Over the last thirty years, growing out of BBC sessions and star spots at Celtic Connections, Transatlantic Sessions have become – to borrow from Chesterton – The Flying Folk Club. And not just as a travelling session going from town to town but also being in a way the nation’s biggest folk club – with a regular core of attendees who will keenly turnout every year – and more than once if possible. With the venue size that Transatlantic Sessions play this makes for a reliably large pool of regulars which means that filling a space the size of the Royal Festival Hall is no problem at all. Or, put more succinctly, this was a sold out event.
Transatlantic Sessions has stuck to a winning and recognisable format – a core band of top folk musicians from the UK and USA joined each year by guests that help shape what the sound will be before a given tour. And in 2025 that meant that Aly Bain, Jerry Douglas, John Doyle, Michael McGoldrick, Tatiana Hargreaves & Allison de Groot, John McCusker, Donald Shaw, James Mackintosh and Daniel Kimbro were joined by Julie Fowlis, Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Niall McCabe and the huge presence that is Loudon Wainwright III. Each of the guests gets a “spot” between the tunes the band provides to offer two or three songs before handing back to the band. And repeat.
After the opening instrumental set the first guest singer up was Niall McCabe – and that’s quite the compliment to the guitarist and singer from Clare Island, Co.Mayo who has taken to playing big rooms with a confident aplomb. His folk songs are rooted in observed life experiences – ‘November Swell‘ speaks to the dangers to fishermen of high winter seas and is made more poignant by Michael McGoldrick’s uilleann pipes, whilst ‘Stonemason‘ is described as a “sad song inspired by the sad lives of those who left Ireland to build Britain” and hits home like a Paul Brady song.
The following spot saw a dramatic change of pace on ‘That’s the way you make me Feel‘ with Larry Campbell on electric guitar and the vocals of Theresa Williams. Possibly a shuffling blues with a country twist thanks to the dobro of Jerry Douglas is stretching the definition of “Celtic music”, but it does allow the concert to include some definite rock links – Campbell had eight years (and there’s a slight suggestion that it was eight long years) as Dylan’s guitarist, whilst Theresa Williams can boast of playing with Phil Lesh. Their second song ‘I wonder did you love me at all’ was written by Larry Campbell and is a slow country ballad which just goes to prove that everything sounds better with Uilleann pipes. Larry Campbell would show himself as quite the asset to the band adding at turns an additional fiddle or a mandolin part.
Julie Fowlis was preceded by a set of tunes that drew on music that had been picked up during travels in Spain, presumably the Celtic part. They showed two sides, alternating between the very slow and the very lively. It’s wonderful music, and the pleasure in the playing is equally wonderful. And having shown her prowess on the whistle during these tunes, Julie Fowlis then went on to impress with two examples of Gaelic mouth music – a traditional form that she lightly explained “sounds very hard to sing, because it is very hard to sing.”
Lightening the mood a little, John Doyle moved “from the trenches” at the back of the band to take a turn at the lead singing spot with a song from the civil war, “the first one…not the upcoming one…” he ominously joked – a song about the tragedy of Fredericksburg where immigrant Irish men fought each other on both the Union and the Confederate sides. It’s akin to a rebel song – but transferred to America.
The first half of the gig closed out with a big name who Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas had wanted on the tour for some years – particularly since most of his family have already taken the gig. Loudon Wainwright III was in dapper and upbeat form, joking about how much he’d enjoyed the tour and now that it was the last night he’d have to go back to the states, although he was “kind of hoping they won’t let me back in“. His two songs were the new ‘Primrose Hill‘, which he’d revisited that day, and ‘Middle of the Night‘ acting as a hopeful partial antidote to all of the current American maelstrom: “it’s not the end of the world / rather the middle of the night.”
With the audience soon refreshed and ready for the the second half the session continued in much the same enjoyable way. Jerry Douglas led the band on ‘Choctaw Hayride‘ which he’d written for Alison Kraus in the fulfilled hope it would get her playing fiddle again – tonight it is is dobro led of course.
Other second half highlights included the Aly Bain led four tune fiddle set with a power line of four fiddlers with Larry Campbell alongside Tatiana Hargreaves and John McCusker. The gospel folk of Reverend Gary Davis’ ‘Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning’ added a further musical twist to the session. There was a celebratory rendition of a song that Loudon Wainwright was pleased to acknowledge had also been recorded by Earl Scruggs – that would be his ‘Swimming Song’ but the beautifully – and only recently – worked up cover of Marty Robbins’ ‘At the end of a long lonely day‘ was exquisite – as good as it had been in the sound-check.
It was left to Julie Fowlis to bring it all home with two more songs and a surprise: when she quit the stage it felt like the start of a Von Trapp like stage departure, except the Von Trapps never retook the stage with a set of bagpipes. Is there nothing this remarkable musician cannot do? It certainly prompts the thought “is this the finest Transatlantic Sessions band ever?” Because the combined musicianship and the mix of singers would be hard to better anywhere. A final encore of fast tunes saw the band bathed in a dappled light and grins going from one end of the stage to the other, a perfect summary of the gig – uplifting, seasoned, varied and just a whole lot of fun.
Thanks for stirring some great, albeit recent, memories. I was at the Oxford show the previous night and it was equally marvellous. I guess I’m one of the regular core: I’ve not missed a tour yet.
Teresa Williams corrected herself regarding the composer of ‘Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning’. She claimed it was written by Blind Willie Johnson, not Reverend Gary Davis. Whoever, it as one of the night’s standouts.