Arts / Wood wows and Kansa conquer festival’s opening night at Mareel
Bryan Gear and Margo Cilker impress at first gig of packed weekend
AND SO, after a year of counting down and crossing off the calendar, one of Shetland’s most anticipated weekends of the year arrives.
Folk fever was in the air at Mareel for Thursday night’s opening salvo, the anticipation palpable in the packed auditorium.
Some awaited their first taste of the folk festival, others are battle-hardy veterans ticking a 43rd off.
Expectation was so high, in fact, that there was not a seat to be had by 7.10pm, a full 20 minutes before the opening note was struck.
This reporter found his access all areas pass could only get him so far, a seat next to a bin his vantage point. A lesson in punctuality, and in the eagerness of folk enthusiasts.
Fiddler Bryan Gear was the perfect person to ease in those enjoying the festival for the first time, starting with a set of three Shetland reels to give them a taste of why the isles’ has earned its strong name in the fiddling world.
Accompanied by Martin Henderson on keyboard and Brian Nicholson on guitar, Gear’s reasoning for opening with home-grown tunes was simple.
“We decided that Shetland tunes are the best,” he said to a raucous Mareel reception.
The trio are easy company, rattling off reels from Orkney too in between jokes from Gear that Nicholson – sporting a mop of hair – isn’t sharing it out with the band evenly enough.
Nicholson ties the set together with a country cover of Hank Williams’ You Win Again, giving the audience something to sing along to for the first time on the night.
A California country star herself is Margo Cilker, who is next to take the stage. She comes with a strong reputation, heralded as the new star of country rock by Uncut magazine.
Cilker arrives on stage very much looking the part, decked out in double denim and with guitarist Forrest van Tuyl sporting a moustache that would put Yosemite Sam to shame.
Their style blends country and Americana and it doesn’t take the audience long to get onboard, though songs about canyon craters could not be much further away from Shetland’s peat hills.
However Cilker explains she and van Tuyl live in a “windy place with lots of sheep”, asking: “Does that sound familiar?”
Rose of Nowhere is a touching tribute written by van Tuyl for partner Cilker, which she brings to life beautifully with a voice that can range from lilting and sweet to fierce and strong when she wants it to.
Hailing from America’s West Coast originally, it’s no surprise to hear she “didn’t know much about this festival” before speaking to friends in previous visitors The Hackles.
Their advice? “Get some sleep while you can.”
They will be one trio that people will be seeking out over the weekend, in between naps, and they’ll have good reason to do so.
Homegrown heroes Kansa were welcomed to the stage vociferously by a Mareel crowd who mostly knew just how good this Americana inspired sextet are. The rest soon did too.
Opening with Roving Gambler, they explained they were aiming to shake people back to life after the mid-concert break.
They succeeded in doing just that, before a raw and emotive cover of Like a Cloak by The Milk Carton Kids.
Kansa were the solitary six piece amongst a trio of trios, and having double the members certainly did not muddy their sound.
With perfectly melded harmonies from Norma Wishart and Karlyn Garrick, pounding double bass from Adam Priest and intricate, weaving guitar, fiddle and mandolin playing from Robert Wishart, Adrian Wishart and Lois Nicol respectively, every performance from Kansa seems better than the last.
A woman next to me summed it up best in one word at the culmination of a cover of Long Time Gone by the Everly Brothers: “Wow.”
Having Americana groups this good in Shetland must be a relief for the folk festival committee. No need to jump on the NorthLink and escort these guys to the isles – they’re waiting on our front door to blow the roof of Mareel.
[Richard Wood] is in danger, at times, of making the fiddle cool.
Kansa on this form are a tough act to follow, but Canadian fiddle extraordinaire Richard Wood is exactly the man to do it.
Waiting in the wings for his cue, the opening night’s headliner springs and bounds on to stage looking a bit like Robert Plant.
And like his rock-star doppelganger, Wood – returning to Shetland for the first time since 1997 – is equally adept at psyching up a crowd, urging them to match his fast-paced tempo and at one point decrying the lack of a dancefloor.
To see Wood is to believe in the potential of the fiddle to be a rock instrument, wielded and worn out by him at frenetic pace. He is in danger, at times, of making the fiddle cool.
He calls it an “honour and a pleasure” to be back in the islands he last visited, he says jokingly, “in the 1900s”.
It helps he’s also excellent company. One slow air is movingly dedicated to his late mother and father who he said were excited about his descriptions of the “magical” Shetland that he visited.
Of the reel The Appropriate Dipstick, Wood jokes it “must be for someone in the US”. Shetlanders lap that one up more eagerly than the American tourists sitting in front of me.
With a final tribute to his backing band and his wife, who he credits with getting him back to Shetland this year, Wood bounds back off stage to close night one of this year’s folk festival.
Folk fever exits Mareel and makes its way the short distance through the Lerwick rain to Islesburgh to continue the party. There is plenty more to come.
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