Ullapool, 23-24 September 2005

HIGHLAND HARDINESS was attaining truly heroic proportions on the opening day of the inaugural Loopallu festival, hosted by cult bluegrass rockers Hayseed Dixie. Horizontal sheets of rain blown on a gale straight off the Minch swept the campsite as much of the 4,000-strong sellout crowd arrived, under a darkly glowering sky.

Many a punter battling to pitch their tent nearly found themselves paragliding instead, until kindly neighbours stepped in to help. This far north, though, when a spree’s in the offing, bad weather is greeted with a kind of bring-it-on defiance, and so it proved again here, bonding the audience in a spirit of thrawn determination to party on all the harder.

According to Hayseed Dixie’s larger-than-life frontman, Barley Scotch (aka John Wheeler), the band began looking some time ago for the right place to start their own festival, opting for Ullapool after an exceedingly happy night playing the village hall back in April.

Inspired by characterful, off-the-beaten-track events like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, their key criteria included substantial distance from major centres of population: “So people really have to want to come along – but when they do, the whole place gets kind of taken over.”

There was certainly no mistaking that a festival was happening in Ullapool, whose population of 1,200 was nearly trebled for the weekend, and whose business community, by all accounts, was utterly delighted at such an influx of trade to round off the summer season.

There was even a glimmer of celebrity to gild the proceedings, with Radio 1’s Vic Galloway playing a DJ set on Friday, and Radio 2’s Janice Long also jetting up for the weekend. Small wonder that the town didn’t mind having its name reversed for a few days – the resulting moniker also doubling as a typically wry, sly, Hayseed Dixie-ish nod to the legendary Lollapalooza alt.rock circus in the US.

---

… this is one festival we can surely look forward to welcoming back next year – but you’ll need to book early.

---

As with the Skye Music Festival and the Tartan Heart Festival earlier this summer, Loopallu’s programme was an artfully unclassifiable, trans-genre mix, pulling its audience from across a broad swathe of musical affiliations, with visitor numbers also reinforced by a strong local turnout.

The upshot, in the Big Top-style marquee which housed the main stage, was a wonderfully variegated gathering of types and ages, all of whom evidently found plenty to enjoy among the line-up.

After a suitably bracing fanfare by the local junior pipe band, for instance, and a brief welcoming set from Hayseed Dixie, Friday’s bill served up a superb double-header of veteran punk pioneers The Undertones, followed by techno-ceilidh kings Shooglenifty.

When the Undertones reformed a few years back, many doubted that they could possibly cut it minus Feargal Sharkey, their iconic original frontman, but having been blessed by the sainted John Peel himself, their latter-day incarnation with lead singer Paul McLoone has earned them a second set of stripes.

They certainly delivered the goods in Ullapool, firing off a taut, trenchant, hard-hitting set, McLoone’s gutsy vocals cutting across his colleagues’ slashing guitar riffs with all the requisite cocksure attitude. The old classics inevitably raised a bigger cheer than the new material, but the show amounted to much more than trading on past glories, and the band seemed deservedly delighted with their reception, from young and old alike.

Shooglenifty then went on to crown the night, obliterating all thoughts of chill or damp with a typically blistering performance, once again demonstrating their seemingly inexhaustible capacity to reinvent their back-catalogue anew. They also keep coming up with wonderful new tunes, of course, as with a fine selection here from their last studio album, ‘The Arms Dealer’s Daughter’.

There was still a certain poetry, though, in their finishing off with a final, fresh-minted encore of ‘The Pipe Tunes’ – the very first track from their very first album, ten years ago or more.

Saturday, thankfully, stayed more or less dry, allowing the mud around the site to recede somewhat. A full day’s line-up assembled by Highland promoter Robert Hicks showcased a diverse cross-section of current Scottish talent, from the rough-hewn blues-roots balladry and athletic fiddling of Orkney duo Saltfishforty, to the big guns of Glasgow indie-rockers the Cosmic Rough Riders.

Easily the standout of the afternoon for this listener, though, were Invernesian four-piece The Lushrollers, who seem to have transcended their once-overt Americana allegiances, and are now forging a sound still resonant with references, but authoritatively their own. Clever, incisive songwriting, powerful vocals and richly textured guitar work sometimes recalled Del Amitri at their classic, bittersweet best, while spine-tingling four-part harmonies added extra layers of lyricism and poignancy.

Saturday night, of course, belonged triumphantly to Hayseed Dixie themselves – and they in turn were more than happy to share the honours with us. In amongst a riotous set of breakneck hard-rock covers, arguably the pinnacle moment came when Scotch/Wheeler conducted a mock-hellfire anti-sermon celebrating all the hedonistic delights of the weekend – accompanied by plenty of heartfelt “Hallelujahs” from the crowd.

With the entertainment completed by three late-night “fringe” gigs both nights (just to make sure the local pubs were really groaning at the seams), and with the weather already having done its worst, this is one festival we can surely look forward to welcoming back next year – but you’ll need to book early.

© Sue Wilson, 2005

Related Link

• Loopallu website