fRoots

[ian]

I went all the way over to the Half Moon, Putney tonight, for the first time in about 20 years. Somehow I still expected to find Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones, Ralph McTell etc propping up the bar - no doubt very sad on the night Davey Graham died, news which came in just as I was leaving for the gig - but they were nowhere to be seen. Apart from that not a lot has changed!

The Bad Shepherds – Adrian Edmondson's folked punk band – made the trip well worthwhile. If you saw the interview with Ade in fRoots a few months back you'll know the wheeze: songs of the punk & new wave era done in Irishy folk style. Could have been an easily failing gimmick but he's a good singer (reminds me of Robb Johnson) and mandolin player and he's surrounded himself with excellent musos: Troy Donockley on pipes, whistles and cittern, Maartin Allcock on 12-string and bass, Andy Dinan on fiddle and Mark Wooley on bodhran and percussion.

They hit the right balance between fun and musicianship, very much involving the audience who seemed to mostly be au fait with the lyrics, reliving their distant youth and well up for it. It's all presented with humour and much welly, energy with finesse rather than thrash. Some of the songs from that era turn out to be better songs than I thought: others that were iconic favourites that you couldn't imagine revisited in any other way actually survived the remodelling with ease. I'd half joked to Adrian a few months back that they'd stand or fall on how they did London Calling and it worked really well - I can imagine Joe Strummer (who after all had his spell in the Pogues) liking it a lot. Oh, and they've reworked All Around My Hat in the opposite direction!

Do try to catch them on the rest of this short tour or next year's festivals like the Big Session.

Ella Edmondson and her band opened. One might be inclined to raise an eyebrow at the headliner's daughter doing the support, but in fact she's a good singer songwriter with a strong voice - somewhere between Tracy Chapman & Lou Rhodes - and whilst she's not much more than an energetic strummer instrumentally, she's got good musicians on board, including Matt Norman, known for work with Jackie Oates and Jim Causley. Bodes well for her debut album due in February.