Sunday no day of rest as Peerie Spang livens up the Clickimin

“ARE YOU guys ready to dance?” one-man-band Elias Alexander exclaimed from the Clickimin stage at Shetland Folk Festival’s Peerie Spang on Sunday afternoon.

The assembled mass of bairns at the front of the stage had no qualms with playing ball – bopping and bouncing, spanging and screaming, some with folk festival branded ear protectors or temporary tattoos.

Aoife Gray (10), Lerwick, is invited on stage to meet Mec Lir’s fiddle player Tomas Callister during the children’s concert at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media

Aoife Gray (10), Lerwick, is invited on stage to meet Mec Lir’s fiddle player Tomas Callister during the children’s concert at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media

The Peerie Spang feels like one of the folk festival’s most community-minded events, drawing in punters of all persuasions – with some parents saying it was the only gig they’d been to that weekend.

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As always, it was a tonic to see the bairns getting their chance to shine – and perhaps sowing seeds of musical inspiration in their minds.

Alexander, who hails from the US, blended electronic beats and looping with bagpipes, fiddle, guitar and whistle – not perhaps something easily swallowed by folk traditionalists, but the Peerie Spang crowd are an open-minded bunch.

There were some nods to the past, though, with the multi-instrumentalist giving traditional song Up Da Stroods a bash, which he said he’d learned from local fiddler Kevin Henderson.

And the dancefloor swelled in size for following act Mec Lir, whose trad stomp and blazing fiddling took things up a notch.

There was even a keytar (why not?), cowbell and hints of 80s rock, and a special moment where a lucky young gig-goer got the chance to play on Tomas Callister’s fiddle – as pictured above.

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But who wants to read what this 37-year-old thought of a bairns’ gig anyway? What about Shetland’s youth, the ones who were there soaking it all in?

Elias Alexander performing during the children’s concert on Sunday afternoon at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media

Elias Alexander performing during the children’s concert on Sunday afternoon at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media

This reviewer took the chance to hear what some of the young folk thought after the concert had come to an end – and it seems it was pass marks for both acts.

One six-year-old reckoned the gig was “super groovy”.

Her favourite moment? “It felt really exciting when the fiddle player and the accordion player went into the audience and some of the audience was getting a shot of their instruments,” she said.

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A four-year-old boy proclaimed that the gig was “as good as can be” – praise indeed.

He also said he did some “daft dancing” – he wasn’t alone – and saw lots of interesting instruments, with his favourite being the “piano guitar thing” because it is now what he would like to play one day.

Another bairn, aged five, said the gig was “great” and that her favourite bit was the dancing.

The last word can perhaps go to a six-year-old girl, who was giving feedback while eating her tea.

“I liked the music, but it was too loud,” she said. “And can I have more noodles please?”

Paddy Callaghan and Tomas Callister (right) of Mec Lir performing at the children’s concert at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media

Paddy Callaghan and Tomas Callister (right) of Mec Lir performing at the children’s concert at the Clickimin.
Photo: Malcolm Younger/Millgaet Media