NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we thought
of
Cappy's
Drift
A Band to be Proud
of
We tend to have a romantic image of bands, how they coalesce around each other, passionate musicians forming a crucial nucleus of artistes and playing their own individual music. But everyone knows nowadays that some of the best bands are formed in a recruiting agent's imagination before the actual corpus becomes a reality.
If swank London agencies can do it, then so can we, up here in the north, man! And surprise ourselves in the bargain.
Cappy's Drift played to a packed house at the King's Head in Allendale last Saturday evening, transporting their audience along with them, with love, as individual members demonstrated their own particular skills and then melded together as a real Northumbrian band.
A week before featuring as invited guests at the International Bagpipe Festival in Scapoli, Italy, it was to be a priming session, to ensure the band would be up to snuff, as musical representatives of the North Pennines, but in the end it was a wholly enjoyable evening of the best, sweetest, and most intimate music anywhere in the world.
Warming up with a set of jigs, of course, and what more local than 'Blackthorn Stick', 'Saddle the Pony', and 'Hexham Races', the music moved on to feature the Northumbrian smallpipes, in a delicious duet of 'Wallington Hall' and 'Nancy' by Ray Sloan and Andrew Lawrenson. Here is real, sparkling talent! Two smallpipes together provide that extra ambiance, that hint of echo and sophisticated harmony, that adds up to much more than the sum of the halves. And adding to a brilliantly varied repertoire, to which his guitar provided inspired and textured blending, Paul Bloomfield threw in an evocative vocal on 'The Waters of Tyne', accompanied in true aching pathos by Andy Morgan on fiddle.
Then it was Ray's turn to solo, and he played a composite of pieces that seemed to float on the very air, dancing hither and thither like so many sprites on dust motes in a shaft of golden sunshine. Back to the full band, the reels came out crisp and clean, in a steadily building crescendo, so that the crowd could hardly contain themselves with good cheer. Andy Lawrenson brought us back to earth with the haunting melody he's claimed as his own, on his own fluttering pipes, and with a crashing set of reels to finish the set, it all seemed too good to be true. Yes, this really is a band to be proud of!
After the break, Ian Brown, who stood in as able compère for the evening, quieted the riotous assembly with another of his thoughtful pieces, and introduced Allendale's own Terry Conway, who sang, most appositely, 'Famous old Cappy', the song on which the band's name is based, before contributing his ode to 'The Working Man'.
And then, hurrah, the band were back, for a tight second set of more Northumbrian music like 'Lambshaw's Fancy', 'Berwick Johnny', and 'Lads of Alnwick' which lead to enthusiastic calls for more, more! Fortunately, the band had prepared a little something for just such a petition, and rounded off the evening with a set of danceable, hand-clapping standards ('Salmon Tails', 'Buttered Peas' and the 'Morpeth Rant') so heartfelt, so moving, so pure and so fine, it felt like our hearts would literally burst with pride.
This band is ready to play before thousands in Scapoli, and that audience cannot fail to be as moved by their talent, and the music of North Pennines, as we were last week.
