For a little downtown Folk Club like ours,it was quite a brave thing to do to attempt to cross boundaries and have a go at staging something above and beyond the usual candles in bottles and fingers in the ear scenario. We've always danced close to the edge at NFC,and have usually pulled it off. Wednesday was no exception. Joe O'Donnell's Shkayla are a big name:a Festival and circuit band with some internationally rated musicians.That they would come along at all was a coup for us. That they impressed a large audience with their two excellent sets was a marvelous bonus and was personally very satisfying.
NFC audiences are endearingly broadminded. They will embrace Blues,Country,Roots, Gospel,Americana, Rock, Singer-Songwriter,Comedy,in fact anything that entertains. Most of them accept that nowadays "Folk" is only a label,part of what is now a very broad church. Those that don't,(thankfully) stay away and take their musical prejudices elsewhere.
Anker Folk Radio audiences have the same tolerance threshold. We give them the same eclectic diet and they don't seem to mind. Must be something in the air in Nuneaton,for The Ragged Bear Festival each Autumn attracts visitors in from all over the country,who enjoy a very wide range of musical experiences.
Before I rave about the sheer exuberance of our Main Guests and praise an epic performance from them,I'd like to pay tribute to the floor singers. Who don't actually sing from the floor-they have to climb up on a ruddy great stage and do their thing in front of a sea of expectant faces. Under banks of lights and occasionally behind swirls of smoke added by our eager back room Boys Harvey and Tom. Earlier in the week I'd had to delete a new "friend" from the NFC Facebook Page,after he had a strop because he could not instantly be added to the running order on Wednesday. I tried explaining the rules (not just ours-many Folk Clubs operate them including some of the ones he was quoting at me as "friendlier,") but he did not want to know.
Had he bothered to check the place out first he might have seen what he would have been up against. The quality of our floor spot singers is legendary. This is because we vet them first-checking them out locally or listening to their material-before letting them loose on that gigantic stage. This is actually doing them a favour but our "friend" could not get his head round this. Yes,such a process kills spontaneity. On the plus side,it spares us sitting through anything too excruciating.
We were deprived once again of our lovely lady singer Flossy,so it was just four guys named Nunc who kicked us off.Only those who host Folk Clubs know how tough this opening spot is. People are still coming in.The bar is busy. No-one has come to see us. Our job is to simply to capture their interest,hold it and then hand it on to someone else, warming the audience up for the main act. We did "Vigilante Man," "Sitting On Top Of The World" and finished with a new arrangement of "Bad Moon Rising." Not Folk Music,all American,but that's how we roll.
And that baton was handed over to the extraordinary talent of Coventry's Adam Wilson. A great guitar player,and a vocalist with an astonishing range. He's an unassuming chap and is refreshingly ready to tackle any aspect of contemporary music. So his own unique arrangement of "She Moves through the Fair" and one of his own compositions were part of his set.
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| Adam Wilson |
Pete Grassby has been along as an audience member before, but this time,knowing what a good all round entertainer he is, we got him up on the stage as well. Two very clever songs of his own and an instrumental number on the melodeon. Very high standard,all three. Pete runs what used to be Rowington Folk Club. It's had a number of homes and is no longer in the village itself,currently being based in Bar Catalan, Warwick.
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| Mr. Melodeon |
Lesley Wilson,local girl then followed,making a return to the NFC stage.Two Wilsons on one programme! (And two more to come in 2020) Lesley has Salsa lessons on Wednesdays so can't always make the first half. (I've told her-she needs to combine the two!). We're glad she made it as she did three quality numbers including one of her own.
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| Lesley Wilson |
So the audience had been spoiled by a varied diet of all kinds of quality music. We had whipped them into a frenzy (well we'd kept them awake) and Shkayla maintained the momentum with an opening set which combined some identifiable Celtic patterns with some 21st century musicianship. At times it was difficult to know where to look. I found my eyes darting from player to player as they traded solos,swapping them back and forth seamlessly.
That first half left the audience gasping. After the interval John Kearney and I did a song apiece whilst the raffle tickets were folded.Then we had the draw and handed the stage back to out guests. A word I use often in my Reviews and Blogs is "eclectic." I like eclectic and I truly believe that "Folk" is a bit of a misnomer, stereotyping as it does, in some closed minds, Roots and Traditional music.
Shkayla's music touched a lot of people by blurring the lines between genres, extending horizons and exploring panoramas.I overheard a few comments about electric folk which took me back. The band members would point out (correctly) that they are not Folk. They are Celtic Rock. They are certainly very innovative. I'm old enough to remember having seen Family, Eclection Alain Stivell and Fairport Convention in their embryonic stage. Experimental. Creative. Imaginative. Mind-expanding.
It was a truly memorable evening. It worked. It was a triumph.The standard of musicianship was outstanding. The quality of the arrangements was remarkable. The rapport and chemistry as they fluidly exchanged musical passages was sublime. These thoughts reflect not only what I felt,but reflect also the general consensus of some very heavy traffic on our NFC Facebook Page afterwards.. I heard echoes of Yes, Jon Hiseman's Colisseum,Gary Moore and of Caravan. Others heard Horslips or Thin Lizzy's Black Rose Suite. What we all heard was Joe O'Donnell's Shkayla. One word: WOW!
