An Lanntair, Stornoway, 14 March 2008

Box Club (© Box Club)

YOU KNOW that west coast line, skillfully lifted and embedded in an Iain Macdonald song: “I went to a fight and a dance broke out.” It’s not really a trade descriptions act job because you’re getting both experiences. A bit like going to Shakespeare and getting these daft comic bits and very welcome too – the bawdy keeper at the gate before the immense tragedy of marching armies.

Well, the Box Club gig was a bit like that. I caught them in An Lanntair but this tour also included Eden Court. I would have crossed the Minch in a Northerly to catch the crack again. In fact I did, kind of by accident, a few days later. There I was, at the ferry terminal, saying cheerio but the conversation wasn’t finished. So I got on the ferry too, and saw the band, on return from the tour, with the banter still flying around the ship.

That’s what made me realise a Box Club night is two gigs for the price of one. See all these mumbling, non-verbal, it’s all in the music, type of performers – I’ve no problem at all with that approach. But, down deep, got a memory of these Leadbelly and Humblebum and Dylan and John Prine and Arlo Guthrie albums when the talk and the music is just all stuck in there together with no seams.

And that’s what Box Club do. It’s an itinerant gang of storytellers. I mean a no-shit/plenty of shit, alternating, sad and happy, islands and continents, full-firing, multi-cylinder, storytelling machine.

An Lanntair took-off because these guys made contact and gave out the stories behind or between the tunes with generosity. The tune-titles are wee poems but also cues for the yarn behind them and one by one, these individuals do their stand-up solo at the mike and reveal where the sounds came from.

This could be with the charm of Mairearad Green or the gentle touch of John Somerville, who brought the character of his 97-year-old Czech grandmother on to the stage with him. She was there.

But let’s take that example and see how it all works. John gives the title – and introduces the tune. It’s kitchen-table intimacy. And then this very haunting melody shines with the personality of this woman we’ve never met. But we have.

And then it gets rumbustious. Mike Newton prowled and paced, but is not really the wild extrovert guitar man he seems. The spaces are judged and the lines laid down. All in sympathy. The bass (Duncan Lyall) and kit or bodhran (Martin O’Neil) didn’t need to display a thing. Just worked with flair, necessary and sufficient to the purpose of driving all that energy – but so well that the whole rhythm section could be the subject of pretended rivalry from the four front-line boxes. You can only rip the piss in public if there’s nothing to fear.

Gary Innes and Angus Lyon complete the front-line, bringing vast experience to the party. These guys started young. They’re a good advert for it.

I had to be persuaded to leave my own kitchen in the Ides of March but that was a good tip. If you haven’t already caught up with these civilized marauders, have a treat. If you have, you won’t need any persuading to hear them again and catch the yarns.

© Ian Stephen, 2008

Links

• Box Club
• An Lanntair