(Photo courtesy of Lizzie McCollum)
The true artistry of folk music for me lies in the telling of stories, and as a first time listener of Hungrytown at the Devonport folk club on Monday, I was drawn to Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson’s old style Americana for their great story telling. The highlight in story was that of their van ‘Blue Meanie’ in which they tour America, stepping out in a car park to the smell of burning tires to then realise their van had caught fire. As Rebecca was frozen in one spot uttering just the word “fire..” Ken frantically set about putting the fire out, managing to rescue the instruments and stop the fire before it reached the propane tank.
They effortlessly weaved between stories and simple happy songs inspired by life spent travelling to play music. Their sound is an appealing mixture of stringed instruments and occasional harmonica with guitars capoed up high, banjo and mandolin, the high pitch and lightly plucked sound carried their bright sunny songs well. The vocals of Rebecca who carried all of the tunes recalled a happier Gillian Welch, with her simple unaffected approach to melody and non vibrato style. Ken’s backing vocals were expertly supportive offering soft articulation and being well balanced as to be present without getting in the way of the melody.
Song highlights included Any Forgotten Thing with its tasteful harmonica lines, an acapella version of Woody Guthrie’s pastures of plenty and November Song, evoking images of the duo’s home town in Vermont in Autumn with simple and effective melodic resolutions ending each phrase. Highly recommended for fans of storytelling and sunny sounding Americana
They effortlessly weaved between stories and simple happy songs inspired by life spent travelling to play music. Their sound is an appealing mixture of stringed instruments and occasional harmonica with guitars capoed up high, banjo and mandolin, the high pitch and lightly plucked sound carried their bright sunny songs well. The vocals of Rebecca who carried all of the tunes recalled a happier Gillian Welch, with her simple unaffected approach to melody and non vibrato style. Ken’s backing vocals were expertly supportive offering soft articulation and being well balanced as to be present without getting in the way of the melody.
Song highlights included Any Forgotten Thing with its tasteful harmonica lines, an acapella version of Woody Guthrie’s pastures of plenty and November Song, evoking images of the duo’s home town in Vermont in Autumn with simple and effective melodic resolutions ending each phrase. Highly recommended for fans of storytelling and sunny sounding Americana
(SAM LOVERIDGE)