Muireann Bradley is an Irish teenager playing original Folk Blues Americana with stunning finger-picking acoustic guitar virtuosity.
She couldn’t help it. Her father was immersed in Roots Americana music of the Twenties onward. She heard and learned about key artist like Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Blind Blake and the like.
This is bedrock music which fuelled the rise of British Blues and R’n’B in the Fifties. Skiffle was a legitimate hybrid of all this with strong Country elements, inspiring a bunch of scruffy Scousers to have a go as the Quarrymen before morphing into the Beatles.
The British Invasion bands then brought it all back home when they helped to revive a lot of the original artists who had been languishing in neglect.
Looks like we go round and round in the circle game sang Joni Mitchell.
In current times Bradley reminds me of Larkin Poe and the Lovell sisters, who built their signature sound around the wild and confrontational Preaching Blues, laid down by Son House in 1930.
Much of what she played last night comes from her 2023 debut album I Kept These Old Blues, reissued this year under a major label Decca.
Maybe her breakout performance was appearing on BBC TV on Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny New Years Eve 2023. She received a standing ovation for Candyman from Rev. Gary Davis.
This starts tonight’s show and although she has an Irish accent when speaking, this changes into an American lilt on singing.
Richland Woman Blues (Mississippi John Hurt) follows. There is a nice easy swing and roll to her fingerpicking. Melody and rhythm are equal, and the playful nature keeps it light. Reminding me of the acoustic guitar on the Rolling Stone’s Factory Girl.
Redemption in roots after psychedelia and the satanic majesties’ requests.
Next comes Delia. As she plays, I am reminded of David Johansen and the Harry Smiths. The album serves the same purpose as Bradley’s debut. A circle back and the mystical pull of roots music.
Johansen has just died, so that’s serendipitous. His is full of melancholy and regret. All I ever had was gone.
Bradley’s phrasing is airy, and folky and she gives it a playful lift. Closer to Sixties Melanie Safka.
She says it’s written by Gary Davis. Bob Dylan also claimed it alongside the familiar Trad moniker. Blind Willie McTell threw his hat in there one time.
Two covers of Elizabeth Cotton. Freight Train and Shake Sugaree. She extracts nice bass tones around the melody.
Bradley shows us her virtuosity by covering two John Fahey instrumentals. An idiosyncratic player who merged a multitude of styles and was a genuine pioneer of world music.
Leads to one of the best tonight, Blind Blake’s Police Dog Blues, which is complex and seamlessly fits in ragtime.
The atmosphere is Folk Club. Everyone is quiet and reserved, but it lets the music stand unimpeded. Bradley may have been nervous at times, but this was countered by her confident delivery as the show progresses.
She had good support from Louis Jarlov. Seen him with a band and playing Rock’n’roll and Americana. But this evening he is solo with an acoustic guitar and it’s all manner of Country Americana sans Nashville sound.
Mostly melancholy is his Jerry Jeff Walker cover. He takes some of the bombast but none of the drama out of Springsteen’s Thunder Road.
In between are his own songs, a honky-tonk of whiskey breath and broken hearts, feeling like James Dean and watching something burn to the ground.
In the middle a song of the last world war and a great-grandfather coming home to Taranaki.
Everything circles around again.
Muireann Bradley gives us her interpretation of the old standards Stagolee and Frankie and Albert.
Her phrasing on a Hank William’s masterpiece I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry softens the edges and drops the blue yodels.
A couple of Memphis Minnie songs, including the classic When the Levee Breaks which is another highlight.
The chosen encore is Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. Which fits with the playful tone of the show.
Muireann Bradley is breathing fresh life into Americana music which is always timeless in the circle game.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Greg Haver
Louis Jarlov
