Do you know of any really cool musicians who aren’t well known? We thought we might do a casual “Tinsmith Pick-of-the-Month” sort of thing…..
There is so much good music that this month (or maybe this is officially November’s Pick) we have two. Rowan and I were very fortunate to open for one of them, Quicksilver (Hilary Spencer & Grant Baynham). What an amazing duo! They are from England and were VERY English in their delivery and humor (of which there was an enormous amount!). We laughed so hard I was afraid there would be an accident. And when we weren’t laughing, we were marvelling and the superb guitar playing (Grant) and equally sublime vocals (Hilary). The only downside for Americans is that their albums don’t convey the things that make their live performance so fantastic since they lack the spoken intros…but they are talking about doing a DVD, so watch their website:
http://www.grantbaynham.com/quicksilver/quicksilverindex.htm
The other supergroup is a duo that I saw at the Cincinnatti Celtic World Festival: Dempsey and Broughton. Kevin Dempsey plays guitar (and some other stuff on their album) and Joe Broughton plays violin (and some other stuff on their album too). I have to say though that the way I heard them was this: I was being a booth monkey (selling stuff) at this festival and our booth was at the main stage. This amazing music started happening and I stepped out to get a look and see who it was. Imagine my surprise when I found that what sounded like a five-piece band doing high-energy Irish, Middle Eastern and Eastern-European tunes and songs was actually two guys (and not really young guys either – move over all you teenage Irish supergroups!). The highlight for me was when Kevin broke a guitar string and as he changed it (really fast!) Joe proceeded to play a several-minute improv on “The Irish Washerwoman”, changing keys seemingly at random but with amazing facility and virtuosity and making it all sound both musical and easy. Crazy. And then, as soon as the guitar string was on and tuned, they launched without pause back into the breakneck Middle Eastern tune they had been playing when all this started.
Their album “Freehand” is wonderful, though quite unlike the music they played at the festival. It is much more low-key and more jazz/contemporary folk but is really lovely and Kevin’s voice is to die for. They do have another album – their first, “Every Other World”, which I haven’t heard. Check out their website too:
http://www.dempseybroughton.com