Rooting for Cara
ROOTS MUSIC WITH ALAN NICHOL
THIS week’s roots music scene – stuffed tighter than Santa’s sack - has a distinctly folky feel to it with a range of acts to demonstrate just how broad the genre can be. There are, as you may expect, festive favourites in evidence, but there are plenty of other goodies as well.
Sage Gateshead’s Hall 2 plays host to the chiming clarity of Cara Dillon’s voice tonight. The Dungiven-born singer is genuinely steeped in the traditional music of Ireland and indeed UK folk music generally. She and husband/guitarist/pianist Sam Lakeman have lived in Somerset for years now and bring their top-class band for this seasonally-themed show, Upon A Winter’s Night.
The multi-award winning Dillon has been singing since childhood, winning the All-Ireland Singing Trophy at the age of 14. Since then, she has fronted bands like Oige (aged 16) and recorded a couple of albums with them.
Later, she replaced Kate Rusby in the folk academy that was Equation where she sang alongside Kathryn Roberts with Sam, Sean and Seth Lakeman.
After Equation, Cara and Sam embarked on their own touring schedule and released the debut Cara Dillon album in 2001, which included contributions from their family members and other musical friends. The pair set-up their own Charcoal Records in 2008 and the following year Cara sang the official Children In Need single, All You Need Is Love.
Last year’s Wanderer album was her seventh studio release and could be seen as a personal memo to her birthplace. She said at the time of the album’s release: “Having lived outside of Ireland for most of my adult life, I continue to identify with these songs of departure and longing for home on a very personal level.
“Several of the songs refer to places close to where I grew up, making them particularly emotional to sing. It feels like a gift to be able to share these stories as they continue to move and inspire a new generation of people.”
The same venue has another Yuletide offering next Wednesday night when Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band perform their show of Carols and Capers. Maddy, of course, needs little introduction since she has been a continuous member of the UK folk scene since the mid-sixties. The band is a stellar outfit, too, with Giles Lewin (violin/reeds), Andy Watts (all manner of blowing things), Andrew “Jub” Davis (bass) and Steno Vitale (guitars/mandolin/cittern).
Prior, awarded the MBE for services
to folk music in 2001, has recorded with her long-time band Steeleye Span, Tim Hart, Martin Carthy, June Tabor, John Kirkpatrick, Mike Oldfield, Jethro Tull and released well over a dozen solo albums. The show is a mixture of the ancient and modern in a musical sense, but the wit and energy are timeless.
The Cluny also has a double helping of folk tonight when the six-piece folk-punk outfit, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, are in the main venue, while the Toronto-based The Burning Hell are in Cluny 2.
TMTCH have a history dating back to 1984 and their debut album, Night Of A Thousand Candles, appeared on Demon Records a year later. Championed by John Peel, they tapped into a similar vibe as their contemporaries, The Pogues, and after supporting David Bowie (Sound and Vision 1990) spent several years label-hopping.
After a couple of periods of semiretirement the band has just issued Cock-a-Hoop, their fourth album in as many years. Fourteen studio albums plus several live releases prove that the hangman will have to wait a little longer to “retire” this band.
The Burning Hell may have played most of the major folk festivals in Canada - and further afield, too - but they prove to be much harder to categorise. More indie-pop, perhaps, but the sound that leader, Mathias Kom, projects is often determined by the line-up at the time.
Currently a trio, the literate, offbeat party-starters look set to create a real Friday night buzz in the Ouseburn.
Rocking it up a tad, former Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson brings his new Magpie Salute to Newcastle Riverside tonight. Also in the band are other former Black Crowes, Marc Ford and Sven Pipien. They have a new album, High Water, too, described as “swaggering, soulful rock”.
Saturday night offers the chance to catch a couple of ever- popular acts when they have pre-Christmas shows at riverside venues. Cluny welcomes back Dan Baird & Homemade Sin who have made the venue more like a second home, really.
The one-time front man of the Georgia Satellites is frequently in the company of his long-standing pal, Warner E Hodges - as he is here and the pair seem to tour relentlessly both in Europe and in the US. Hodges was the lead-guitar showman in Jason & The Scorchers and he also fronts his own band.
Put Baird and Hodges together and the result is essential, rootsrockin’ rambunctiousness. The band’s last album, Rollercoaster, is like the band itself - a ride that goes on forever!
Across the river, in Sage Gateshead’s Hall 2, there will be another party of sorts when Martin Stephenson & the Daintees are the guests. The annual festive re-connection of Stephenson with his erstwhile bandmates back on “home-turf ” is always a crowd-magnet and, as usual, Stephenson will draw from his conjuror’s hat of material.
From country, ragtime, folk, rockabilly and more he has a broad canvas on which to layer his lyrics and off-the-cuff invention.
Newcastle Labour club has a oneoff show which features the distinctive voice of Chris Farlowe, with the Teresa Watson band on support duties.
Up the Tyne at Hexham Queen’s Hall on Tuesday night, the local fiddle and guitar (and vocals) folk duo, the Brothers Gillespie, launch their new album, The Fell.
Rounding out the week is a New York musician who specialises in old-time music of Appalachia. Bruce Molsky plays fiddle/banjo and guitar and once described himself as a “street-kid from the Bronx” who studied engineering at Cornell university. He abandoned that course after two years when the call of the music was too strong.
Molsky was a blues fan initially, but the Beatles, Bob Dylan and others also turned his young head. Since then, he has worked with all manner of musicians from Irish folksters like Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny to dobro-maestro Jerry Douglas and mainstream artist such as Mark Knopfler and Linda Ronstadt and to Cajun artists like Michel Doucet. Molsky is also an academic, tutor and regular touring musician, driven by the power of some ancient musical calling.