Bruce Robison and Kelly WIllis / Noel McKay and Brennen Leigh: Summertyne Americana Festival, Sage Gateshead
DOUBLE-BILLS don’t always turn out as the running order suggest. Here was one such case, because Texas singer-songwriters Noel McKay and Brennen Leigh blew away their better-known US compatriots Bruce Robison and Kelly West.
Traditional steeped country advocates McKay and Brennen are the real deal, pure as dirt from a West Texas farm country, fine acoustic guitar players (theirs was a beautiful golden sound). Naturals on stage, they fed off one another as they breezed through their hour-long set, easing in and out of one another’s songs and the duet recordings turned the clock back.
Brennen has only recently released a tribute to country legend Lefty Frizzell and she excelled in all departments, not least her beautiful vocal harmonies and silky-toned lead.
On its day the sound of Stage 2 at the Sage can take some beating, and this was one of those day. The audience were on the edge of their seats throughout the couple effortlessly performance.
Among the gems you had a cover of Frizzell’s I Love You A Thousand Ways and priceless Before The World Was Made; as shades of Iris Dement and John Prine filtered through. So good were they I believe the latter could not have bettered them.
Willis and her husband, singer-songwriter Robison, were afforded a longer set, and did not waste any time as they shared a bunch of material from respective solo careers, and duets too.
Robison has seen a great many people cover his music, and was kind enough to share some of this work plus the stories about those who performed them. So engaging was the one concerning the Dixie Chicks’ Travelling Soldier that it was near as good as hearing the song.
You would think with Robison being such a wonderful storyteller and champion of vocal harmonies, and Willis one of the purest voices on the country scene they should have mopped up.
Yet the immediate chemistry and fluidity shown by McKay and Leigh wasn’t as forthcoming.
Maurice Hope
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