Shetland, 3-6 May 2012

AS THE Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian once observed, reflecting on the travelling musician’s lifestyle, “If you ever wonder why we ride the carousel/We do it for the stories we can tell.”

WHILE “rollercoaster” might be a closer analogy for the Shetland Folk Festival, its worldwide reputation as a source of all-time great, frequently fantastical stories is second to none.

Treacherous Orchestra (photo Somhairle MacDonald)

During this year’s 32nd event, for instance, one couple of first-time visitors found themselves so blown away by the whole experience that he ended up proposing – successfully – amid the sublimely beautiful setting of St Ninian’s Isle, in one of the fleeting sunny intervals that punctuated the weekend’s snow showers. As word swiftly spread on the festival’s uncannily expeditious grapevine, the newly-engaged pair were presented with a bottle of champagne by their B&B hosts, and congratulated from the stage – then cheered by 800 people – at the closing concert on Sunday. If ever a troth was propitiously plighted, this is surely it.

Then there was the somewhat sorrier tale of a certain Glaswegian flautist, who – along with many of his fellow performers – had started the party immediately upon boarding the overnight ferry from Aberdeen. Having continued it more or less uninterrupted for nearly 36 hours, he was eventually spotted around 4am wandering the streets of Lerwick, utterly clueless as to where he was staying, by the local constabulary, who picked him up not once but twice, and delivered him not to the cells but back to the Festival Club, where one of the long-suffering volunteer organisers was sure to get him home safely.

The story behind Mànran’s fiddler and piper Ewen Henderson playing in the thick of Saturday’s mammoth late-night Festival Club session wearing a (literal) penguin suit was traceable to a borrowed Up Helly Aa costume, courtesy of his hosts: bandmate Gary Innes was also spotted in full Viking regalia. The reason why a (male, bearded) member of US old-time revivalists The Hot Seats took the stage at the final-night party in an extravagantly frilled lilac bridesmaid’s dress, however, remained a mystery. As did the exact identity of whoever deemed it a good idea for three members of the Treacherous Orchestra to take a wheelie-bin ride down Lerwick’s main street one morning – though the real comedy came when they attempted to climb out. . .

Manran

At the heart of such legendary shenanigans – abetted this year by the festival’s favourite dining establishment, the Harbour Café, opening its doors as soon as the club finally closed, and as ever by locals’ amazing willingness to open their homes round the clock to invading hordes of musicians, whether for bed, board or yet more tunes – is Shetland performers’ and audiences’ likewise insatiable appetite for the music.

The 2012 programme comprised 26 main concerts around the islands, more than a third of them outside Lerwick, with performers dispatched as far afield as Skerries (pop. 54), a three-hour return ferry crossing from the Shetland mainland. Most shows featured five acts each, and almost all were sold out. Up to four more bands each night then played scheduled slots both upstairs and downstairs at the club, while impromptu sessions sprang up in all corners of the building, uniting players from different line-ups, countries and genres, always with a liberal sprinkling of formidably talented locals.

It’s all fuel to the fire of Shetland’s uniquely inspiring ambience within which – thanks also to the international calibre of each year’s bill – performers almost invariably up their game to the max when it comes to the actual gigs, regardless of after-hours antics. Not only do the professionals put each other fruitfully on their mettle, they’re further spurred to excel themselves by the likes of Shetland singer-songwriter Sheila Henderson, who, had she hailed from Nashville or its cultural environs, would long since have had A&R men beating a path to her door.

As it is, though, usually only fellow islanders are lucky enough to hear her richly dulcet, country-folk voice and engrossing choice of material, here including both adroitly crafted, radio-friendly originals and diverse covers, from the big honky-tonk licks of ‘Send It Out’ to a wonderfully smoky, sultry version of Patsy Cline’s ‘Never No More’. The A&R people would surely have snapped up her four-piece band, too, which featured some serious electric guitar work from Brian Nicolson, together with fiddle, bass, drums and sweetly-layered backing vocals.

Lori Watson's Rule of Thumb

Also on Saturday night’s line-up in Mossbank, a wending 45-minute bus ride north of Lerwick, and home to many workers at the Sullom Voe oil terminal, were two contrasting exemplars of the current Scottish/Celtic scene, firstly the Borders-born fiddler and singer Lori Watson and her Rule of Three combo, with brother Innes on guitar and accordionist John Somerville. The deceptive simplicity and spacious arrangements of their largely traditional-style set conversely amplified the skill, subtlety and imagination involved, in both the fiddle and vocals’ blend of elegance and fervour, and the silky, sparkling finesse of its accompaniment, while guest appearances on some numbers from double bassist Duncan Lyall and fellow fiddler Aidan O’Rourke kept faith with the collaborative Shetland spirit.

While Lyall and Innes Watson had already played the night before as members of the Treacherous Orchestra, who delivered a suitably triumphant, all-guns-blazing performance before an 800-strong crowd sat Lerwick’s Clickimin Centre, O’Rourke closed the show at Mossbank with his newest band project Kan, partnering him with Irish flute and whistle genius Brian Finnegan, guitarist Ian Stephenson and drummer Jim Goodwin. Ambitiously complex and freewheeling, their nonetheless viscerally compelling sound was an endlessly mercurial synthesis of melody and rhythm.

Kan (photo Louis de Carlo)

Similarly revealing a wealth of fresh possibilities within folk-based instrumental music – albeit with brilliantly different results – were the Nordic/northern English quintet Baltic Crossing, also featuring Stephenson on guitar, together with Northumbrian piper Andy May, Danish fiddler Kristian Bugge, and two Finnish cousins, Esko and Antti Järvelä, on fiddle, viola, double bass and mandolin. Their superbly executed, ebulliently dynamic union of distinct north European traditions, within which the pipes’ liquid brightness vibrantly catalysed the dense mesh of strings, was allied with hugely effervescent onstage energy, ranking them among this year’s most fêted Shetland first-timers.

Other noteworthy debutants were Cape Breton combo Sprag Session, who did a terrific job warming up for the Treacherous Orchestra as well as two gigs outside Lerwick, and a memorably extended slot during the Festival Club finale. Boldly charting new frontiers for their native fiddle-led traditions, with frontman Colin Grant flanked by banjo, piano, bouzouki, guitar, bass and drums, they cooked up another exhilarating instrumental storm, a fiery mix of rootsy tunes with rock, funk, trance and reggae.

No less pyrotechnic was the acoustic quartet assembled by progressive banjo star Alison Brown – making her fourth Shetland appearance – combining the dream-team talents of US fiddle phenomenon Casey Driessen, Irish guitar supremo John Doyle, and Brown’s bassist husband Garry West. With jaw-dropping solo workouts interspersed by dazzling ensemble passages, the resulting sound abundantly lived up to the sum of its parts. And with Brown having also brought along her two young children for the trip – all the way from Nashville – her presence at the festival further underlined the deep affection in which it’s held by musicians far and wide.

© Sue Wilson, 2012

Links

• Shetland Folk Festival