) are on top form while Best handles acoustic and electric guitars with some aplomb. Altogether, Your Dog, Champ is perfectly positioned as a late contender for one of the best albums of the year and plans are afoot for Best to tour the UK early next year to promote the album.

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The Hellfire Club. Songs For Fallen Stars. Strength In Numbers Records

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Blabber’n’Smoke noted The Hellfire Club’s single release of Sun In The Sky back here.  Now the album it’s taken from, Songs For Fallen Stars is being launched this Saturday at Stereo, Glasgow. Produced by Johnnie Smillie the album is  jangle packed classic Americana, think REM, The Long Ryders, Grant Lee Buffalo with some Waterboys and Neil Young thrown in for good measure and you’ll have an inkling of what’s contained herein.
The single opens the disc and pretty much sums up the album. Strong and propulsive songs, hooks a plenty with muscular guitar breaks while Nick Ronan’s fiddle work is a fiery Celtic addition to the American influences. All Because Of You has some abrasive mandolin adding a folky feel with the band almost going into jig time on the refrains with fiddle and guitars skirling like bagpipes. Cal dips its toes into Neil Young waters with a melody that recalls Powderfinger at times. It lurches along with a rough and ready feel, the guitars unfettered and snarling while the fiddle is a dervish in the background as Willie and Helen Brown duet, their sweetness contrasting with the din and clatter of the band. Overall the song comes across as a bruised and battered dose of reality without any studio sweetness added; it does recall Neil Young’s maverick attitude to country rock and one wonders if producer Smillie’s well known affinity for Shakey was to the fore here.
Private Campbell is gentler fare initially with its mandolin driven intro although it’s not long before some restrained fuzz guitar starts to breakthrough adding a grittier feel to this tale of a soldier’s grim doom. Again there’s a folky root to this song but the band abandon any folk pretensions for the portentous and eponymously titled The Hellfire Club. An attempt perhaps to create a band mythology it’s a bit of a mish mash of roaring guitars and East Of Eden fiddle driven prog rock but there’s no denying it’s stirring enough and tailor made for live performance especially the climatic ending. We’re on surer ground with the honky tonk country waltz of Absent Friends which boozily weaves its unsure path and the fast-paced romp of Dali’s Clock which repeats the assured country rock of the opening song with the rhythm section on top form. Montgomery maintains this form as the band go on an Odyssey through the old South with lashings of guitar sparking and feeding back over an inventive backdrop that evokes the hope and fears of the civil rights movement as it pitches from jangled melody to discordant chaos. Montgomery closes the album on a high note although it should be noted that there’s a following snippet of old timey fiddle that properly ends the playing, a trick used by the band throughout the album with four of the 13 tracks comprising these snippets.
Overall a strong showing from The Hellfire Club and definitely recommended for anyone interested in home grown Americana. The album launch is this Saturday, 14th March and if you attend you can buy the album for the once only reduced price of £5 and that’s a bargain these days. In addition you’ll see the band play the songs and sets from The Dirt and Les Johnson And Me. In addition you’d be supporting local music, ’nuff said.

Pieces of Robert Wyatt

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Excellent piece on Robert Wyatt by Richard Williams

Richard Williams's avatarthebluemoment.com

The Amazing BandWhen I read, in the new issue of Uncut magazine, that Robert Wyatt has decided to stop making music, I felt an immediate pang of dismay. So I rang him up to see if he really meant it. His reply was to tell me a little story about the novelist Jean Rhys, who, after a long period of inactivity, responded to her publisher’s gentle suggestion that she might like to write another book by asking him if he’d enjoyed her last one. “Yes, of course,” he answered. “Well, read it again,” Rhys said.

We could all do a lot worse than work our way through Robert’s albums, starting with 1970’s End of an Ear, which includes his fabulous deconstruction of Gil Evans’s “Las Vegas Tango”, and concluding with 2010’s magnificent ‘…for the ghosts within’, on which he shares the credit with the saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and the violinist/arranger Ros Stephen. And…

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Billy Childs. Map To The Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. Sony Masterworks

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Time for a little sophistication here at Blabber’n’Smoke. Late night sophistication in fact in the form of this exquisite tribute to the late Laura Nyro from jazz musician, Billy Childs. Childs has rearranged a slew of Nyro songs and invited guest vocalists to breathe new life into them. The guests include Renée Fleming, Rickie Lee Jones, Alison Krauss and Dianne Reeves while Jerry Douglas turns up on Dobro and Wayne Shorter adds sax, the whole produced by Larry Klein, no stranger to enigmatic female singer songwriters.

The orchestration is superb with the strings in perfect harmony with the jazz instrumentation and while several of the songs are not immediately recognisable from the originals the spirit of Nyro can be felt throughout. Rickie Lee Jones’ interpretation of Been On A Train is the current favourite here but all of the songs bear repeated listening. Definitely recommended for lovers of Laura Nyro while fans of modern jazz will find it interesting.

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Blue Rose Code/M. G. Boulter/Wrenne. The Glad Cafe, Glasgow. Wednesday 1st October.

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Blabber’n’Smoke has to admit that it’s a bit of a latecomer to the music of Blue Rose Code, the vehicle for Edinburgh born Ross Wilson’s song poetry. A chance hearing of Boscombe Armistice on Celtic Music FM a few weeks ago stopped us in our tracks as this winsome pedal steel laced gem wafted from the speakers and Wilson’s Scots burr crooned about his granny saying he’d start a fight in an empty hoose. I suppose we’re much more used to hearing Scottish accents in songs these days with The Proclaimers leading the way while you wouldn’t contemplate King Creosote or Aidan Moffat adopting a transatlantic drawl. But there was more here, the song conjured up memories of Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece and even Astral Weeks with its haunting quality and impressionistic feel. In these instant internet days the album The Ballads of Peckham Rye was almost immediately summoned up and pretty much floored me. A magnificent trawl from Leith to London with side trips to the corner of the northern isles to the peak of the antipodes the album is a psychogeographic trip as Wilson summons up a mystic Celtic hinterland finely balanced by a couthy Scottishness that would be familiar to readers of The Broons. As for the music it inhabits that folk/jazz hybrid that Morrison invented on Astral Weeks along with nods to Jackie Leven and John Martyn, helped indeed by having the legendary Danny Thompson on double bass duties.
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The Ballads Of Peckham Rye came out on CD a few months ago but this week was given a vinyl release and in tandem with this Wilson assembled a road troupe for a short tour. The show at The Glad Cafe was packed to the rafters and accordingly blisteringly hot, however the audience stalwarts were rewarded with a show that surely rates as one of the best of the year. A mini revue almost, both support acts were plucked from the Blue Rose Code line up with Wilson introducing them. First up was Wrenne, a singer he first encountered “playing a nylon strung guitar, barefoot, at a Secret Garden Party.” Singing songs from her forthcoming album along with a cover of Steven Merrit’s The Book Of Love her voice impressed, an opinion confirmed later as she sang some magnificent harmonies in the main set. Next up was M. G. Boulter, pedal steel gunslinger for the likes of Simone Felice when he’s in town. Boulter’s pedal steel graces The Ballads of Peckam Rye but he’s also a solo artist and a member of Southend’s The Lucky Strikes. His acoustic set saw him in a line of succession from Loudon Wainwright III and Alan Hull, bare boned songs that have a bleak yet hopeful outlook. Descriptive of Southend On Sea, chip shops, ice cream men (and their demise) featured but his best was the wonderful and evocative Once I Was from his fine album, The Water Or The Wave.

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The stage was well set then for Blue Rose Code, tonight a five piece with Wilson at the front, Boulter on pedal steel and Dobro and Wrenne on harmony vocals along with Nico Bruce on double bass and Lyle Watt playing acoustic guitar and mandolin. From the off it was obvious that this was going to be something special. Rippling guitars introduced Silent Drums before Bruce’s bass burbled into action sucking the audience into the slipstream. Wrenne’s vocals slipped and slid around Wilson, recalling that other vocal duo Birds Of Chicago, as the band gently billowed like a fine wind pushing the ship forward with Lyle Watt’s guitar embroidering the sound. Wilson took us on a journey that went back to his childhood with Ghosts Of Leith via Edina up to his London travails on Whitechapel (where he slipped in a Drumchapel to some applause). Come The Springtime was described as a hope for the future and comes across as a magnificent update to what one might imagine to be a traditional Scots song. Norman McCaig’s poem, True Ways Of Knowing was acknowledged by Wilson as an example of his late flowering into the highways and byways of Scottish literature and it’s an excellent example of written poetry set to music, a feat repeated later in the encore.

Introducing Matthew Boulter earlier Wilson declared that he had always wanted some pedal steel on his records but later said that he was reluctant to participate in the Americana Music Awards as he “wasn’t country.” The Right To Be Happy was his attempt to write a country song and tonight it swung with a fine country heft while several other songs certainly cantered into a country trot. The Hibernian folk swing persisted through the night and culminated in the first encore with Wilson and Wrenne delivering a powerful rendition of Hugh McDiarmid’s poem Scotland. Finally the band came out to perform the excellent This Is Not A Love Song which allowed them to stretch out and improvise, recalling Soho folk blues such as Pentangle in their heyday although Wilson brought it back to earth with his couthy declaration ” time after time it’s the same old shite,” a wonderful mishmash of folk purity and Scottish bare faced cheek. Overall the impression was of a magnificent warm and enveloping wit and humanity with Wilson and his players producing the finest night of the year so far.