Dave Franklin is our man about town when it comes to the Swindon music scene. This month he discovers a musical gem.
It’s all to easy to view music purely as a big, commercial business, especially when people are mortgaging their houses for festival tickets and bands are dropped from labels for not selling the required 2 million albums.
A wonderful reminder of the purity of the art came at The Beehive recently when a last minute flight delay left the local pick up band without their featured artist. But the show must go on, so a few hurried phone calls later, extra musicians added and a new line up was convened to snatch musical victory from the jaws of airline-induced defeat. And the results were not only stunning but served as a reminder of what live music is really all about.
The night began with the duo of David Corrigan and Emily Sykes and a combination of lilting acoustic folksiness and beautifully complimentary harmonies. Jim Blair took the stage next, his funky slide blues augmented by rhythm section and piano and who appeared to be jamming along, a fact not given away by their playing, which was stunning, but by the hushed chats, nodded cues and laughter whilst weaving their wonderfully improvised creations. I’m not sure who was having more fun, the audience or the band themselves.
The headline act was David Corrigan’s new musical vehicle, Kid Calico and The Astral Ponies, a psychedelic take on the rustic Americana you normally associate him with. The band is something of a local super group, though they would be too modest to use that term themselves, but the set was nothing short of brilliant. The songs were infectious and groove driven but with enough leftfield quirks and originality to really make their mark.
And at the heart of everything was the love of music, a bunch of talented musicians coming together to jam, experiment, entertain and revel in each other’s company. To be honest I don’t think they even cared if there was an audience there or not.