IF Allan Taylor presented the embodiment of the weary traveller as he opened Friday's Carrying Stream festival concert, it was due to the shoulder tendon problem that requires imminent surgery rather than any disenchantment with the troubadour's life that the Brighton-born singer-songwriter-guitarist chose to follow over 40 years ago.
Between-song massage might have benefited Taylor more than keeping up a linking narrative that placed his songs in context and traced his experiences from discovering music during hometown rambles through acceptance into the London then Greenwich Village folk scenes, forging lasting friendships with hero-musicians and watching, helpless, as some sought and found oblivion.
Taylor has a pleasingly warm, relaxed singing and guitar-picking delivery and although he was clearly in some discomfort, shifting sitting and guitar positions as he spoke and sang, he was able to conjure up a sense of place, be it a Yorkshire mining community on his classic, still affecting Roll On The Day or the banjo-like pattern that recalled his meeting and fast-friendship with American folk legend Derroll Adams before handing the stage over to, as he said, "the energy."
The Shee certainly have that going on and in keeping with a band whose latest album offers a different cover to every buyer, the six women's repertoire has a kaleidoscopic quality, ranging through bluegrass, Gaelic, murder ballad, footstompin', medieval and even Philip Glass-like systems-music colours. Their end product doesn't always match their ambition, however, and a bit more attention to intonation and timing and a stronger, tighter vocal impact would bolster their candidacy as Best Live Act in this year's Scots Trad Music Awards.
HHH
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