Main Auditorium, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 30 January, 2009

Nanci Griffith

NOWADAYS extended over two swiftly sold-out nights, the Transatlantic Sessions concerts have been a mainstay of Celtic Connections’ programme since the festival’s earliest years, borrowing their name and concept from the BBC Scotland TV series, first broadcast in 1994. The ongoing vogue for all things Americana, in the wake of O Brother Where Art Thou?, makes those beginnings look very prescient now, while further boosting the shows’ success and kudos.

Once again it was an evening to bask in, as up to 16 Scottish, Irish and US musicians, all ranked among the finest in their field, settled down to share a big bunch of tunes and songs from either side of the Pond, at once drawing on and reinvigorating the cousinship between their traditions.

Topping this year’s bill were Nashville heavy-hitters Nanci Griffith and Kathy Mattea, both settling delightedly into the occasion’s laid-back spirit and both in sterling voice, with Mattea dedicating a fondly elegiac rendition of ‘May You Never’ to its recently-departed author, John Martyn, with whom she featured in that very first Transatlantic Sessions series 15 years ago.

Other songs from Stateside visitors ranged from dobro king Jerry Douglas and recent Grammy-winner Tim O’Brien’s splendidly gung-ho arrangement of Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’, to the stark, sinewy lament ‘Peg and Awl’, dating from America’s industrial revolution, and hauntingly delivered by old-timey one-man-band Bruce Molsky. Our own Julie Fowlis and Eddi Reader returned the favour, respectively with a beautifully forlorn Gaelic love-song and a sumptuous version of Willie Nelson’s ‘I Guess My Heart Just Settled Back to Earth’.

A good many of those named above, of course, are renowned as both singers and multi-instrumentalists, another such being Cajun/Appalachian star Dirk Powell, who contributed a softly heartfelt self-penned ballad about his grandfather in addition to his accordion and banjo skills.

The ranks of world-class pickers were further swelled by guitarists Russ Barenberg and John Doyle, while with Aly Bain and John McCusker also in the frame, the line-up featured as many as four fiddles, along with Phil Cunningham and festival director Donald Shaw on piano and accordion, Todd Parks on bass and James Mackintosh on percussion.

Many of the tune medleys were every bit as lush and lavish as you’d expect from such an assembly, but as with the songs there were plenty of quieter, sparser interludes between the big full-ensemble arrangements, one such highlight being Barenberg’s exquisite articulation of his own composition ‘For J.L.’, written on the occasion of John Lennon’s death, but offered here as another tribute to John Martyn.

© Sue Wilson, 2009

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