Gillespie Brothers March 20, 2024

Sitting in our little folk club up above the Gladstone pub can sometimes be a magical experience. The Brothers Gillespie gave us that last week. The first thing you respond to is their ‘sibling harmonies’, soaring and close, plangent and moving. Then the beautiful guitar playing, in the British finger picked tradition, augmented with fiddle from James and banjo, mandolin and low whistle from Sam. The melodies seemed to me to be in the British Celtic tradition, in minor keys, and often Scottish in inspiration, as in The Road to Dundee.
 The brothers were brought up in the village of Wall in Northumberland near the Scottish border and they talk, in a gentle Scottish-tinged accent, of the way the landscape has inspired their song writing. It says on their website: ‘Their songs and performances have a rare intimate energy that is both earthy and ethereal, romantic and radical.’ The close communion between the brothers on stage helps to create this energy and there is often a strong Romantic tinge to their songs as in the bucolic Northumberland or the Blakean protest in the song Albion.
The brothers used to do more traditional songs in their set and I would have liked a few more of these to complement their own songs; also I would have liked more of James’s fiddle as he is a rousing player.
Overall, though, this was a great concert as shown by the reaction of the full house in our redecorated club room.
Mike Wareham