Reviews Festival 2008
HCF 2008 IN PICTURES: WEDNESDAY · THURSDAY · FRIDAY · SATURDAY
HCF 2008 IN WORDS: WEDNESDAY · THURSDAY · FRIDAY · SATURDAY
Bodega - Saturday
Sometimes you come face to face with a group of youngsters who make you wonder what on earth you were doing with your time at school. Bodega are like that, combining so much talent with a critical mass of years surely somewhere below one of our grandparents.
Saturday night can be a bit of a funny night in the Big Blue. For one thing, at least two boatloads of tourists have gone home, and some of the locals are just plain exhausted after an unaccustomed three straight nights of partying. Another problem is the early finish time, which means bands start on stage at 7pm, rather than 8pm. However much information there is, the early start takes plenty of people by surprise.
On the plus side, there's going to be one helluva party on Saturday night, and that's the mood Bodega captured right from the off. There's a strong local following for this band, with Carloway's Norrie MacIver already a heartthrob (more than one 'I Love Norrie' poster in the crowd).
Most spectacularly, this band is a composite of stunning individual performances from all over Scotland and the Islands – lovely vocals from Norrie, pipes from Gillian Chalmers, and a fiddle that looks like an extension of Ross Couper's arm. We couldn't quite see what Tia Files looks like in her succession of enormous hats (is she shy?) but we certainly appreciated her rocking guitar, and we'd have liked to hear more of June Naylor on the Clarsach.
If you haven't heard them before, you'd be amazed the singalong they got going with Wagon Wheel, and their own compositions (examples from website) showed that there's plenty more to come from what is still a relatively new band. Then they went on to the Festival Club at An Lanntair, where the end of festival party resembled an end of term dance for a while. How nice to see the young folk enjoying themselves.
Festival Club
For those festivals that thankfully provide them, a festival 'club' can often be the heart (and indeed soul) of the event. If that is the case, then the HebCelt's one, based in the impressive bodily surroundings of the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway, beats very strongly indeed.
From Thursday till Saturday during the festival it's the place to be once the concerts themselves wind up - if you have any reserves of strength whatsoever left after those of course.
Fortunately (and perhaps not surprisingly) most HebCelter's - audiences, artists and organisers alike - seem to find an extra overdrive gear from somewhere, collectively summoning up more than enough late-night energy to make the festival club a veritable hive of activity, both musically and of course socially.
It's the place in town to meet, greet, eat, drink and most certainly make merry at festival time. It's also the place to see and hear again at least some of the great artists taking part in the festival in more informal and intimate surroundings and certainly in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Having said that, it's desirable to have the constitution (and perhaps the liver) of a water buffalo - not to mention the fluid retention abilities of a camel. But rest assured most of us there seemed more than up for the challenge, albeit much of what was said or discussed during the evenings ran the risk of being a bit hazy (to say the least) the following morning, while the hotel breakfasts were less than well patronised for some strange reason – and it was nothing to do with the quality of the food I can assure you.
Over and above the inevitable social whirl, three fantastic nights of music were also served up alongside the pints, drams and stovies. The Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson Trio showed just why they are one of the hottest Scottish acts on the scene at the moment; Four Men and a Dog drank the audience dry of energy before attempting to do the same to the bar, while mass dancing to the Red Hot Chilli Pipers and Orkney's 'The Chair' threatened to undermine the foundations of An Lanntair, before both bands simply settled for raising the buildings rafters.
Karine Polwart may be diminutive in terms of personal dimensions but she's quite simply immense in every other way - a gobsmackingly gifted songstress of whom Scotland can be hugely proud. The only thing wrong with her band's festival club set was that it was an hour and a half too short for me.
'Bodega' delivered a short but terrific greatest hits set, topped-off by their version of 'Wagon Wheel', a song that's clearly become the Carloway national anthem since the band adopted it - if the local crowd's response was anything to go by that is.
Whew!!! - And that's only some of the acts to grace the club stage during the festival.
Three nights of sheer, undiluted terrific-ness, not to mention the last gasps of this year's festival, were rounded off by the ever-mighty 'Shooglenifty', who had come hot foot (maybe that was why guitarist Malcolm Crosbie took his shoes and socks off on stage) from a stunning gig at 'Big Blue' earlier that evening. Where that gig had been as tight as a 34' belt around a 42' waist, this set was an altogether much looser affair – a real club gig - and perhaps all the more exciting and enthralling for it, creating what could only be termed a writhing, at times leaping, jam-packed mass of perspiring humanity on the venue dance-floor. Yes indeed Stornoway had been well and truly stormed by the Shoogles and their acid-croft shenanigans.
The gig finished at precisely one minute to 2am, the club's witching hour (closing time to you) leaving no time for a wind down of any kind - not that for many the night and the fun were necessarily finished elsewhere I suspect.
An initial unwillingness to leave was met by the strains of the Clash's classic 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' blasting out of the in-house PA in An Lanntair. Given the choice I know what everyone would have gone for, but it was clear we sadly didn't really have a choice.
"I don't want to go to sleep, cause then I know it will really be over" said someone who admittedly was very close to the festival. But I knew what she meant. All good things do come to an end, but it's great to put up a last desperate fight if nothing else.
But given the way time seems to fly nowadays it might just seem like a blink, or even better a couple of night's sleep, before the next HebCelt Festival is once again upon us, and given the strength of the festival heartbeat that is the club you can rest assured it will be back next year too.
Oidhche mhath for now Heb-Celt...
