On a driech Monday night, with no invitation to a Burns Super in sight, what better than to head to the Traverse Theatre bar and enjoy the warm welcome afforded to the Nuala Kennedy Band?
Playing as part of the now well established Soundhouse sessions, Nuala Kennedy and her fellow artists Shona Mooney on fiddle, Donald Hay on percussion and Michael Bryan on guitar took best advantage of the Traverse’s low-ceilinged bar space to produce some lively and frequently thrilling interpretations of both traditional and more recent compositions.
Beginning with ‘Lovely Armoy’, a song of emigration from the Sam Henry collection, the first half of the band’s performance showcased several pieces from their new CD – indeed, the concert could well be classed as a pre-album launch event – including Kennedy’s rendition of songs in Irish Gaelic, although this reviewer’s bad case of ‘begann Ghaidhlig’ allows only for appreciation of her vocal performance rather than her interpretation.
In ‘Bonnet so Blue’ and ‘Fair Annie of the Loch Royan’, the latter a clear case of kinship with other ballad versions stretching from North East Scotland to the ‘Scotch Irish’ communities of West Virginia and Tennessee, Kennedy’s voice released their full potential and power.
In the second part of the concert, ‘Death and the Lady’ offered a different and perhaps more credible ending to what is surely its companion piece, ‘The Faus Knicht on the Road’, where the enquiring child escapes his fate.
‘The Books in my Library’ gave Kennedy the opportunity for reflective mood, considering life rather than its fictional presentation, and all the near misses and car-crashes that we might prefer not to return to but can never conveniently donate to the Oxfam shop.
‘The Lion’s Den’ provides the title for the band’s new CD ‘Behave the Bravest’ along with a tale of a lady whose method of choosing between two suitors, and it would be churlish not to mention it again, available via http://www.nualakennedy.com/ for a modest £10.00
Lacking taste and discrimination too not to offer proper praise to Kennedy’s altogether excellent band members, whose playing of the several instrumental pieces throughout the performance illuminated both it and the darkness of the journey home.
Playing at Celtic Connections and subsequently in Peebles, Nula Kennedy Band continues to lighten our present darkness.