Claire Watts/Gerry Hegarty + Afterhours

We reviewers, we diary bloggers, live in perpetual fear of having sold sold our souls. Of finding that it is no longer we who experience the arts, but a sort of homonculus that experiences them on our behalf. 


"I so hope this film sucks" we say "Then I will be able to write a funny review slagging it off." You can tell when the alter ego has taken over when we start to talk in a funny Latinate language; when we say "self-penned song" rather than "he wrote it himself" or say "troubadour" when we mean "man with guitar" or "performed with aplomb" when we mean "we liked it but we can't remember why."


So: nothing will cause me to resort to the obvious cliche. 


I may say that opening act Clair Watts and Gerry Hegarty were virtuoso extremely good proponents players of the fiddle and the tin whistle; I may note that they played jigs waltzes and polkas and I may admit that the song I enjoyed most was the non-taditional but definitely Irish "Galway to Graceland" (by Mr Richard Thompson) and that the audience joined in the chorus. 


I will certainly say that the main act was a reunion or a revival of a group that were popular on the folk circuit with people who like modern versions of mostly Irish traditional folk songs in the 1980s and 1990s, and that this is the first time they've played together for 14 years. I may note that it was a definite coup for Marick (and the other people involved in running the festival, oh yes) to get them to re-form; and that there was great enthusiasm from the audience when they implied that they would come back next year, if there is a next year, which there will be. I will note that it was the biggest turn-out so far, and with a real genuine atmosphere, that there was an old guy at the bar who started to doing Michael Flatley type dancing at one point, and that the young kid sitting in front of me clapping in time with everything turned out to be the one of the performers sons; and that when the group tried to get the audience dancing for the final few numbers, the youngster, and then quite a lot of the audience, rushed forward. And I shall talk about how eclectic what a nice range of different kinds of songs they sang. They finished their main sent with one in the Irish language about a young man whose brother has died, and one of those traddy underdog songs about going off to fight for the king and coming back to find your houses burned down and your goods all stolen, but that they and went almost immediately into a close harmony piece about a little Irish baggar man doodledum doodledum dooddle dum, fol whack a daddy in such genuinely close harmony that one of the trio had to stick is finger in his ear. And they then got a local guy who played the pipes up on the stage ("have you got your noisy stick and bag with you?") for yet another encore.


What nothing, I am telling you, nothing, will possess me to say is that after the long set, the encore, getting the piper up on the stage, setting up a tune for him to play, doing a long piece with lots of improvisation, the  I nearly missed the last train because the set really did finish, get this after hours. 


Even though I bet no-one has ever said that before.