I'll Get Me Waistcoat...

I'm at the Black Box in Belfast on the third week of 2009, but I feel like adjusting my watch back to 1969. The mood is mellow and sweet and folksy. There are many young men with facial hair, and the dress is somewhere between Amish settler, Montana farmboy and Brokeback wrangler. I know that I've seen this look before and heard similar sounds in the past. And then it comes to me. I'm thinking of Robbie Robertson and The Band, getting it together in Woodstock, 40 years ago.

The Band and their pal Bob Dylan had gone to ground to escape the drugs and the intensity of their wild years. The music started sounding more downhome and mysterious while the famous Basement Tapes were an insidious answer to the hippies and acid-eaters of the West Coast.

Such reverberations are resumed in Belfast in the music of Jackson Cage, who add more recent influences like The Jayhawks and Ryan Adams to their deal. From Lurgan, Captain Kennedy are well immersed in the "old weird America" that writer Greil Marcus covered in his book Invisible Republic. They take their name from a Neil Young song but they're also fit to sing old Dixie down. Excellent vocals. I likes 'em. Check out this live recording of 'Take Care Of Me' on YouTube...

The Lowly Knights are fixing to get increasingly popular this year. They're also aware of how an act can get trapped in a look, a scene and a style. "They're selling waistcoats half price in the Rusty Zip," says Cazi, with just a little alarm. Form an orderly queue, young men.