125 f
Bébert Orchestra. This showed a broadening of the repertoire and style to include Scottish and Irish material, which still features in the trio. Tommy and Olivier were band-mates in the Bébert and the direction of that band seems to continue here. The tune titles give clues with names like Suite de Cape Breton and Vent d'Irelande. The latter track takes us into 6/8 time – and you don't usually hear much jig-time music in Quebec.
yveslambert.com Vic Smith
NITEWORKS Air Fàir An Là Comann Music CM002
This is the second full-length album from Nite- works, who are Innes Strachan (synthesiser, keyboards), Allan MacDonald (bagpipes), Christopher Nicolson (bass) and Ruairidh Gra- ham (drums). Friends from school on the Isle of Skye, they fuse Scottish Gaelic language and traditional music with swirling electronica and pulsating beats. They create distinctive, exhilarating electronic dreamscapes with incantatory Gaelic traditional vocals, wailing pipes and powerful, hypnotic rhythms.
As with their previous album, they have brought onboard some impressive guest singers and musicians, including folk singers Julie Fowlis, Ellen MacDonald (of Dàimh), alt- folk indie singer-songwriter Iain Morrison, plus a string section comprising members of the Kinnaris Quintet.
What’s striking about Niteworks’ mash- up of traditional Gaelic material with elec- tronica and club beats is just how authentic, uncompromising and prominent in the mix the traditional material is. Air Fàir An Là is a rhythmic, 17th-century Gaelic song by the poet Mary MacLeod, sung here with vigour by a trio of young female Gaelic singers: Ceitlin Smith, Ellen MacDonald and Eilidh Cormack. Òran Fir Ghriminis is an 18th-centu- ry Gaelic song by the bard John MacCodrum, sung by Julie Fowlis. Do Dhà Shùil is a St. Kilda lullaby, sung by Ellen MacDonald. Ian McGee’s has mesmeric keys and beats enveloping a stirring bagpipe tune by Hamish Moore. The closing track Highlander’s Farewell To Ireland is a cracking, whirling tra- ditional tune led by fiddle and whistle float- ing atop massive electronic beats, to send us all dancing out into the night. Fans of Martyn Bennett’s Grit will love this.
niteworksband.com Paul Matheson VARIOUS ARTISTS
Downhome Blues: New York, Cincinnati & The North Eastern States – Tough Enough Wienerworld WNRCD51040
It’s rare that a blues compilation provides a fresh perspective on the genre, as most issues re-tread well worn paths offering little that is new. Most blues history focuses on the blues from the South, the Carolinas, Texas, or Chicago, while the West Coast and North East States have been marginalised.
Downhome Blues is an invigorating four- CD boxed set that collects a staggering 110 tracks of great blues recorded between 1943 and 1962 for labels based in the North Eastern part of the United States… in particular, New York. Like measles, at the end of the Second World War, a rash of small local labels appeared with such names as Bluestown, Cris- Cross, Diamond, Jax, Lennox, Old Town, and Scatt. The music they recorded had one foot
Pianist Bob Gaddy – Downhome Blues
in the past and one foot in the present. Due to migrational patterns pre and during the war many musicians had travelled north bringing their older country musical styles with them. But following the war the winds of change were blowing and black listeners were craving new sounds, something harder, something that reflected their new lives and city environ- ment. It’s fascinating to listen to this music, of this period, and hear the push and pull, the interchange of the old and new. Some musi- cians clung to the music they knew, some were able to adapt and modernise, and some, like Sonny Terry, played the same way they always had… but in a variety of settings.
Sonny Terry moved from the Carolinas to become a staple of the New York scene and crops up both as a featured artist and a ses- sion musician heard playing alongside Alonzo Scales, Allen Bunn, Cousin Leroy, and Square Walton. Just three selections find Terry backed by his usual guitar partner Brownie McGhee but McGhee was just as busy in the studio helping out Bob Camp, Wilbert Ellis, Bob Gaddy, and Alonzo Scales. The only other well-known name, Champion Jack Dupree, swapped New Orleans for New York before (eventually) relocating to Europe and appears both as a leader and as a sideman playing his recognisable piano style. Lil Arm- strong, Big Chief Ellis, Bob Gaddy, Melvin Merritt and Jimmie Newsome are some of the other pianists heard on various items.
Tracks vary from solo guitarists (Gabriel Brown, Guitar Nubbit, Sunny Jones, Doug Quattlebaum) playing and singing their old country-style blues, through a variety of duos and trios, on to full band workouts with saxes blasting, cutting electric guitar, and rocking bass and drums. Many of the recordings are pretty low-fi as the studios and recording facilities available to the small labels were not of the best standard, but the recording quality doesn’t affect the vibrant, gutsy music knocked out by all the many (37) artists that this wonderful release (one of the best of the last year) highlights. And if all the music is not enough you get a beautifully illustrated, superbly annotated, 77-page booklet thrown in. Tough enough… sure is!!
wienerworld.com Dave Peabody
JAYWALKERS Time To Save The World BCR001
OLD MAN LUEDECKE
Live At The Chester Playhouse True North TNR 693
Three outstanding musicians and one out- standing singer makes for a pretty powerful recording. Based in Chester, England, the Jay- walkers have a total mastery of American- inspired music without needing to adopt phoney accents or even wear Stetsons in a way that so many other English-Americans feel the need to do. Up front, Jay Bradberry is a really excellent singer and fiddle player, never missing a note and having a great tone to both of her skills. Mike Givern on man- dolin is as good as any, and also writes almost all of the songs. Lucille Williams holds it all together on bass, and like Givern adds har- mony vocals when required. The songs are good. How Many Whiskeys? is classic country music with added steel guitar to complete the effect. This Time benefits from a well- worked arrangement and complementing are two excellent instrumentals, with Burnt Chilli Creek being a hot, tuneful classic. As good as I have heard from British musicians playing American music.
jaywalkers.co.uk
The Chester link is separated by a few thousand miles, as Luedcke is captured live at the Playhouse, Chester, Nova Scotia. Luedcke is an engaging performer who accompanies himself on a very tastefully played old-time- style banjo and occasionally guitar. And maybe a live recording is the best way to appreciate his music. He is a very inclusive performer with stories and the odd sing-a- long to help the flow of his music. In truth the songs are not, in themselves, memorable but taken as a whole provide an entertaining experience. Low On the Hog is one rapturous- ly received by the live audience as is The Early Days but not all of his humour seems to hit the spot. I just find 75 minutes of a solo per- former without outstanding songs, singing or playing a little hard to take.
oldmanluedecke.ca John Atkins
Photo: Dave Peabody
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
