Unadorned rockabilly, rough-edged surf and unsweetened country roots were at the heart of this year's Kilkenny Rhythm and Roots festival, writes TONY CLAYTON-LEA
AS ALWAYS, it begins calmly. Sedate in fact, but as the weekend goes by in a blur of bars, music, American accents and homegrown colloquialisms, the Kilkenny Rhythm & Rootsfestival hurtles towards an all-too inevitable yet utterly satisfying conclusion: a riot of musical flavours created by a multicultural gathering of decidedly odd singers, songwriters, musicians and performers – mostly American but also some natives. And then there is just plain oddness: as Willie Nelson and Creedence Clearwater Revival take their turn as background music in the Anna Conda pub, next door at Cleeres there is someone dressed as Batman (who is, we can guarantee, not Christian Bale).
The Caped Crusader is holding onto a pint glass of Smithwicks, simultaneously watching a televised rugby match and talking to his plainly-attired mates. As they might say in Nashville – holy alt.Americana, Batman! Meanwhile, as we amble towards Ryans, we encounter the impossibly slim Sara Romweber, strolling in the opposite direction, to soundcheck for her evening gig with her brother, Dex (whose raw-knuckle combo, the Dex Romweber Duo, is regarded by no less a figure than Jack White as “one of the best-kept secrets of the rock’n’roll underground”). Dex and Sara play across the weekend in various venues, but their gig at Cleeres on Sunday is the best one – a blend of unadorned rockabilly, rough-edged surf and unsweetened country/roots. Meahwhile, over at Ryans on Saturday and The Pumphouse on Sunday, Nashville’s Caitlin Rose, tipped for crossover success this year, makes her Irish debut appearance.
Rose might be jetlagged, tired and just a little bit on the whinging side, but her voice is clear and strong. With equally crisp guitar work, backing from friend/musician Jordan Caress and a series of sharply focused songs that reference yesteryear (Patsy Cline, Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt) and relatively new (Moldy Peaches), she manages to get an initially hesitant crowd on her side. Her Sunday gig at The Pumphouse displayed a fresher approach than that of the previous day’s, with less irritating tweeness and a stronger will to stamp her own identity on proceedings. Brattishly, Rose describes her music as “uneducated and dumb”, but don’t let her occasional on stage Juno-esque whimsicality fool you.
“I used to play a lot with other people,” she says after the gig, in the smoking area of the venue, where young girls walk up to her and ask for photos, “but I don’t do it any more. I have to realise that I mess up a lot, but when you’re playing with a band everything is kinda more fun in that you’re not worrying about the tiniest little thing. It’s almost like a party. And it isn’t that having a band around you is even a safety net; it’s just you’re enjoying it more, and you don’t have to think about messing up because you’re having fun, you’re playing with people that you like being with.
“When you know you’re the only person on stage you feel as if you have to do things in the way that you know works.”
New York's The Duke and the King couldn't work in anything other than a band format. Named after the Shakespearean hucksters in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,this slinky outfit (are they glam, soul, folk, country or a beguiling hybrid?) slipped into Kilkenny and suckerpunched an audience not once (Saturday night, at the superb Set Theatre) but twice (Sunday afternoon at the baronial Kyteler's Inn). Between pirouetting on and twirling off stage, and delivering two of the best sets Kilkenny has surely seen in years, this sinewy lot administered a healing touch to those afflicted by a Saturday night hangover (quite a few by the looks of it), then twisted us around their little fingers and refused to let go.
Speaking of not letting go: you know the Johnny Thunders song that reckons you can’t put your arms around a memory? Well, it ain’t necessarily so. On Sunday night, Jason the Scorchers returned to the fray following some years in the commercial twilight zone.
Looking even lankier than he normally does, Jason Ringenberg turned back time (as Cher might say) and transformed the sell-out venue from a swish music theatre to a honky-tonk bar. The sound might be as rough as docker’s stubble but there’s an authenticity present that can’t be denied.
Such a description may also be most fitting for this small but always ambitious festival: often subtle (James Vincent McMorrow and Joe Pug), sometimes bland (Band of Heathens), occasionally startling (The Duke and the King) and fitfully quirky (Caitlin Rose), it continues to capture – even after 13 years on the go – what is good and new about the ever expanding genre of Americana. Super music in abundance, then. Superhero characters optional.
