NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said
about Jez Lowe & The Bad
Pennies
JEZ LOWE AND THE BAD PENNIES
PLAY IT COOL ON A HOT NIGHT
When the audience hails from as far afield as Manchester, and stays on in the area's B&Bs for one or two days after the gig, then the promoters must be doing something right, even if a standing-room-only crowd means that the Northumbrian Music Nights organisation just breaks even. If the love of music was an inspiration to one, last weekend, it was an inspiration to all, since all ears had an opportunity to enjoy in Allendale.
Jez Lowe, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the North-East, has fans right around the world, so perhaps it was not such a great surprise that he brought them along with the Bad Pennies (Billy Surgeoner on fiddle and whistle, Simon Haworth on bass, and Tynedale's own Judy Dinning on percussion and vocals) to the King's Head in Allendale last Friday night at the beginning of a warm and wonderful Bank Holiday weekend.
Throughout the night the band exhibited, in microcosm, all the best sorts of community sharing -- the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. With a crash and a bang the band struck up on 'Durham Jail', but then Jez and Judy showed how individual voices can enhance each other, on the nostalgic 'Soda Man'.
'Caught in the ticking of a dead man's eye' were 'Young men propping up walls', and a lively fiddle helped the foursome dominate the stage as the music started to sizzle. Judy's solo on 'Dover Delaware' -- 'tell my love that I'll be waiting there' -- was helped along by a plaintive whistle, but it was on the rousing 'Galway Shore' that the band began to feel like an ensemble.
Jez introduced the new 'Hoi Polloi', in which a young man suggests to his dad that really he'd rather be a rich man's son, before moving into the famous 'Bergen', a bonnie barque upon which 'my true love sails'. Are folk songs relevant anymore? Should we 'bow down to the idol electric', when the vital reality of a live drum is always at hand?
Or how can we learn to live with inevitable bitterness, as 'Coal Town Days' and 'These Idle Times' asked, when lay-offs and redundancies are always with us, unless through songs and humour? In dealing with life's wry mysteries, the blues are very very good, as are both sacred and secular classical music, but on the folk scene, it was a brilliant reflective time for 'Home of the Bewildered', as well as a self-deprecating aside about 'diddly-diddly music'.
After the break came ballads: the melancholy 'Parish Notices' were given a life-enhancing rendition by Judy, whose voice with this band soared to different and most affecting heights and exuberance. And Jez' self-evident satisfaction at singing a song where its meaning would well be appreciated: 'H'ad away, g'an on' was fondly infectious.
Or the last song, 'You can't take it with you when you go-oh', which brought the enthusiastic crowd stamping to attention -- 'Yes it's one piece of the pie that no money can buy' and made a single iconic statement about love, and community.
Encores of 'Old Bones' and 'Those guilts -- they can't hurt me' brought the house along and together, and finished the evening in delicious fashion. And not before time, as the heat on stage threatened to drown these hard-working cool professionals before their job of work was over. It was a much-appreciated evening from an ensemble of entertainers who are increasingly beloved in their own home.
