It’s always good to hear music presented outside of the normal gig haunts and this one is certainly different, an old whiskey distillery in Bushmills. They’ve managed to create a pleasant little festival village, with music spread across two venues. Willy Mason is on stage playing ‘Oxygen’ as requested and talking about liquid gold and the mood up front is reverential.
The lineup included acts from the north, the UK and further afield and they’re all well-suited to the Cooperage and the Still Room of the old establishment. Local lad Iain Archer kicks off with the ever-beautiful ‘Canal Song’ before bringing VerseChorusVerse and David C Clements up with him for Tired Pony’s ‘I Am A Landslide’. The lads are given the spotlight for some of their mighty numbers, with David C Clements drawing a big reaction with that powerful voice of his. It’s Iain’s birthday and a cake is presented to him with a singsong setting the scene for VerseChorusVerse’s ‘You Can’t Win Back Your Freedom If You’ve Never Been Free At All’, as big an earworm as anyone would’ve heard all day.
Iain is back later in the day to perform with Jake Bugg in the Still Room, a tiny venue for a man on Jake’s level. The lad has had huge success in the last year and Iain was involved in the writing, performing and production. Today Iain’s with him for about half of the set, his extraordinary guitarwork taking the songs to places that they hadn’t reached when Jake was performing solo earlier.
Foy Vance has of course been a favourite of Across The Line for quite some time. He’s here at Bushmills with a cracking band behind him showcasing some material from his upcoming album. It’s a much meatier sound than we would’ve witnessed in the past and it doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine these songs packing in arenas worldwide. He’s sporting one of the most unusual moustaches you’d see in 2013 and he’s peddling a bizarre brand of comedic banter in between the songs but when the music is doing the talking it can be mesmeric stuff.
It’s left to Of Monsters and Men to wrap up proceedings in the Cooperage and it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate band. The band’s debut album has had huge worldwide success and it’s not hard to see why. Big anthems like ‘Little Talks’, ‘Dirty Paws’ and ‘King and Lionheart’ are big barnstormers, fit for headline sets at the major festivals. It really is a treat to hear them in this environment. It’s not all big anthems though, with some of their songs like ‘Yellow Light’ and ‘Show and Steady’ showing many other directions the band could take on future releases. They’re one of those bands that are great fun to witness on stage and ensure we leave the old distillery with their tunes swirling around the head for long afterwards.
