We went last night to see The Bad Shepherds at the Colchester Arts Centre. It was the third time we've seen them live, and we have all their albums, so are clearly hardcore fans. Their audience demographic seems to be shifting away from younger people, who were maybe there because they'd seen Ade Edmondson in Bottom, and were rather mystified by the Bad Shepherd's Irish folk stuff, towards oldies like us who know the songs from first time round. Punk and New Wave, performed on trad Irish instruments, the sound tracks of my youth. Perfect.
They would not work as a novelty act, or at least, they might have got one single out of it, but wouldn't be on their third album. If you are going to put together a punk-folk band you can't treat it as a joke. It is much better to recruit a two times winner of the All Ireland Fiddle Championships, and a uilleann pipes player and all round musician who has produced albums with Maddy Prior and Barbara Dickson and performed with Clannad and Status Quo. Adrian Edmondson is a pretty competent vocalist and thrash mandolinist, after five or six years at the game. You can hear the words, which is always a bonus.
Door opened at eight. The first time we saw them, we queued for good seats, only to discover that it was a standing gig and there were no seats. This time we arrived at half past, and still got some of the support act. A man and a girl sang in close harmony into a single microphone, very sweet, and played the guitar, and banged a tambourine. We found our beekeeping friends in the crowd, whose verdict was that when you'd heard one song you'd heard them all. They'd arrived before us, and pretty much had heard them all, and he said he'd only counted four chords. His son plays keyboards in an internationally successful Indie band, so I defer to his knowledge. I just classified it as rather samey.
I'm not convinced by the rock and folk tradition of support bands. There is a lot to be said for the classical system whereby a 7.30 pm piano recital means that at half past seven Alfred Brendel starts playing the piano, not that somebody else with Grade 8 piano certificate gets a go, and then finally at half past nine you get to hear the artist you actually came to listen to. We had to wait until half past nine to hear the Bad Shepherds, but the fairly long interval gave us a chance to swap news with our friends, and for her to sign my two beekeeping cheques. It says something about the Bad Shepherds' audience demographic that fellow fans were using the interval to sort out beekeeping association admin. I don't suppose you get that at a Miley Cyrus gig.
Once they started, they kept it up a good clip with minimal chat, so we got most of the songs from the new album, and several from the previous ones. There was only a little chaos early on, when Troy Doneckley broke two strings on his bozouki (by the 1970s it was well on the way to being adopted as a traditional Irish instrument) so they had to skip on to the numbers that didn't need the bouzouki while their roadie fixed it, then go back and do the ones they'd missed out. Troy Donockley did seem to be demonstrating the opening bars of a couple of numbers to Ade Edmondson, who was fine once he'd got going, but sometimes looked as though he was struggling to remember where to start. Maybe that was part of the stage act, or perhaps the jokes about how much they'd drunk were more statements of fact. The clowning ended, at any rate, when Andy Dinan or Troy Donockley went off into their solo turns. Dinan still sounded like an all Ireland champion, while Donockley sat completely still and bolt upright to play, eyes closed, suddenly looking nothing like Ade Edmondson's cuddly comedy sidekick, but utterly focused on the serious business of music.
The audience were appreciative but highly respectful. There were a couple of grey haired folk pogoing and jigging around in ways that would have surprised their grandchildren, and a few little attempts to clap along to reels on the fiddle (it never works), but this time almost no talking, and certainly no hands held up to take pictures on the smart phone while spoiling the view of everybody behind.
The Bad Shepherds tour ends on December 14th at the appropriately named Shepherds Bush Empire. I imagine Adrian Edmondson will have some fun with that one. Highly recommended.
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