 | | Reviews | | |  HOLMFIRTH FESTIVAL 2004
FESTIVAL OF THE PEAK 2004
Mel McClellan continues her
festival report
FESTIVAL OF THE PEAK 2004
Saturday June 12
With the afternoon ceilidh over and audience suitably refreshed, Canadian band Tanglefoot are onstage in a landscape of blue-grey water and long evening shadows cast on the grassy arena at Carsington Water. Looking like stray cast members from Pirates Of The Caribbean and combining Canadian history, humour and pathos (notably the epic and rather histrionic Vimy), their uptempo material, full-on harmonies and oldtimey string sound is just the job to warm up the evening concert audience.
Richard Digance gets the sunset spot and has the crowd chuckling and singing along with his Cockney humour. Surreal highlight in a set of silly chorus songs (Michaelangelo tribute: "Ceilings, stop painting bloody ceilings…") and dodgy jokes about Jehovah's Witnesses is Mark Knopfler's Going Home (Theme From Local Hero), complete with seawash and seagull soundtrack courtesy of the audience.
The Doonan Family Band are the genuine thing. Patriarch John is sadly missed but various sons and granddaughters, along with their long-term adopted family members, keep alive his Irish heritage of traditional music and dance. 'Traditional' in the loosest sense, of course: the Blues becomes the Greens as Mick Doonan sings "Sam O'Cooke's" Bring It On Home To Me, complete with twelve-bar uilleann pipe solo and the soft sound of the audience singing the final verse alone, their voices drifting over the darkening water. Stunning Irish dance displays featuring dynamic acapella stepping and quirky percussive rhythms from four matched sets of flying feet punctuate a classic DFB repertoire.
FINALES
As the Doonans finish their set with a slow, ethereal Wild Mountain Thyme and couples rise to sing and sway together, I'm reminded of the annual farewell at Holmfirth Festival. Local singer Will Noble traditionally gives The Holmfirth Anthem, unaccompanied and from the floor, and though compere/performer Robin Garside stood in for Will this year the effect was no less electric as massed voices raised in harmony swelled the air and brought a tear to the eye. That's the spirit that makes a festival, and both these grand northern affairs have it in spades.
Mel McClellan - June 2004
See also:
Festival Of The Peak 2003
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Folk & Acoustic
