The evening started with a real treat from Thomas Leeb, an Austrian who now lives in California. This was also a wonderful set from a young man who would be perfectly at home with the excellent musicians on the Wyndham Hill Record Label. His technique was a pleasure to watch, let alone to listen to.. Numbers played Albino; While My Guitar Gently Weeps (For Eric Roche) and Sweet Child Of Mine.

Although it doesn’t seem very long ago, it must be about thirty years since I had seen Pentangle. Back in those days they produced really good music maybe because they were fortunate in having two recognised virtuoso musicians in the form of Bert Jansch and John Renbourne amongst others.  Together with the dulcet tones of Jacqui, they made a really sweet noise. I was looking forward to seeing them again, and as far as I am concerned it is a blast from the past and seeing that I have become very nostalgic lately, this suits me very well.

Nowadays the line-up in the band has changed considerably, one of my old favourites and Mr really nice guy on drums, Gerry Conway who is a busy man these days, providing the percussive contribution to Fairport Convention’s sound, who, I am a big fan of and always have been. Alan Thomson on electric bass and vocals; Spencer Cozens on keyboards and vocals, Gary Foote on soprano sax, tenor sax, flute and vocals and last but not least Jacqui McShee, the only member from the original days on vocals. In the old days Jacqui sang beautifully, but sounded a little fragile at times, nowadays the voice has matured wonderfully and she now sings heartfelt songs with real soul.

They started off with one of my favourite folk songs, the traditional She Moved Through The Fair, a song for me that evokes images of Ireland (I can remember viewing the splendour of the Mountains of Mourne in Co. Down with the  red-golden light of a beautiful tequila sunset - or perhaps it was a Black Bush sunset-  dipping down behind Slieve Donard providing a glorious silhouette from the upper deck of a ship I was travelling on. I had just watched the original rendition of the film “Ned Kelly” in which this song was featured, and which reverberated around in my mind and haunted me for several days and still haunts me today....) which segued into the Indian sounding track Jabalpur, starting with a long slow melodious drone on the keyboards from Spencer, who provided interesting sounds throughout the set, enhancing the mood of the music and not just impressing us with his obvious virtuosity. 

At times the folksy style songs gave way to a laid back jazzy sound with Alan Thompson supplying some mean funky-sounding jazz bass playing. Gerry provided, as usual, some well timed subtle drumming, letting rip occasionally as the music demanded and with a drum solo at one point. Gary Foote also provided really nice solos on wind instruments. In a word, all were brilliant and I soon settled down and enjoyed it immensely and the audience seemed to as well. Other songs performed included The Banks Of The Nile, Once I Had A Sweetheart, Hope For Me, Nothing Really Changes, That’s The Way It Is (A song written for Jacqui’s son), Pride Comes Before A Free Fall (which had a reggae sound), All Blues, Time, Lovely Joan, Light Flight and There’s Always Tomorrow

 

A Stunning set, especially good because as it was the first one of the tour. So you’ve got a good chance to catch them again at some other venue. Jacqui is a lovely lady and the others aren’t bad either.