Its music in its purest form, just two artists alone on stage with just an acoustic guitar. First up is Kelsey Waldon, signed to John Prine’s record label Oh boy, who is garnering a lot of praise over the past few months and rightly so. Its Kelsey’s first time across the pond to these shores and her short thirty-minute set acts as a taster for her unique voice and supreme song writing skills. It takes in a few tracks from the latest album with a couple of back catalogue cuts thrown in for good measure. Sadly, I can’t make her Thursday night headline slot but will certainly catch her next time she is over here.
On to tonight’s headliner. I must admit I had not heard of Ian Noe until recently but after seeing him top some country best of charts I checked out his only album and I’m so glad I did. Given Noe only has one album he plays a full ninety minutes taking in pretty much all of his album plus eight or nine others and a John Prine cover to boot. The new songs more than hold their own with special mention for ‘POW Blues’ which is a great song. Hoping that’s on an upcoming album.
Noe’s style takes in country, Americana and folk and his voice has hints of Dylan in places as he delivers these intelligent songs of normal American folk. What he has done is to write songs that are instantly familiar that you feel you’ve known them for years. If this is the quality on his first album then lord help us once he gets into top gear. What he delivers in terms of songs and vocals he more than backs up with his dextrous touch on the guitar constantly picking seemingly getting more notes out simultaneously than is physically possible?
A perfect set of acoustic music with title track ‘Between the Country’ the aforementioned POW blues and ‘Meth Head’ some personal favourites. A great night of top quality music by these two artists who will only get bigger as the word of mouth of this and their other shows gathers pace.
Till the next time keep on country rockin y’all