Various venues, Orkney, 24-27 May 2007

Saltfishforty (photo - Louis de Carlo).

ORKNEY FOLK Festival generally likes to put it about a bit, in terms of staging concerts beyond its main hub of Stromness. With this year’s event being the 25th, however, and extra funding available from the Highland 2007 pot, the organisers went a whole lot of extra miles in taking the music to parts it doesn’t usually reach.

The eight-day Island Hop, starting the weekend before the festival itself, saw a crew of musicians setting sail in a converted fishing boat for a voyage around Orkney’s farther-flung airts, stopping off to perform on a different island each night.

I caught up with them on North Ronaldsay, Orkney’s topmost outpost, where difficult sea conditions had prevented the ship from landing, necessitating a last-minute rescue mission by a local charter pilot, who shuttled the artists over from Eday, the previous night’s destination, in his single-engine plane.

Besides saving them from a bad case of mal de mer, it also offered the chance to experience airport protocol, North Ronaldsay style, as I had when arriving at the farmland airstrip – where you seem to be speeding straight into the sea during landing or take-off – on the eight-seater Loganair flight from Kirkwall.

Informal was definitely the word, a welcome contrast indeed to all the slow-motion officialdom at Edinburgh, where I’d nearly missed the flight thanks to the latest tweaking of the security regulations.

While the performers arrived safely, however, the PA system remained stranded on the boat, being too heavy to fly in. The good folk of North Ronaldsay were thus treated to an entirely unplugged show, with a crowd of around 40 turning out for the occasion – a number representing fully two-thirds of the island’s population.

Thankfully, the primary school hall – prettily decked out by the local community association, who also provided supper at the interval – turned out to have a highly conducive acoustic.

A well-chosen mix of music included the sweetly aligned voices of Fridarey – whose home of Fair Isle is visible, on a clear day, from North Ronaldsay – in an adroit choice of songs traditional and modern, including several composed in Shetland’s richly expressive dialect.

With proceedings ably MC-ed by adoptive New Zealander Martin Curtis, who sang a few of his own songs in between some comically tall tales, it proved an impressively cosmopolitan line-up, including a bonus appearance by the tour’s Australian sound engineer, who took the opportunity of an enforced night off to tout his wares as an aspiring singer-songwriter.

Next up were Oban-based duo Wingin’ It, winners of a Danny Award at this year’s Celtic Connections Open Stage, uniting the guitar-picking talents of Adam Bulley – who doubles on mandolin – and Chas Mackenzie. Maintaining the night’s keynote of variety, they drew tunes from across the spectrum of jazz, folk and Americana, inventively arranged and played with terrific brio and flair.

The powerhouse partnership of accordionist Angus Lyon and fiddler Ruaridh Campbell has mostly been seen of late at the helm of a rocked-up four-piece band, following the acclaim heaped on their fusion-oriented 2006 album ‘18 Months Later’.

Stripped here of all props and safety-nets, they delivered a superb closing set, their formidable individual calibre and tight-knit mutual attunement highlighted all the more winningly by this close-up focus, as they comprehensively trashed any negative stereotypes of Scottish fiddle and accordion music.

Back in Stromness, the festival’s official opening concert kicked off the weekend in thoroughly classy style, from a fine opening fanfare by the town’s own pipe band to a typically rambunctious finale from Blazin’ Fiddles. The latter was both peppered with new material and tempered by quieter interludes, including a brilliant relay of contrasting strathspeys and a lovely version of the contemporary waltz ‘Lost in Fishponds’, by Bristol band the Famous Five.

Between times, the a capella quartet Stravaig alternately bewitched and regaled a sellout crowd with their exquisitely configured harmonies, deployed in a blend of folk and contemporary material, and lively banter.

Sweden’s Mattias Perez Trio, this year’s Scandinavian ambassadors to the festival, meanwhile staked their initial claim to discovery-of-the-weekend status, which they’d certainly earned by Sunday night.

With Perez himself on 12-string guitar, flanked by two female fiddlers, their supple, richly shimmering versions of Swedish and Norwegian dance-tunes were artfully embellished by an array of other flavours, from jazz to classical, and performed with vibrant ensemble synergy.

Friday night’s concert and ceilidh in Orphir, off to the east of Stromness, was one of the festival’s earliest sellouts, a bottom-line vote of confidence fully borne out on the night. Following an afternoon walk taking in a rare 12th century round church, and its neighbouring “Earl’s Bu”, or Viking drinking hall, plus splendid views over Scapa Flow – typical of the non-musical delights Orkney offers to festival visitors – it was time to settle in for a cracking night’s entertainment.

Highlights included top Ulster song exponent Len Graham, whose compellingly resonant voice – at once stern and warm, lyrical and implacable – was paired with the impish, mordant wit of Dublin storyteller Jack Lynch, and a rewarding solo set from Scots singer Rod Paterson, interspersing his trademark Burns material with everything from a pawky send-up of local evening papers to a 16th century Norwegian hymn, translated into Scots.

Home-grown Orkney acts are always a prominent feature of the festival programme, and here Shoot the Piper flew the home flag first, mixing lively sets of jigs and reels with potent original songs, later followed by the duo of Douglas Montgomery on fiddle, and Brian Cromarty on guitar, mandola and vocals, better known as Saltfishforty.

They demonstrated exactly why they’re fast making a name for themselves well beyond the islands, combining the grit and grain of classic Americana with the colour and vitality of Scottish and Orcadian tunes; Montgomery’s marvellously agile, full-toned fiddle with Cromarty’s driving muscular rhythms and gutsy singing.

Blazin’ Fiddles rounded off the show once again – at least, before the Occasionals’ eagerly awaited appearance to start the dancing – a performance chiefly memorable this time for Allan Henderson’s Saturday Night Fever-style dance moves during the final number.

With a total of over 50 acts performing at this year’s festival, a packed programme featured twelve scheduled performances on Saturday alone, from Kirkwall to the island of Longhope – and that’s even leaving aside the many pub sessions taking place, day and night, along Stromness’s main street.

Earning themselves a warm welcome back, at both concerts and sessions, were the Cork quintet North Cregg, who’ve undergone a substantial line-up reshuffle since their last visit in 2003. The captivating gusto and rhythmic bounce that fuel their freewheeling sets of jigs, reels, polkas and slides remains as distinctive as ever, though, complemented now by the smokily seductive singing of Claire Anne Lynch.

Tom McConville, Claire Mann and Aaron Jones are all well-kent faces around the UK folk scene, but their new trio formation won them plenty of fresh applause. Variously juggling two fiddles, flute, whistles, bouzouki and guitar between them, and with McConville and Jones in sterling form sharing lead-vocal duties – plus Mann singing harmonies – this was one trio with plenty up its sleeve, showcased in imaginative arrangements of everything from traditional ballads to Phil Ochs covers, interspersed with some strong instrumental sets.

A final honourable mention must most definitely go to local heroes Lazy Boy Chair, who comprehensively rocked the house in Saturday’s late-night slot at the Festival Club. Also among the winners of this year’s Danny Awards, their line-up includes the aforementioned Saltfishforty plus six others, in a line-up featuring twin fiddles, accordion, banjo, guitars, bass and drums.

Their sound is a wonderfully unclassifiable melting-pot of influences, from country-dance tunes to tricksy Balkan-style numbers, blues to reggae to funk, its raw anarchic energy underpinned by impressively tight delivery: a true party band with depth, heart and ample collective talent.

With the festival’s outgoing chairman, Johnny Mowat, having received the Services to Industry accolade at last year’s Scots Trad Music Awards, his successor Bob Gibbon (Lazy Boy Chair’s accordionist) faced a daunting challenge in filling his shoes – especially taking over in the 25th year.

After a near-clean slate of sellout shows, a general thumbs-up for the programme, a non-stop array of cracking sessions and a lively buzz on the street, boosted by aptly festive sunshine, his relief over a successful inaugural weekend (aka baptism of fire) must have been intense, even if he perhaps wasn’t quite joining in the chorus of “roll on next year” which was more or less everyone else’s verdict.

© Sue Wilson, 2007

Links

• Orkney Folk Festival