Songwriters in the Round – Orkney Folk Festival – Stromness Town Hall – May 23, 2025.
Written by celtic music radio on May 30, 2025
To get to this mid-afternoon gig, I had to say farewell to a great session in the sun-kissed courtyard (yes, one of those strangely Hawaiian days that turn up from time to time in Orkney) of the Ferry Inn. As it turned out, I was right to do so, a) to avoid the well-seared prawn look I was developing, and, b) because this was a good fun gig with masterful performances by all four acts sharing the stage.
It was a circular session format with each performing one song then “move on and repeat”. Glasgow-based Findlay Napier started with a cleverly-barbed little number called I’ve Never Been Wrong referring to a certain overseas politician. The audience had no doubt as to the target and showed their approval of the song and its sentiments with hearty applause.
Guy Davis, all the way from New York, took a more direct poke that perhaps hit a little harder here than back home as one of the meanings we give the word “trump” fitted perfectly with the intent of the song It Was You. The theme was the common attempt by those cursed by malodorous flatulence to pass the blame. We were invited to a call and response motif in which Davis’s every utterance of the song title was echoed back along with vigorous finger-pointing.
Next up were The Maes, two sisters, Maggie and Elsie Rigby, from Melbourne accompanied by the artfully understated double bass of Australian jazz sessioneer, Isaac Gunnoo which was rhythmic, melodic, but never in the way of the song. They opened with Done Here, from their forthcoming release Abreast, about realising when it’s time to go in a relationship. As it turned out, The Maes were all over the festival and I’ll be going into more detail about them in subsequent reviews. All I’ll say here is this: harmonies, blissful, beautiful harmonies evocative of the best of Kate & Anna McGarrigle.
Last up in the sequence was Cape Breton’s Buddy MacDonald – a veteran of the festival and greeted warmly as such by the audience. Displaying his trademark good humour, he began by thanking his “support acts” then moved into a song musing on a travelling musician’s experience of a new and interesting city, In Vancouver Tonight. He invited the audience to sing along with the gently lilting chorus, an invitation that gained an enthusiastic response.
Other than the excellent opening numbers, other song highlights for me were Findlay’s wryly bitter musical memories of past employment as a waiter, Silver Service; Guy’s “moonshiner on the run” number, Long Gone Riley Brown, which featured an accelerating harmonica played with Roland Kirk-esque gasps vividly portraying a man running for his life; The Maes with More Than You Know – a poignant Maggie Rigby song about caring for her grandparents during lockdown; and Buddy’s musing on why he’s a musician, Six Strings and Me.
A bonus was the unrehearsed spontaneous harmony backing provided Buddy by the Rigby sisters which gave his songs a touch of the sublime.
My first concert attended this year at The Orkney Folk Festival and a thoroughly enjoyable opener for what was to come.
BOB LESLIE
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