The whole day yesterday was amazing, but last night, WOW! What a night!
Our city walking tour that we mentioned in yesterday’s early post was super fun and enlightening, plus we got the inside scoop on the streets, history, and folk music scene back its early days. Along the way, we visited a place made famous because of Stan Laurel being associated with it, now known as the the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall. It’s a project rarely seen in the states, what they call a conservation project here, to keep it in its historic yet fading form, not restore it to new glory, or tear it down and replace it.
Nuala Kennedy, Hamish Moore and others play in Dunkeld, Scotland, 2004We went to our concert venue a bit early as this was an unassigned seating night. All day we’ve been meeting people with an East Coast US connection. In line, we met someone who met her husband at the Philly Music Festival and now makes a yearly pilgrimage to Celtic Connections.
We ended up with front row seats and started chatting with neighbors. One was Tom, a Glasgow native who has attended all the music festivals for the last 30 years. As we glanced around the venue filling up, we noticed there were many more gray heads than not. Our new acquaintance mentioned that we would likely see less gray heads at the after hours locations.
Tom shared details about the after hours music scene so that helped us set on which venue we would try to get into. We discovered that these late night club venues had gotten so big that they are now ticketed events.
Now for the main event…
The opening act was Nuala Kennedy, someone we originally met in Dunkeld, Scotland in 2004 and again some years later when she came to Wilmington, Delaware as a guest of the Green Willow Folk Club. Amazingly, Nuala was as great as ever. She and her two musical collaborators, Tony Byrne on guitar and Tara Breen on fiddle, blew the socks off everyone. No one in the house was disappointed. As usual with this type of music, the performers tell a little back story for the song before they start to play. I would say Nuala is best seen live. While her voice is soft and sweet on records, her delivery live is more engaging.
The headline act was Skolvan, a band from Brittany. If you are unfamiliar, that is part of France in the northwest that bumps off the Atlantic coast. This was their first gig on their 40th birthday year. They were also as one would expect fantastic. They were funny and played lots of various style dance tunes so there was lots of toe tapping and enthusiastic applause after each set of tunes. We will be seeing a few bands from Brittany during our time here.
After the concert, we were still eager for more music, so we headed to The Glee Club, one of the after hour venues. So happy we chose to go there as the line was already forming for the doors to open at 11 pm. We waited without tickets hoping that they were not sold out already. We could see the line was filling with many non-gray headed folks, unlike the earlier concert. We asked a very nice young man who joined us in the queue, if we were in the right place for music and not a comedy show (as shown on the marquee). He enthusiastically said we were but that each night’s musical lineup was unknown in advance he was really looking forward to whatever tonight’s surprise guests would be. It turns out he was a fiddle student in the music conservatory.
Finally, the doors opened and we were able to pick up a couple of the last tickets. Later on, we heard they were sold out. The music began with two people known as Nectar singing songs, promising that the place would get rocking shortly with the following bands. And so it did! Each act played for maybe a half hour or so. Followed by what seemed like an equally long stage change and set up. Each group that followed the last built up the play. We didn’t catch the names of all the bands but after Xavier Diaz, then Nuala and band appeared as The Shorelines Trio.
If you are unfamiliar with how this type of music goes, it often played in medleys of a few tunes strung together. These can be reels, jig sets where usually there are 3 or four different ones that blend together well. Then maybe there will be ballad or a song that slows down the pace for a bit, then again with the reels and jigs tunes. So you are riding a wave of music.
Some thoughts/observations on the music…
Back in the day, in what seems like a past life now, I worked in a Scottish bakery with some fun Scottish ladies. They came from a town just across the bay from Glasgow. At that time, there was also a Celtic folk club that brought wonderful music to our little area of the world. I dragged these ladies out to hear some of the more modern Scottish music of that time. While most of us Americans were setting listening and clapping politely from our seats, once the music got going, these ladies were standing and clapping along, yipping, hooting, whistling enthusiastically. It was as much fun to see them as it was to hear the music.
Last
night in the Glee Club was like my early memory of Scots enthusiasm for live music, this time with 1000x from the youthful crowd. The screaming, hooting, applause, yips, and cheers were deafening. The roars from these young college age kids and a few of us gray heads when the tunes changed was thunderous. I would just wait and listen to see just how mad they would go for the next tune change. And, when each set was ended the roar was unbelievably loader. There was music, drinking, dancing, and screaming and a great time was had by all. And while I have been to other English, Irish, and Scottish live musical venues where the locals were much appreciative of the musicians skills and showed it with some level of enthusiasm, I would have to say there has been nothing like the love shown by these Glaswegian college students and locals.
If you’re still reading and would like a taste of the music we heard tonight, here are two videos.
Shorelines Trio: Nuala Kennedy, Tara Breen & Tony Byrne “Sea Reels”
Skolvan – Pont Croix
