This is an excerpt of an article written by Tom Girard
With festival season fast approaching three bands, BlackTopTales, Blue Mountains and JD & Folk, took over The Lion’s Den upstairs room at The Golden Lion for a bit of an unofficial warm up for this year’s Sark Folk Festival that happens at the beginning of July.
Country influenced duo JD & Folk started the night with their own relaxed take on the style mixing tracks from their recently released debut CD with popular covers from the likes of Johnny Cash and The Eagles.
Combining acoustic guitar with pedal steel guitar (impressively played by veteran musician Dave Dales) gives them a unique sound in the island and, while I can never quite place the pedal steel between Nashville and Hawaii, it really added an authentic feel here.
John Le Sauvage’s songwriting and playing add the heart to this as, while relatively simple (as is a tenet of the genre), it was convincing throughout, starting the night well, even if many were content to hang back and listen while chatting at the bar.
The set also featured possibly the first use of a digital stompbox I’ve seen where it was both effective and worked reliably.
It was clear there was at least a section of the audience there to see folk duo Blue Mountains as the crowd was noticeably quieter as soon as they took to the stage and began with a version of previous a capella song Bright Stars featuring the newly added harmonium (a strange instrument that seems to be equal parts, organ, accordion and vintage style suitcase).
With the band in two piece mode, without the fiddle and voice of Andrew Degnen, the chemistry between Colleen Irven and Mike Bonsall really had the chance to the cut through.
For their chosen style of music their clear connection with each other helped add to the feel and mood of these songs of damaged love and worse and was particularly evident on both Hummingbird and Shanty Man where even the dual guitar work was developed by this link.
A rendition of Emmylou Harris’ Red Dirt Girl was again a highlight before they closed with a new song, based off a 16th century Irish poem, with Mike back on the harmonium which provided a spectacularly ominous sound tempered by guitar accompaniment from Colleen instantly making them a must see band come festival time (if they weren’t already).
BlackTopTales have only played a handful of public shows so far, including past Sark Folk Festivals, but this was my first time catching the band and, while I didn’t know exactly what to expect my suspicion was for lighter end country rock with a humorously scathing sensibility to the lyrics and, partly, that’s what I got.
With Lisa Murfitt added to the line up to stand in for a missing in action pair of backing singers the band didn’t seem to miss a beat as her and frontman Chas Cole’s vocals played off each other excellently.
As I say I was expecting songs that took aim at specific subjects and that’s what we got with a couple of stand outs, one aimed at a certain regular letter writer to the local newspaper and the other, the frontman’s hometown that had a feel of Ginger Wildheart’s recent solo work as heard on Ghost In The Tanglewood.
Elsewhere though things were more subtle and heartfelt ranging from melancholy country sounds to upbeat dance-along stuff.
A song about a visit to Graceland was particularly poignant while the eponymous set closer was the sort that, with more familiarity, could fill dancefloors and get a crowd singing along.
The band were uniformly tight but had enough give to be fun when needed and emotional at other times and Chas, despite his potentially surly reputation from behind the sound desk at many local shows, was an engaging and entertaining frontman with a great singing voice that never aped the classic style but added it’s own aspect to it, along with some top notch guitar playing.
This all rounded off a very good and relaxed night of music on a high and, for those attending, no doubt worked as a fine primer for the upcoming Sark Folk Festival.
