Reviews of previous gigs at Whitstable Folk Nights

These reviews are by Debbie Neech and also appear in K M Group newspapers.

Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers - January 2012

“So I took my guitar and went down to Memphis and Nashville to see what would happen.”

Shy smile, pause. “And nothing happened”

Zoe Muth was explaining how she left her native Seattle and her job in teaching to go to her musical homeland in the south. Well if nothing happened then, it’s certainly happening for her now.

Zoe and the band drove to Whitstable from London where they’d recorded a session for that night’s Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4. The Whitstable gig was just the start of a tour through the UK and Europe before more gigs back in the US. This girl is the talk of the town,with a heap of glowing reviews, from “vintage country classic” to “stunning, soulful and spine-tingling.”

To listen to her hypnotic voice is to step back in time, to long, hard roads, a dusty bar in Texas where lonesome cowboys down beers and girls’ hearts get broken to the echoes of the jukebox in the background.

And all this, bizarrely, from a singer songwriter from Seattle.

She admitted that it still feels a bit like a dream, that she can’t really believe she gets to do this for a living now. And while she did talk to the audience, there is still a shyness about her on stage, which feels as though this whole thing is still a work in progress for her.

It was a pity that I had a bit of trouble picking out the lyrics -  although I had tuned in a bit more by the second half of the evening - because it gave the gig a rather homogenous feel as the songs blurred together. It felt like it needed a little more variety of mood or tempo to give it more light and shade. But a writer who can come up with the atmospheric Before the Night is Gone (All I’ve got is the radio and this empty distant sky”), or jaunty If I Can’t Trust you with a Quarter has been blessed with a talent that is going to take her a long way along those country roads.   

Kris Drever & Eamonn Coyne - November 2011

Cheerfully erotic. As oxymorons go, it at least has the merit of grabbing your attention.

It’s also how a reviewer at Celtic Connections described Midnight Feast, one of the songs performed by this talented Irish-Scots musical pairing at the gig in Whitstable. And it was at least half right. The wonderfully fluid banjo playing of Dubliner Eamonn and the beguiling voice and guitar of Orkney native Kris could even cheer up a eurozone crisis meeting.

What was particularly clever about the set list was the mix of traditional and contemporary. There was everything from jigs, reels and Polish mazurka to songs by Boo Hewardine (Harvest Gypsies), Sandy Wright (Steel and Stone, Wild Hurricane) and one written by Kris’s brother Duncan (The Crown of London) as well as the Coyne/Drever combo Honk Toot Suite. So whether you wanted to stamp your feet, clap and whoop or simply sit back and let Wild Hurricane blow you away, you were well served.

Before the gig, music from the great singer songwriter Jackie Leven, a friend, supporter and regular guest at the Whitstable club who died last week, was played in tribute, including Heart In My Soul.

Kris and Eamonn’s gig, with its timeless musical heart and soul, was one of which Jackie would surely have approved.

Po’ Girl - September 2011

Po’Girl’s Euro tour came to a close at Whitstable and, as Allison Russell told the audience: “We couldn’t have chosen a better place – it feels like coming home.”

Not only were they at home, they were welcomed back to the town with a Whitstable sunset, just as they’d hoped, Allison’s “golden path across the sea”.

And there is something golden about this Canadian band’s music-making too, it fills you with a warm glow and puts a smile on your face. From Follow Your Bliss to Kiss Me in the Dark, it was the perfect music to imagine yourself sitting on the beach watching the sun go down and feeling that all’s right with the world.

Americana, folk, roots and jazz – there’s dash of them all in their melodies, along with some zydeco, country and blues. There seems to be no end to their talents – not only does Allison sing beautifully, she plays banjo, guitar, clarinet, even glockenspiel. Awna Teixeira has an equally memorable voice, and she plays banjo, accordion, guitar and – not something we’ve seen in Whitstable before - gutbucket bass. Mikey ‘Lightning’ August on drums completed the line-up for this sell-out gig, the band’s second visit to Whitstable Folk Nights.

Anyone who caught JT Nero when he played Whitstable would have immediately felt his influence too – the set included songs from Mountains/Forests, and Allison is touring with JT in the UK later this year.

Rolling Stone called their vocals “plaintively slurred” and that was the only slight issue on the night – if you didn’t already know the songs you might have been hard pressed to pick out the detail as their vocals blended into the overall sound and the clarity got a little lost on the way. Not quite so important on songs like Maudite Guerre, as they’re singing in French anyway. And there’s always their website if you want to check out the finer details of songs like Benediction – which is well worth it, they’re almost stream of consciousness in their poetry.

Po’Girl’s joyous return to Whitstable was a real ray of sunshine. While you might not be able to call up a Whitstable sunset to order, get yourself a Po’Girl song, sit back, and bask in the golden glow.

Oysterband - July 2011

“Do you get a sense of history repeating?” sang John Jones in the second song of the set. And with the Oysterband returning to the very spot of their first ever gig back in 1978, there certainly was.

Such was the demand the band gave two sell-out performances on Sunday and enthusiastic fans greeted them like long-lost friends. It was perfect synchronicity – the Oyster Festival, the Oysterband and the Oyster Stores. Unless that is you happen to have ostraconophobia (an aversion to all things shellfish-related), in which case perhaps this wasn’t the place for you.

The band have been through several incarnations since those early days in and around Whitstable and Canterbury and most recently recorded a new album with June Tabor, a follow-up (albeit two decades later) to Freedom & Rain. They’ll be touring that album in the autumn but while their gig here included a track from that, the set list was also a wide-ranging journey back and forth across their long history. Alan Prosser, Ian Telfer and John Jones remain from the original line-up, Ray Chopper Cooper has been with them since 1988 and drummer Dil Davies came along in 2008.

Oxford Girl, Street of Dreams, Here Comes the Flood, Molly Bond, I’ll Meet You There, Put Out the Lights, Bury Me Standing, Deserters – whether it was a traditional folk song reworked, a protest song or belting out Celtic-flavoured rock, they attacked each number with a joie-de-vivre and energy which only musicians who love what they do with a  passion can bring to the stage.

If I’m being picky, it was on the loud side for the size of venue which affected the clarity of the sound – it would have been really great outdoors at a festival, where they would really get the crowd on their feet jumping for sheer joy.

That said, the crowd at Whitstable were pretty quick to their feet to give their returning heroes a standing ovation after a tremendous show. If you do suffer from ostraconophobia, this could be the band to cure you.  

Devon Sproule - June 2011

From the opening notes of singer-songwriter Devon Sproule’s sell-out performance, I knew I was going to suffer a bout of America-envy.

The symptoms are easy to recognise – you start to wish names like Poughkeepsie would trip lightly off your tongue, that you’d grown up in Virginia and gone camping in the mountains of North Carolina. As it really takes hold you start to picture yourself sitting on the back porch, an old Gibson guitar slung casually across your chest, singing to a night sky full of fireflies.

Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in Norwich and it’s a fine city but no-one has yet, as far as I know, immortalised it in song.

There’s just something about the romance of Americana that fires the imagination, and Devon, who, although Canadian-born grew up in Virginia, captures its essence perfectly.

She has one of the most instantly recognisable voices I’ve heard - folk, country, bluegrass but with a quirkiness all of its own. This was the fourth time I’ve seen her, and I thought the best yet. She’s always good but something about the band, the venue, the crowd and the relaxed mood just took this performance to another level.

Keep Your Silver Shined, Julie, Don’t Hurry for Heaven, Ain’t That The Way – her well-loved songs were all there, sometimes with a different tempo or arrangement just to keep it interesting, as well as the haunting and hypnotic If I Can Do This and the wonderfully menacing One Eye Open, written by Megan Huddleston.

It was a great night. Now I’m just off to find that porch and a few fireflies......

Kirsty McGee - May 2011

With songs about prison, incest and cold-hearted lovers perhaps it’s no wonder the term folk noir has been coined to describe the unique world of Kirsty McGee’s music. If David Lynch ever makes Twin Peaks – The Sequel and wants a new soundtrack, he couldn’t do better than get Kirsty on the case. Her songs have a definite edgy dark side, but can also be tender and sweet, not purely folk but encompassing everything from blues to jazz, protest song to lullaby.

She may have started her musical journey in Manchester but to me she sounds as if she’d be right at home under those big empty skies of the American mid-west. Sandman is a perfect example of her work, one of those songs that sounds as if you’ve always known it, but I also loved a new composition, Salt, one woman warning another about the inadvisability of loving a cold-hearted man – there ain’t enough salt to melt that ice.

Mat Martin accompanied her perfectly, whether on banjo or guitar, and if you’re keen to know how he does it, find his website and you can download his free guide to playing clawhammer banjo. I also really liked his sound on the Harmony Stratotone.

A bonus was an appearance by Kieran Halpin, calling in en route to a tour in Belgium. His set included a song which got him into a spot of bother during a live radio appearance when its lyrics were considered too controversial for the tender ears of listeners. No such qualms for the Whitstable audience, who relished the chance to hear him sing Letter to America, as well as Singing Boots and Port of Call.

It was Kirsty’s first visit to Whitstable – let’s hope the beach, the sunset and the crates of oyster shells which caught her eye might one day draw her back.

Jez Lowe - April 2011

Jez Lowe appeared in Whitstable without his backing band The Bad Pennies but while he might have been penniless it was an evening of musical riches.

With puns like that it’s easy to see why I’m not a songwriter. Jez, on the other hand, is a master of the craft, and craft it really is. Just a few nights earlier I’d watched a very successful, beautifully staged West End show, yet some of the lyrics were so contrived I had to stifle a laugh. Any laughs during a song from Jez, on the other hand, are absolutely intentional. I loved the wit of the Ex-Pitman’s Potholing Pub Quiz Team, the neat simplicity of We’ll Hunt Him Down, about the Bible Belt reaction to Darwin’s theory of evolution (I’m searching for a man who’s made a monkey out of me) and the surreal imagination of Vikings and the comical take on the story of the monkey hanged as a Frenchman in Hartlepool and his simian son’s revenge return.

He has a way of approaching a subject from a new angle – writing about the miners’ strike his Judas Bus took on the subject no one wanted to touch, the men who broke the picket lines to carry on working; writing about heroine Grace Darling he looks at the jealousy she inspired in her sister Thomasina.  

Jez came to prominence writing about his native Country Durham, songs like Small Coal, Taking on Men or The Bergen. The tunes are as memorable as the words, and certainly the North East of England could have no better champion. But his songs cross borders, counties, countries – evidenced by his popularity in America – in their themes. Old Bones, Bare Knuckle and Jack Common’s Anthem will strike a chord wherever they’re heard, not just on Tyneside.  

JT and The Clouds - February 2011

Note to self: Don’t review JT Nero by comparing him to other artists. You know the sort of thing… “like a cross between Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson/Gram Parsons” and so on.

Why not? First good reason - he’s impossible to describe in those terms, the list would be pretty eclectic and not very helpful.

Second, because during this gig he poured scorn on that whole idea, offering up his own absurdist version: “Like a cross between a young Benny Hill and Barbra Streisand.”

I don’t suppose he thought he’d actually get to see that one in print.

Though for someone whose lyrics can have a definite surreal edge, perhaps it’s not so crazy.

After a rip-roaring bluesy set by support act Sean Taylor (tipped as the next big thing, “catch him before he goes stellar”), Chicago-based JT and the Clouds took the Whitstable stage,  trailing clouds of glory from JT’s last appearance there, as support to Po’Girl.

This time JT and his band were the main attraction and a pretty riveting one at that. Their music is a blend of soul, rhythm and blues, rock and country, with a quirky, indie flavour. The combination of JT’s lead vocals and the musicianship of The Clouds was pretty hard to beat, all delivered with a laid-back, mellow humour that made it impossible not to be completely charmed.

It’s no wonder that the Be Good Tanyas and Po’Girl have had rave reviews with his songs - JT is a real songwriting find. From the opening Who Shot Sam Cooke? to Mountains/Forests and the final Til It’s Gone - he  can write about electric seahorses, dying bees, or ice cream and make them all remarkable.

He can do love, loss and all the big stuff too but it’s those little seahorses that I’m going to remember.