The two stars are for Grant Campbell, whose opening set showcased his new album, Beyond Below. Sounding like a melodically raspy cross between Springsteen and David Gray, his own tunes, like Annabelle and the upbeat Starting Line, paled rather in comparison to the blistering version of Lead Belly's Out on the Western Plain with which he closed the set.
Mindy Smith clearly has a couple of important lessons to learn. The main one would be that, if you are going to tout yourself as a professional musician, you had better know your songs, in what order they are supposed to be sung, in which tuning your guitar is supposed to be, what day of the week it is and, most importantly, which particular planet you happen to be on at the time. Smith gave the distinct impression that she could have ticked a box marked "none of the above". The majority of this was a litany of fluffed lines, dropped notes, abandoned songs - "Does anybody know the next line?" - and exiting punters. She rallied somewhat towards the merciful conclusion of this travesty by struggling through two or three complete songs but, by that time, I had ceased to care.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article