One last fling as ever before the clocks fall back, heralding the coming of winter, Glasgow Americana Festival remains a beacon of light before the nights draw in. Now in its 18th year, the festival took place over five days in various Glasgow venues covering the south side and the city centre and featured a host of local acts along with the headlining visitors.
Since the pandemic, one hears time and again, from artist, promoters and venues, how tough it is to survive these days. One of the prime venues for the festival, The Glad Café, remains open only after a huge crowd funder which enabled it to pay for extensive repairs to the building (local heroes Deacon Blue were heavily involved in the fundraising) while the city centre’s CCA, a treasured cultural hub, has just announced a temporary closure due to uncertainty regarding its future funding. Praise then to local promoters The Fallen Angels Club who managed to put on these five nights of assuredly great music.
The festival opened with Good Guy Hank, a three piece comprised of two Scots and an Australian. The trio (Theo Barnard, Pepita Emmerichs and Donny McElligott) originally bonded over a shared love of Hank Williams (hence the name) but became a more cohesive unit during lockdown and recently released their debut album “Silver Lining”. Having just completed a tour of the Netherlands the band were well honed and, with the addition on drums of James McIntosh and various guest artists, played many of the songs from the album with a fine degree of versatility. Tender ballads such as ‘Alaska’ and ‘Esmeralda Red’ featured allowed McElligott to remind the audience of his time in Scotland’s country pioneers Southpaw and his current band The New Madrids. ‘Better Man’ had a punchier, rock beat to it and ‘Ring Of Fire’ (no, not that one) rang out with a strong Appalachian pulse, helped in part by guest Cahalen Morrison’s banjo although it was Emmerich’s nimble and fiery fiddle playing which gave the song its wings. Morrison returned to the stage later to play mandolin on the bluegrass delivery of ‘I Hope It Rains’ which showcased their three-part harmonies, captured as they grouped around a condenser microphone. There was a spate of covers dotted throughout the set. A Hank Williams number of course, ‘You Win Again’ while Steve Earle’s ‘I Still Carry You Around’ fitted well into Good Guy Hanks’ bluegrass leanings and Gillian Welch’s ‘Dear Someone’ was another opportunity for the trio to harmonise quite brilliantly. Meanwhile John Prine’s ‘Angel From Montgomery’ never fails to engage an audience (and it did so again later in the festival).
The night’s proceedings were opened by a local band, The Black Denims, who were a bit of a revelation. They have a floating line up and tonight appeared as a four piece set-up led by Scott McPherson who was an engaging frontman. They play a fine raggle-taggle mix of folk, country and string band music with strong original songs such as ‘Only Call You When I’m Lonely’, ‘Hole In My Foot’ and ‘You Weren’t There’ and pretty soon they had the audience enthralled, who can resist a song called ‘I’m Only In The Doghouse Because You Keep Barking At Me?’ With one EP under their belt they played a new song due out as a single soon, ‘No Time For Talking’, and received huge applause when their all too short set ended with Emmerichs and Barnard on stage with them for a bluegrass like number. The Black Denims did reappear on stage at the close of Good Guy Hank’s set, swelling the numbers on stage to 10 for a hootenanny-like sing-along.
The following night saw the Scottish debut of Karen Jonas, touring the release of her excellent new album “The Rise And Fall Of American Kitsch”, with her excellent band comprised of Seth Morrisey on bass and Tim Bray on guitar. They kicked off with two of the Elvis-related songs on the album, ‘Four Cadillacs’ and ‘Shake Bump And Grind Show’, the latter in particular having more than a hint of the devil’s music in its sinister air which culminated in a crescendo of soaring guitar from Bray. This was followed by Jonas’ dream vista, ‘Let’s Go To Hawaii’, also from the new album, a brief respite before they then slammed into the rockabilly like roustabout which is ‘Pink Leather Boots’, introduced by Jonas as a possible love song about a trucker and a stripper. It was back to Elvis for the shimmering Las Vegas-themed ‘Gold In The Sand’ followed by the first cover of the night, Johnny Cash’s ‘Big River’, featuring a scorching solo from Bray.
A lengthy introduction to ‘The Last Cowboy (at the Bowling Alley)’ saw Jonas relating the tale of how much easier it was to find a cowboy than a bowling alley who would allow her to film the song’s attendant video. Nevertheless, it was a fine reminder of her salute to the South West on her album “The Southern Sky”. ‘Online Shopping’ had the audience finger popping away while the opening song from the latest album, ‘Rich Man’s Valley’ was a mighty countrified rumble. Flanked by a pair of plastic pink flamingos, gifted to the band by a grateful promoter earlier on the tour, Jonas gave a dramatic performance of the song, “Plastic Pink Flamingos” which started as a bit of a country hoedown before a martial beat indicated the said flamingos’ owner’s descent into paranoia, vividly described by Jonas. She reached into her back catalogue for ‘The Garden’ (from her 2016 album “Country Songs”), an atmospheric and haunted song which had the audience hushed and in awe of Bray’s frantic guitar solo. Despite having a hefty list of albums to draw from Jonas always peppers her sets with covers of some of her favourite songs. Recent favourites such as ‘Boys Of Summer’ and ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ have been retired and tonight saw Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’ revived while the encore was a lovely version of Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’, a song which suits Jonas down to a T.
Poor Norma Macdonald stepped off her flight from Nova Scotia earlier in the afternoon, all prepped to play the first of her two shows at the festival only to find that her luggage – her clothes and merch- was nowhere to be found. She still had her guitar however as she opened for Karen Jonas. Still in her travelling gear she shrugged off this minor calamity and proceeded to play a fine set drawn mainly from her last three albums, “Burn The Tapes”, “Old Future” and “In Wave” including ‘Trick Of The Light’ and the wonderful ‘Blue As A Jay’. One highlight was what she described as “her country song,” ‘Your Wedding Day’, about three relationships she had been in. She also confided that she was hooked on horoscopes as evidenced by her song ‘Co-Star’, named after an app she uses to find out what the stars have in store for her. Unfortunately they hadn’t warned her about her luggage disaster.
Friday night saw the one clash of the festival. Either Rachel Baiman in the city centre or Sulidae on the south side. Your reviewer plumped for the sold-out album release show for Sulidae’s excellent new album” …an invincible summer”, drawn by the disc’s warmth and sense of humanity. Sulidae (the generic term for medium-large coastal seabirds, including gannets, that plunge-dive for fish) is the brainchild of Bobby Motherwell, a Scottish writer, poet and photographer and “…an invincible summer” is their second album. Motherwell has a distinctly Scottish take on life which is infused with the joys of nature and the commonweal found through friends and family and expressed via song and poetry. These can be spiritual and uplifting or gritty and, well, couthy and both qualities were on show tonight as Motherwell and his musicians, Lyle Watt (of Blue Rose Code) on guitar, Paul Harrison on keyboards and legendary harmonica player Fraser Speirs, delivered a spellbinding set.
It’s not often that a reading from Albert Camus, the French/Algerian philosopher, author and goalkeeper opens a set but as he provided the album’s title then the passage which ended with the words “No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back” was quite fitting in its sense of human resilience. Motherwell then proceeded to recite the poem ‘How Peace Was Won’, from the album “Kitchen Sink Dharma”, with Watt and Harrison adding some colour to the words. Calm, moving and heartfelt, the poem segued (as it does on the album) into the song ‘The Child in the Growing Old’, the audience was rapt. ‘A Letter And A Blessing’ followed, a sweet rapture which showed why Motherwell is often mentioned in the same sentence as Ross Wilson of Blue Rose Code; both are able to convey warmth, love and wonder in the words of their songs.
Fraser Speirs stepped onto the stage for a rendition of four poems from the new album (‘When The Penny Drops’, ‘A Kind Wind’, ‘Dae Ye Miss It’ and ‘Fragile Wings’). This quartet portrays Motherwell as a typical west of Scotland character, in thrall to the drink, a trait he has now left behind. With Speirs’ harmonica wizardry, bluesy and atmospheric, and Watt’s ethereal guitar notes gliding below the words this was awesome, pure west of Scotland Zen wisdom. With Speirs remaining on stage for the remainder of the show we were treated to a fine and moving rendition of ‘The Wild Garlic And Bluebell Way’, dedicated to Motherwell’s deceased canine companion and then Motherwell’s tribute to a Scottish pioneer, the 18th century ornithologist Alexander Wilson on ‘Wilson’s Lament’, the introduction leaning more on Wilson’s radical leanings which forced him to emigrate to America.
Motherwell gave way to Carol Laula, like Speirs, another Scottish favourite from past years, who came on stage to sing ‘Ode To Bob’, a love song to Robert DeNiro which appeared on her 1995 album “Precious Little Victories” and then ‘Wishing For Me’, a song written for peace in Ukraine on which Laula sounded like Janis Ian arranged by Stephen Sondheim. Very impressive. She remained on stage for the remainder of the show adding her harmonies to ‘Why Are All The Good Guys Gone’ and its companion song ‘Three Women’ (the songs dedicated to friends of Motherwell who have passed on, and to their surviving partners).
Although the evening was a quite joyous occasion, Motherwell was aware that his songs and poems might appear somewhat weighty and so he promised to end on two cheery numbers. To call ‘Save You All My Blues’, co-written with Bobby Bluebell and James Grant at a songwriters’ retreat, cheery is stretching it a bit, it’s a song suffused with heart and soul. ‘Brand New Day’ on the other hand is bright and optimistic and was conveyed tonight with the freewheeling Celtic soul one associates with Blue Rose Code. A tremendous song to close a tremendous show and to borrow a hash tag from Ross Wilson, #grateful.
For various reasons your reviewer had to forgo the Saturday events laid on by the festival. These included a second appearance by Norma MacDonald, by now reunited with her luggage (thank the stars), Malcolm McWatt, Ex Rezillo Fay Fife’s gothic Americana with her band The Countess Of Fife and several local luminaries sharing the stage at The Seven Song Club. However we were on hand to witness the double whammy which closed the festival on Sunday.
First up was a matinee performance by Peter Bruntnell, supported by the Edinburgh-based Paper Sparrows. The Sparrows, an acoustic three-piece, have an attractive sound which draws from folk music and classic L.A. band harmonies, reminiscent at times of America (those lads who had a horse whose name they couldn’t remember) while retaining their Scottish accents. Guitarist Ross Fairbairn’s skills were well to the fore on ‘Saving Grace’ (and a nod to the fine video of the song, mentioned by singer David Hershaw in his introduction) while’ Sunday Shoes’ and ‘Whispering To The Waves’ both allow that the band deserve further investigation and it’s testament to the infectiousness of ‘Keep Hiding Away From The Light’ that they were able to cajole the audience into singing along with its refrain.
Fresh off the ferry from the Isle of Bute, Peter Bruntnell brought his road-tested band (Peter Noone on bass, Mick Clews on drums – sadly, no guitar foil from Dave Little this time around) back to Glasgow for the first time in aeons. This power trio blasted into view with a killer rendition of the title song from Bruntnell’s latest album, “Houdini And The Sucker Punch”, released just a few days previously. The show was a mixture of old favourites – ‘Here Come The Swells’, ‘By The Time My Head Gets To Phoenix’, ‘Mr. Sunshine’ (a song about D. Trump, “he’s been an arsehole all his life”) and ‘Lay Down This Curs’ – along with a selection from the new album. Of these, ‘No Place Like Home’ proved that Bruntnell has his finger firmly on the pulse that was once alt-country while ‘Out Of The Pines’ was a pitch-perfect portrait of Bruntnell’s ennui. Dredged from the 1997 album “Camelot In Smithereens”, ‘Have You Seen That Girl Again’ remains quite a gorgeous song and it was followed by the set closer, ‘Broken Wing’. Throughout the set Bruntnell had been tossing off inspired solos on his guitars but here he took flight in a manner similar to those solos of Neil Young which just meander, squall and soar in magnificent ways.
There was a brief encore. A fiery rendition of George Jones’ ‘White Lightning’, followed by a frantic, delivery of ‘Peak Operational Condition’, a deep cut from “Nos Da Comrade”, which had all the bluster of The Who in their heyday.
A few hours later we reconvened for the closing show of the festival. First up was Hannah White, accompanied by guitarist (and husband) Keiron Marshall for a set which was probably the most emotionally wracked of the festival. White is no stranger to baring her emotions in her songs and this was apparent from the start as she and Marshall delivered a chilling ‘Don’t Despair’ while her introduction to ‘Car Crash’ was a grim litany of hard times she experienced as a single mother with the song itself a powerful and moving portrait of the plight of many other such women who are trapped in a system which is impersonal and vindictive (the song won an AMAUK award for song of the year in 2023). On a lighter note she spoke of how the notion of releasing a song a month for a year had been a much harder task than she and Marshall had anticipated, nevertheless, with songs of the calibre of ‘Child Of Mine’ they seem to be doing alright. Elsewhere, ‘The Aftershow’ was taken at a much slower pace than the recorded version, turning it into a southern-drenched swamp pop song. Overall an intense and all too short set but that’s the fate of opening acts. White and Marshall have the consolation gift of hanging around Glasgow for a few days to record a radio session with Deacon Blue’s Ricky Ross with whom they have struck up a rapport.
The festival’s closer was Annie Keating, back again with her crack combo of UK players (Scott Warman on double bass and electric bass, guitarist Joe Coombs and drummer Jamie Dawson). Back in 2022 Keating had just met the band and they just about blew everyone away on their tour back then, delivering a hi-octane brand of rock’n’roll, surprising most folk who were familiar with Keating’s albums. They’re still a band who blister and burn but this time around Coombs plays acoustic guitar on several of the songs allowing Keatings some light and shade to play with. That said, they opened with an almighty rumble as if Black Sabbath and The London Symphony Orchestra were tuning up together before slamming into what I think was ‘Rollercoaster Days’, whatever, it was exhilarating. ‘Kindred Spirit’ then slouched into view with Keating sounding like Patti Smith while Coombs’ guitar reverberated throughout before the slash and burn of ‘Lovesick Blues’, a song on which Keating challenged herself to find as many words as she could that would rhyme with blues and she threw them all into the song with some glee over the snarly bottleneck guitar and pounding drums. ‘Belmont’ afforded some respite, an acoustic number, introduced by Keating as having played it to her father who said she’d never make a living singing songs like that. Deadpan, she quipped, “And he was right!” ‘$20′ had a chunky country rock vibe to it along with more than a nod to John Prine (who is name-checked in the song) and ‘Hank’s Saloon’ was another song with some roots in Prine.
‘Storm Warning’ should have come with some kind of warning as Keating and her band went all voodoo on us and this sense was multiplied tenfold as the pounding drums of Dawson introduced the spell-binding and spine-rattling slice of rock’n’roll that is ‘On The Loose’. Here they take no prisoners as Keating intones a classic tale of gambling and riding the highways as the band stretch out with Coombs’ guitar pretty much on fire. On ‘Third Street’, a lockdown song about leaving New York to escape the pandemic, the central character, a chap called Duane, now has a Fuck You appended to his name in the blistering version that ended the set.
There was, of course, an encore, with Hannah White invited back on stage to join in on a spirited version of John Prine’s ‘Angel From Montgomery’, a song which had also appeared on the first night of the festival – circles and all that. Anyhow, a great way to end an excellent five days in the company of a great set of artists and hopefully to be repeated. Huge thanks to Kevin Morris at Glasgow’s Fallen Angels Club for keeping the flame alight.
All pictures by Paul Kerr
