The Unthanks
“The Unthanks – Unaccompanied As We Are” Tour
Support: Tim Dalling
Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne Minster, Dorset
Friday 26th April 2019, 19.30
The Unthanks are touring after releasing the new triple CD set “Lines”. I should list the forthcoming venues over the next few weeks, but go to their website (LINKED) … in a hurry. Many are already sold out. They return in October for a further 2019 tour, based on the Emily Bronte Song Cycle.
The Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, is a community theatre / cinema with an art deco style interior dating from 1936, completely contrasting with the older Georgian-style front. It may not look imposing outside, but among those we have seen grace the stage are Judy Collins, Steeleye Span, Steve Cropper, The Manfreds, Rita Coolidge, Thea Gilmore, Glen Tillbrook, Maggie Bell and Albert Lee. It’s a marvellous venue with a great atmosphere, and just eight miles from the Bournemouth-Poole conurbation.
The stage before the show started. No instruments in sight.
We had assumed they’d be playing stuff from their Lines trilogy of albums (SEE BELOW). Of course it’s The Unthanks. Expect the unexpected. This is just Rachel, Becky & Niopha Keegan. By “unaccompanied” they mean exactly that: unaccompanied. No musical instruments. No backing. Voices only. So, the special point? This tour is being recorded live at every venue. There will be a live album which you can subscribe to in advance for £10, which we did. Therefore, most of the material is previously unrecorded, which means some titles are guesstimates.
Tim Dalling’s remarkable support set is reviewed after the main set.
SET LIST: UNTHANKS
Rachel Unthank – vocal
Becky Unthank- vocal
Niopha Keegan- vocal
Approximate. Normally I look at Setlist com, print off the last couple of gigs and just number. This was virtually all new, plus I found it hard to sort out my note cards so won’t guarantee the running order or that there are no songs missed. Writing in pencil in the dark is hard.
Guard Yer Man Weel
One by One
I’m Weary From Lying Alone
Hi, Canny Man
Three Lullabies
– (Rock A Bye Baby)
– (Sleep Bonny Bairn)
– (Irish lullaby)
The Bee Set:
– Honeybee
– The Bee-Boy’s Song
The Griesly Bride
Sea Coal
The Sandgate Dandling Song
Poor Mum
Where’ve yer bin, Dick?
Magpie
We Pick Apples in The Graveyard Freshly Mowed
Bread & Roses
ENCORES
Love Is Like A River + Tim Dalling
Caught In The Storm
Just the three then, with Niopha abandoning her fiddle to sing as the third part of a sublime trio. It was actually more ‘traditional folk’ than recent Unthanks concerts dedicated to special areas like the Diversions series. It took me back to the Sixties when we would hitch up to London to Les Cousins or The Troubadour (or wherever) to hear folk. We had a very folk year once. Probably it was 1965. We saw the likes of The Young Tradition (featuring Peter Bellamy) and Ewan McColl. At that time the whole purist “no instruments” movement annoyed me, as it did seeing The Young Tradition again a few years later in Hull. Now, as I’ve been investigating Young Tradition and Peter Bellamy CDs a great deal, my teenage attitude is embarrassing. But do were pimples, plumpness, greasy hair and all sorts of unmentionable teenage things. It’s name checks of Peter Bellamy by the likes of The Unthanks, Eliza Carthy, Jon Boden and Fay Hield that set me investigating him again.
However, time has changed. I loved the isolation of the three voices with nothing else, and classic folk has the melodies even on unfamiliar songs. They started out with a Johnny Handle song Guard Yer Man Weel. There are SO many Johnny Handle songs, and I take his spelling of ‘well.’ Whenever confronted by mention of Bob Dylan in the context of House of The Rising Sun, Eric Burdon started claiming that The Animals learned it from Johnny Handle. I don’t believe him. Anyway, this one’s a mining song with a keening melody.
I didn’t catch the title of the next one but remembered the mention of Connie Converse and had scribbled a line of lyric, so it’s One by One. I knew nothing about Connie Converse five minutes ago, but can now inform you she was American, born in 1924 and she disappeared in 1974. Her very sparse 1954 version is on YouTube. The Unthanks three part singing has totally transformed a melodic fragment into a beautiful song. In fact it’s so re-arranged that they deserve a credit.
Over to Niopha Keegan to sing lead on I’m Weary From Lying Alone, a traditional Irish song and if I could find the accents I’d type out its Gaelic title. It was good to see her totally incorporated and taking her share of lead vocals. I checked out a couple of versions on YouTube. Again, I have to say The Unthanks do it best.
Hi Canny Man was next, a Geordie song by Harry Nelson. I scribbled The Elliots on the card so they must have mentioned them, who were a Durham mining family of singers, collected on LP by Ewan MaColl (as so much was). It’s not on their tracklist.
Then up came Three Lullabies – they’re all three mothers, and they took one each as lead with the others harmonizing … Becky, then Rachel, then Niopha (whose lullaby was, I think, in Irish). It’ll be a highlight of the forthcoming album.
The Bee Set consisted of two songs. The first was Honeybee and it sounded more like a pop song (a great pop song) than folk with the way the voices intertwined. Connie Converse was mentioned again, so it was the second of hers. I’ve listened on YouTube. It’s a lovely song in its original, but they did their magic transformation again and turned it into something much stronger (and accessible).
Then it was The Bee-Boy’s Song (aka Hark To Your Bees) a Peter Bellamy (see above) setting of Rudyard Kipling from Merlin’s Isle of Gramercy, one of the Peter Bellamy records I’ve managed to find. Phew! I actually knew that without Googling.
The Griesly Bride – The Unthanks have always liked dark ballads! This one is Australian, music by Cindy Mangsen to a poem by John Manifold. Becky sang it, as she did in the Opera North production Crow’s Bones. and it’s about a dingo werewolf. Yes, that’s right. It’s extremely eerie.
Sea Coal is going to be interesting in post-production. They divided the audience into three to teach the sing along. We were on Niopha’s side, getting the lower register. The other side of the stalls had Rachel’s middle register and the balcony had Becky’s high part. The one they choose will be the best singing audience, I guess. It was a lot of fun. It was written by Graeme Miles. Jon Boden and Fay Hield did a version on his 365 song Folk Song A Day digital project which I’ve been steadily downloading. I have a feeling I’ve seen one or the other sing it too.
They left Rachel alone on stage for the next one The Sandgate Dandling Song. She recorded it solo in her kitchen for the Stick In The Wheel From Here: English Folk Field Recordings Volume 2 compilation CD.
Poor Mum was the first familiar one from a recent concert or an Unthanks record, Diversions 4: The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake. In 2017 they performed that live with just Rachel, Becky and Niopha, so as here.
The next had Becky on lead vocal, for Where’ve you bin, Dick? It’s from Here’s The Tender Coming, but that wouldn’t come to me. So I Googled to find the song title quite innocently. Do not try this at home. I found quite a different reference.
Wisely they did a great big familiar one as the show drew towards a close, Magpie from Mount The Air, now best known as the end theme in McKenzie Crooks’ The Detectorists Series 3, Episode 1. The night before we were playing a quiz game with grandkids, and we had to say whether a single magpie was lucky or unlucky. We started singing One’s for sorrow … two’s for joy. There;’s a fine Jools Holland Show rendition on YouTube. That’s accompanied by Adrian McNally, but Niopha joins them and they use the three voices again. One of my all-time favourite Unthanks songs.
It was followed by We Pick Apples in The Graveyard Freshly Mowed by Richard Dawson. They were debating briefly whether Richard Dawson was folk … OK, but he’s on that same Stick In The Wheel CD with Rachel. The original is on the Magic Bridge (2015). It suits their style perfectly.
The Main set concluded with the rousing Bread & Roses. They mentioned the poem by James Oppenheim, and that Mimi Farina did it. It’s been done by a few singers! It was originally set to music in 1917, but they’re right (I was wrong) in that Mimi Farina set it to music differently in 1974.
ENCORES
A fourth mic came on. A much taller one, and Tim Dalling strode on behind them and took lead vocal in a spiritual, Love Is Like A River – he wondered whether it was The Golden Gate Quartet or The Blind Boys of Alabama. Apparently the latter. He hollered it out like a Southern Baptist revival meeting, and the three women went into classic rock concert backing singer mode, which was amusing too. Terrific stuff, then he left the stage. He had cracked everyone on stage up laughing with some loud non-PC comments too.
The second encore? I’ve heard it before. My first thought is that it’s from Lines. It won’t come, sorry. I wasn’t writing down, but my memory (scribbled in the lobby) has a couplet as:
The land and sky melt into one
It seems the sun won’t shine again
I scan the sky … the wind and the rain, the wind and the rain
That’s not the murder ballad, The Wind and The Rain (or The Cruel Sister, as done by Rachel years ago). I give up. Answers please in the COMMENTS section below and I’ll correct it.
SEE NOTE BELOW: Thanks. It is Caught In The Storm by Graeme Miles
I look forward to the live recording. One hope – keep a couple of minor ‘warts’ in to retain the reality of live performances. An example. One of the best live recordings ever is Bob Marley & The Wailers on No Woman, No Cry, from Live At The Lyceum. There is a piercing piece of feedback at one point as Bob moves a mic. It’s on the LP. When they did the CD, they took it out, as you can nowadays. Everyone said it sounded wrong without it, and on the Remastered CD they put it back in. So keep a couple of bits in … a touch of Niopha’s pitch pipe at the start of a song, or (tonight) Rachels ‘Sorry’ as her voice missed a tad.
SET LIST: TIM DALLING
Online image – not this show
Indelible, Miraculous
Eve’s Bonie Squad
Sweet Slumbers
Mr Michael Marra
Welcome Back Shittypants
Shy Bairns
Meeting Point
“Music Hall Legend”
The Hairy Wee Hole
Tim Dalling is from Ayr, and a Scottish legend in his own right. He was in The New Rope String Band, and is a solo singer / songwriter with accordion. He was fantastic, and such a joyous, cheerful change from the normal folk support: a serious girl with weighty self-written lyrics, playing stuff you’ve never heard before, who may play guitar, and / or be accompanied by a bloke on guitar. Tim bounced onto stage in his formal grey suit, explained that it was unaccompanied and launched straight into a vocal only Incredible, Miraculous. His voice soared. His onstage banter was great, and I won’t spoil it for future audiences by quoting any. Then he apologised and picked up his piano-accordion for a song name-checking all his recent ancestors, which I noted as The Names of Those Who Made You but a little research online and it’s called Eve’s Bonie Squad, the title track of his last album (now available only digitally).
The third song had Sweet Slumbers in the lyric a lot and a lovely melody line. Over the last couple of years, my most played male artist has been the late Michael Marra, a Scottish singer-songwriter who is essential listening , so I got my chance of audience participation when he called out ‘Who’s heard of Michael Marra?’ ‘Yes!’ I shouted. ‘What do you think of him?”Brilliant!’ I said. OK. My contribution over. He played his tribute song, Mr Michael Marra. At the end it went into an accordion tune, with a few words at the end. No idea of the title. SEE BELOW, it’s Welcome Back Shittypants.
Shy Bairns is from Eve’s Bonie Squad and is a setting for a poem by Dr Keith Armstrong. I think this was the one where he set down his accordion and did a tap dance.
Meeting Point is another setting of a poem, one of several Louis McNiece poems he has put to music.
He took on the persona of a “Scottish music hall legend” – Uncle Timmy for the next very funny piece. Then introduced the last song, which I thought was called Mammy’s Special Place, but it’s on YouTube entitled The Hairy Wee Hole. I will say no more except that the title works whether ‘wee’ has the Scottish or the English meaning. You have to be there, hear the intro, hear the song. It is so memorable that half an hour later after the interval, it was the first song Rachel Unthank mentioned.
LATEST ALBUMS
Not relevant to this show, but I’d pre-prepared this section so I’ll keep it in.
They describe the three new themed albums on the rear sleeve as:
Longer than EPs., shorter than long players, so these records are, if you will, Medium Players.
Players Medium was a brand of cigarettes in the 60s. In fact, in the 1950s EPs, LPs and “MPs” existed side by side – MPs were 10″ vinyl albums playing at 33 rpm and had their own logo. So the sort of vinyl MP you’d enjoy far more than listening to human MPs. The example below is from 1955.
It is true that you could fit all three MPs onto one CD, but then you’d lose the thematic aspect. They round up two earlier projects with the 2018 Emily Bronte project.
Lines 1 (Lillian Bellocca) is from an event for Hull’s year as City of Culture in 2017, with Maxine Peake’s words on the Hull triple trawler disaster of 1958.
Lines 2 (World War One) is based on poems and letters from World War One, originally written for a 2014 project .
Lines 3 (Emily Bronte) features Emily Bronte poems, turned into song and written and recorded using Emily Bronte’s own original piano in her home, the Parsonage at Haworth. The recording is remarkable – you can “hear the room” in that’s it’s not recorded in a studio, and the two hundred year old piano has its own creaks which are audible. The outstanding song, Lines, gives its name to the whole project.
OTHER UNTHANKS REVIEWS ON THIS SITE:
- The Unthanks 03.2011
- The Unthanks 04.2012
- The Unthanks 10.2012
- The Unthanks 12.2011
- The Unthanks 2.2015
- The Unthanks How Wild The Wind Blows tour, 2017
- FLIT 10. 2016 (with Becky Unthank)
Thanks, Peter. Great review. Seems like a brilliant and different night.Going to get tickets tomorrow.
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The final encore sing by the girls is ” Caught In A Storm” by Graeme Miles.
The appended tune after Tim’s “Mr Michael Mars” is called “Welcome Back Shittypants” (being his daughter).
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Many thanks. Corrections made above.
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