Edinburgh Folk Club: North Sea Gas and Pauline Vallance
Ukranian Centre - 08/12/21
It was a “gas” of an evening!
Sorry about the bad pun about the main guests of the evening, North Sea Gas, but it was a great evening with lots of great Scots songs that we could join in with, for me the essence of a folk club, because singing together is good for the soul.
The evening began well with an artist new to me, Pauline Vallance from Beith in Ayrshire, a singer-songwriter and clarsach (Celtic Harp) player. She was a delight, a lovely clear tuneful voice that has clearly benefitted from some classical music training, also a fine sensitive clarsach player that allowed the voice to be heard. Pauline is also a very good songwriter and her wee song ‘Coorie in’ was lovely, but her rendition of Burns great ballad ‘Of A’ The Airts’ was for me the high point of her set. After the interval she showed that she could entertain in a different way by setting well known songs to different tunes. Pauline clearly could entertain us for a whole evening, and I hope Edinburgh Folk Club and other clubs will book her as their main guest.
North Sea Gas have been entertaining us for 40 years but as Grant Simpson, their newest member, was keen to point out, not with the same personnel! Grant, who is a fine fiddler, is the most recent member of the group. About 5 years ago he joined Ronnie Macdonald, a guitar and other string player, who joined in 2002 and Dave Gilfillan, the original member of the group from its foundation in 1980 who plays guitar, banjo, bodhran and other instruments. All of the group sing, some better than others individually, but most of all they sing together often in good close harmony and with great gusto; as my companion tonight, an old folk singer from the 1960s, said “they give you a good night out”. Indeed North Sea Gas are a direct link back to the folk music of the 1960s and the beginning of the folk revival. Listening to them tonight brought back memories of the Corrie’s and you can’t have higher praise than that. They gave us a wide-ranging sample of their material tonight from their 22 albums and some new material written during lockdown, which like all folk groups they suffered from. Above all they encouraged us to sing with them; for me that is the essence of a Folk Club, and Edinburgh Folk Club has a very experienced membership who delight in singing in the chorus.
In my last review of the Folk Club I was mildly critical of two previous evenings at the Club when very skilled young musicians didn’t sing much and did little to encourage us to sing. One of them wrote to me and explained they were a little concerned about Covid transmissions. This is a legitimate concern which the club is aware of; we wear masks when walking about and group around tables with a degree of social distancing, but it’s a judgement we all have to make about risk and quality of life. Folk Clubs, like all live music venues, suffered during the lockdown and many are finding it difficult to get their audiences back. There was a good turnout tonight at Edinburgh Folk Club and I’m sure the audience felt it was worth the risk. North Sea Gas were indeed a gas!
