Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman, The Bridge Church, Redditch
IT’S a cold damp February night and we are in the presence of folk royalty.
Indeed they are at the door welcoming us in as a sizeable audience emerges out of the gloom for the gig.
Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman make a striking couple – she swaps between flute and piano and has the most beautiful voice, he is so deft with the guitar it sounds like he has an entire backing band with him.
Each song has a tale to tell, and each deserves and gets a small introduction to put the audience in the picture.
It makes it all doubly significant – these are songs that mean something significant to this most accomplished duo.
And so we have their homage to the great Sandy Denny with her song ‘Solo’, Roberts sounding uncannily like her heroine.
She relates how having sung it as a youngster she actually ended up touring with Denny’s old band Fotheringay when they re-formed.
There’s ’52 Hertz’ a song inspired by a New Scientist report into a lone whale who can’t communicate with other whales because his sound is at the wrong frequency, and ‘an old Appalachian folk song’ which actually comes from….Devon.
It all makes for an informative and enlightening evening of good music, good cheer and on a cold, cold night, a warm feeling of good people singing songs dear to them.
Organised by Live and Local and Shindig, backed by the Arts Council and Redditch Borough Council and promoted by Maureen Brown from The Bridge Church, this was an evening to treasure.
Ross Crawford
