NANCY KERR & JAMES FAGAN + DAVID MITCHELL
FRIDAY 21 JUNE 2024, CHRIST CHURCH DOWNEND
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan have been doing this for a while. Next year will be their 30th anniversary as both a musical and personal partnership and, over that time, they have become, probably, the best folk duo in the country. This evening, they are extraordinary.
As late evening sunlight floods through the church windows and the gentle buzz of a full folk club revels in a pleasant June warmth, Kerr wonders, “Did you all just get together one day and decide that, if there was a perfect folk club, it would be this one?”. The two of them beam and then make this space sing.
Fol The Day-O was originally written for The Full English project and it is a celebration of everything that is good and pastoral.
There are not too many voices that you could listen to forever, but Kerr’s is one of them. Barbara Allen is about as trad as things come (Samuel Pepys mentioned it in his diaries) but Kerr lovingly breathes new life into it.
Towards the end of the first half of the evening Kerr shows that she is a brilliant songwriter as well as a fantastic singer. There are three songs, all of which she has written, that are among the best that this folk club has ever heard.
I Am The Fox is sung by Fagan and thrums with the pulse of nature.
For Broadside Kerr sings her own song. The tale of the meeting between Queen Elizabeth I and the pirate Grace O’Malley was originally written for The Elizabethan Sessions, and is a feminist sea shanty.
It is Gingerbread, taken from 2016’s Instar album, that is entirely tear-duct-bothering though. As Kerr and Fagan meet on the chorus there is a gentle warmth, a delicious sense of the personal that threatens to overwhelm. Fiddle and guitar helping to swell hearts and comfort souls.
As much as it is sometimes impossible to wrench Ωattention away from Kerr, Fagan is just as brilliant.
The combination of fiddle and guitar is most striking on the sets of tunes that they play. Australian Waltzes capture the haphazard totter of a gin-laced tea dance; elegant one minute, ferocious the next. Kitchen Dance is sandwiched between tunes from Croatia and Macedonia and is full of Eastern European dash. Kerr’s fiddle swoops over Fagan’s folk-rock strum on Nancy Taylor’s/The Pearl Wedding and is little more than a wonderful celebration. Thirty years of playing together has made these two indescribably tight.
The final highlight of an evening packed with them is Dark Honey, a song about urban bees making honey from cola.
Support for the evening comes from David Mitchell, a virtuoso on the classical guitar. A short set of purely instrumental tunes showed off an incredible talent.
If Downend has the perfect folk club then Kerr and Fagan are the perfect band for it. Simply one of the finest gigs that this place has seen.
Words: Gavin McNamara
Photos: Barry Savell