NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
The APRIL VERCH
Band
April Verch Band stuns the Dale
There are only so many ways to say, 'What an incredible evening!' I should know, I've investigated most of them!
That doesn't mean, on any given night, that the report is less than accurate, but the difficulty with superlatives does, I hope, indicate some of the trials and tribulations of an erstwhile critic, struggling to convey just what happened at a particular venue on a particular night.
On occasions like these, when a sold-out room, as at the King's Head in Allendale last Friday evening, is effusive in its accolades for an entertainer, when the encores go on and on, when the show is unstoppable and the presentation is top quality, the least a critic can do is to attempt to indicate just how amazing, just how incredibly wonderful the show actually was. In that way, one might hope, those many souls who had to be turned away will be able to appreciate vicariously some semblance of the evening.
So we try to describe the talent that is April Verch.
Right, you've got to discount the fact that every man in the audience fell in love with her from square one. Okay, that leaves the female half that needed to be convinced. So you figure in the fiddle virtuosity, which bedazzled from the first arpeggio, and then the heart-stopping dancing which was literally amazing, so that entranced everyone, say no more.
Was it the two vocals which conspired to convince us of the talent? Some might say these were the least of the evening, but I, a deeply dark country music fan at heart, found her fragile country voice perhaps the most compelling part of an entertainment package that someone described as vaudeville at its best.
This is a talent that is absolutely unique. You take a country fiddler, with roots in classic Irish-Scots music as realised in expatriate mode, where the fondly remembered homeland lives forever, and you incorporate a bit of fresh enthusiasm, Canadian-style, and you've found April. The spring motif is a particularly resonant metaphor for Canadians, who actually scoff at these effete Northumberland winters! Fiddlers from Appalachia through to Brazil would also appreciate the nod that April gave to their disparate styles.
Then you add a bit of show-biz razzamatazz, with tapping feet that conspired to overwhelm the percussion part of the band (though Marc Bru on the spoons did his best to compare). Add in the floppy, desultorily French-Canadian hands of Benoit Legault on bouncing keyboard, and the adulatory guitar licks of Freddie Pelletier on guitar, and you've got the whole band. Never mind that one of them was the husband, they were all wholly in love with their mistress!
But nobody, even those who had promoted the evening, nobody was prepared for the control April exhibited when she tapped into heaven, and then brought the whole night to its feet with crashing reels on a fiddle that never lost its musical control while those tapping talents kept on pounding out a beat that went on and on and on.
Vicarious experience is one thing, the reality is always better! So it's a good thing that the band is feted to return in the summer, when a venue sufficient to hold the swarming crowd will be available.
