Fine Friday
Item Posted: Wednesday 28th March , 2007
Fine Friday
Review Of Fine Friday Concert at Lochgoilhead on Sunday 12th October
Another bumper audience for Loch Goil’s fourth traditional music concert in 2003 confirmed the popularity of Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop’s mission to bring down top quality traditional musicians to this part of Argyll. On Sunday 12th around 170 people gathered at Drimsynie Hotel to hear a double line-up of the innovative young band “Fine Friday”, preceded by Sara Melville on fiddle and Chris Bell on keyboards. The audience, as usual, included large numbers of children, encouraged by the relaxed atmosphere which has become a hallmark of the Loch Goil concerts. There was also a heavy contingent of visitors to the area, supplementing the local afficionados. The concert inaugurated the use of the Workshop’s new sound system, largely financed by the Capital Lottery and Argyll and Bute. The stunning quality of the sound showed its value, and the expertise of Loch Goil’s own sound man, Jack Wilson, aided by Nick Langlands.
Sara and Chris, two fine musicians who are well-known in fiddling circles, joked that the large Drimsynie performance area was a little different from their normal venue of their front sitting room. They went on to give a virtuoso performance whose highlight was two beautiful Gaelic slow airs (“I could play slow airs all day” confessed Sara) -Sara, we wish you would! Sara has a delicacy of touch and golden tone well-suited to this type of atmospheric music, and Chris complements her with grace and restraint on the keyboards. Inspired by the enthusiastic reception given to the Workshop’s programme in Loch Goil and its surrounding area, Sara and Chris are setting up a similar society, called “Get Reel”, in their home area of Killearn-we wish them well, and look forward to many more performances and an exchange of musical visits in the future!
The main band, Fine Friday, are a talented trio of young musicians whose act grew out of the vibrant music scene in Edinburgh, particularly from sessions at Sandy Bell’s pub. They conducted an intricate musical exploration over an hour and a half of rhythmic patterns of reels, jigs, hornpipes and strathspeys, with other less easily classifiable material. For the encore, for instance, they played “a slip-jiggy polka thing”-and also a funky rendition of “Donald Willie and His Dog” (don’t say it too fast). In between they explored variation of pace and sound pattern, with jazz-type improvisations of harmonics which achieved some gut-wrenchingly good effects. Much of the material was modern, but one set was so venerable that they have christened it, “the cave-man set”. Kris Drever (yes, he is Ivan Drever’s son) interlinked with ballads mostly featuring wronged women, sung in his arresting voice. We learned that a “night song” was about late night visits to the rooms of sweethearts, unsanctioned by parental consent or matrimony-leading inevitably, it seems, to the lament of the betrayed woman thereafter. Another song Kris likes, “The Bleacher Lassie of Kelvinhaugh”, features a test of fidelity after seven years of absence set by a returning sailorman. (This girl passes the test, fortunately for her!). “I like to do songs that haven’t been covered much before…I try to steer clear of that kind of typical folk-singer sound, and put my own mark on things.”
The band members come from widely differing backgrounds, but all, one way or another, from families immersed in music. For Nuala Kennedy, who played flute, sometimes the conventional instrument but often a seriously large wooden flute which virtually hid her from sight (I am told it is a B Flat flute-it’s sound is husky and breathy), early music experience was via traditional music –making in her home town of Dundalk in Eire. This was easily available to her in her youth, even though her parents played no instrument (“but they did sing”)- a contrast to the current lack of provision in most of Scotland. Nuala played in a ceilidh band from the age of 13, abandoned music for a while when she was studying ceramics, then went back to her roots when she discovered the Edinburgh music scene. Kris grew up in Orkney in a household where many types of musical instruments were casually available (“a musical instrument is just a tool; virtually anyone can learn how to use them”), and all of his friends “played something, usually-it was expected.” Anna-Wendy Stevenson, the fiddler, has a musical lineage going back at least to her grandfather, the well-known classical pianist and composer, Ronald Stevenson. All are agreed that music is a language expressed by a variety of instruments. As a group they are language postgraduates, with trademark precision in their timing, a delight in funky rhythms and harmonies and a sense of effortless mastery of material and instrument.