NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
Pauline Cato & Tom
McConville
Tom and Pauline steal
hearts in the 'Dale
As perhaps the most unprepossessing act ever witnessed at The King's Head, Allendale, Pauline Cato and Tom McConville moved almost stealthily onto the intimate stage, last Friday evening. A bit like the way that quiet Northumbrian pipes and haunting fiddle can grow out of the background and claim your heart.
After a warm-up set of tunes (and those Northumbrian pipes, lovely as they are, really do need a bit of a warming-in period, to get the drones in tune with themeselves), the cheerful duo launched into a rendition of Cat-gut Jim the Fiddler, and the audience harmonies started in. From a full house, for beloved music, this was like a smile after an introductory hand-shake, amongst acquaintances who suspect they will become friends.
The amplified sound was unobtrusive too, just enough so that every blippety-blip from Pauline's pipes, and every grace note and decoration on Tom's fiddle percolated out to the front, and on around the room. Jesse's Polka was followed by The Death of Blind Willy, in which Tom did a bit' strumming on his sideways fiddle, to accompany the plaintive song of wor 'hinnie who cannae hav' her Willy'.
A new set of jigs, written on the pair's recent tour of New Zealand, included the description of a hair-raising helicopter ride over a smouldering volcano, and finished off with the favourite Northumbrian tune, Holey Ha'penny. And on this tune Pauline showed off the delicate and evocative skirls which the pipes can accomplish, in the hands of an expert performer.
Ashokan Farewell, Golden Wheel, and other tunes from the Strathspey King finished off the first set, and not before time too, as Tom's fiddle showed imminent signs of catching fire!
The freedom evoked by Richard Thompson's song, Beeswing, contrasted softly with the frightening image of a lost child running wild, and as the second set got into flight, it seemed that the melancholy of the small piped blips, and the quietude of the syncopating strings evoked by times a happy sense of wonder, and at other times sentimental tears of appreciation of brilliant music brilliantly played. One was reminded of the music of Bach, composed for harpsichord, as interweaving contrapuntal themes wrapped around themselves. Bach for folk, and why not? Unpretentiously, of course, so long as you hum along.
So Harwether's Farewell segued into a tribute to Woody Guthrie, whose lines Tom declaimed in a sweetly unaffected voice: 'Dark road leads me on; never tire of the road; way out yonder is callin' me'. Tom really is perhaps the best exponent of the art of Tyneside fidldling, and his version of Dance to your Daddy -- sing to your Mum! was such an intriguing complement to The Old Fisher's Farewell to the Coquet.
Encores of jigs The Locomotive, The Hawk, and Quayside finally stole the collective heart of the room clean away, and laid out some good territory for exploration by students at the masterclass workshop held on Saturday.
