Review by Norman Bissell
Celtic Connections – Andy M Stewart / Shona Donaldson
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 30 January 2010
IT’S OFFICIAL. Andy M Stewart still has what it takes. On the strength of this virtuoso performance at a packed Tron Theatre, the former Silly Wizard frontman must be regarded as one of Scotland’s finest singer-songwriters in the folk tradition, and a very funny guy to boot.
Gerry O'Beirne and Andy M Stewart (photo - Irene Young)
Not literally you understand, as he might have joked in one of the many hilarious intros and outros that placed his keen, dry wit somewhere between Arnold Brown and Chic Murray, whose crack about taking whisky with your water he recalled with evident approval.
When he broke a guitar string early on his quip was “There’s the profit on the gig gone”, and you felt from this and a remark that he was carrying on the family tradition of not making any money out of singing that he’s finding it hard to understand (as we did by the end of the night) why he hasn’t been heard much more often at Celtic Connections or elsewhere lately.
For he’s still got the voice for beautiful ballads like The Loch Tay Boat Song and The Valley of Strathmore, which expressed a love of his native Perthshire and had us all singing along. His poignant Where Are You Tonight, I Wonder, about regrets of lost love and the questions you shouldn’t ask yourself, was also a high point.
But this was a sterling, upbeat performance from start to finish with his driving, classic The Queen of Argyll and the ‘pretty raunchy for its day’ Take Her In Your Arms instilling that all important feel-good factor that’s fairly rare amongst folk performances these days.
An even rarer breed, indeed almost an endangered species, is the art of singing comic songs and the telling of hilarious tales between them. Here, particularly, Stewart showed he still has the master’s touch with The Errant Apprentice and The Rambling Rover, his story of American ladies who asked him about the line in Gallant Murray where they put the white rose in their bottoms (instead of bonnets), and his relief that the happy ending to the Irish ballad Matt Hyland meant he didn’t have to psyche himself down for half an hour before the show reading about the Clearances and perusing his old bank statements.
Gerry O’Beirne, who accompanied him throughout, also provided a masterclass in guitar accompaniment and song arranging with his fingerpicking runs reminiscent of Bert Jansch and his subtle, delicate playing. His own set featured his sweet elegy for the great whistle player Michael Russell, The Shades of Gloria, an excellent blues-talking ukulele in The Glass Boat, and The Holy Ground, his grand song about the Irish who fought in the Mexican War of Independence with lines like “And the wilderness took my breath away” and “where the sage brush grows and the desert wind is blowing free” that put to shame the lacklustre effort in that regard of Ry Cooder and the Chieftains earlier in the week.
Shona Donaldson, who kicked off the night along with Innes Watson on guitar, also chose well in the ever popular openers Green Grow The Laurels and The Lakes of Ponchartrain, and had us joining in the chorus of Slip Jigs and Reels about the dancing ladies’ man Billy the Kid. She has a fine Scots voice in the rich North East tradition of Jeannie Robertson and Jock Duncan, and used it to good effect on her own composition Bogie’s Banks and Braes and Matt McGinn’s The Rolling Hills O’ the Borders.
Her fiddle set was less effective, and probably only there to break up the ballads because, as she told us, she didn’t have the breath for faster numbers since she was expecting. Her current singer residency with the enterprising Deveron Arts in her native Huntly promises well for the writing of more Scots songs based on the Greig-Duncan Collection, and she is very much a voice for the future. Innes Watson, who kept popping up in lots of places at this year’s Festival, was in uncharacteristically subdued mood and could have done with some of Gerry O’Beirne’s flair on guitar.
However, the biggest mystery of the night was why there have been no Andy M Stewart CDs recorded since Donegal Rain in 1997, and only his Songbook was on sale after the show. He remains highly popular in the States and is something of a folk deity in Germany, but his undiminished talents deserve much greater exposure and appreciation at home. It would be great to see this marvellous Stewart and O’Beirne partnership touring the Highlands and Islands one day soon.
© Norman Bissell, 2010
