Music

Western Centuries

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

four stars

IF SEEING Cahalen Morrison, a hero of acoustic bluegrass and old-time-styled folk music, strapping on a Fender Telecaster wasn’t quite as earth-shattering as a certain other singer-guitarist going electric in the 1960s, then Morrison’s next move – onto the drum kit with no little assurance – was quite the revelation.

Swapping instruments is all part of the sleeves-rolled-up, getting on with the job philosophy presented by Morrison and his colleagues in the trio at the heart of Western Centuries, Jim Miller and Ethan Lawton. It goes with their music’s realism, the sense that any of their songs’ stories could happen to any one of us – or someone we know.

Much of the material Morrison, Miller and Lawton delivered, with the rock steady assistance of double bassist Travis Stuart and Leo Grassl’s pedal steel poetry, was being road tested for their next album, so we were guinea pigs, they told us. It was far from a chore, though, to audition this rockin’, drivin’, swingin’, shufflin’ country music for them.

Morrison, Miller and Lawton all write and all sing, often in harmony, with Lawton’s voice in particular standing out for its purity, strength and appealing country-as-cow-dung timbre. He’s a fine drummer, too, putting the kit at the musical heart of an arrangement and adding beautifully judged energy and colour to the rhythm.

If some of the guitar licks showed more functionality than ambition, this was in keeping with the overriding impression of good-time honesty and the directness especially of their kicking, urgent parting shot, What Will They Say About Us Now? Plenty, one suspects, is the answer, and pretty much all of it good.