THE KESTOR STRINGBAND – THE MOORGRASS ALBUM
2013 – Self Released
It’s always exciting, as well as reassuring, to discover a band that play their music simply for the pleasure of playing together and blending musical genres that they love and have a feel for. So it is with this tremendous four piece The Kestor Stringband. Old timey hillbilly music, blended with English folk music and with ‘real country music’ tying it all together. In fact, if you take those genres as a very loose starting point they are blended to such a degree that what this band plays is pretty much a unique sub genre of their own making and one that they call ‘Moorgrass,’ with that blend being completely seamless and only achievable by those who really ‘feel’ their music. What is surprising is the fact that this band of ‘hillbillies’ don’t hail from the high Appalachians, but from the ‘wild west’ of England, Dartmoor in Devon to be more precise!
As yet I know very little about them, although this appears to be their first recording. Their lineup is Earl Fontainelle on guitar, saw and vocals, Wynford Dempster plays banjo, Doug Kyle, bass, vocals and harp, with Carl Allerfeldt on fiddle and vocals. Although all six songs and three instrumentals on this tremendous album are written by the band, their grasp of ‘old time’ music is obvious with tracks 1,3,5 and 6 incorporating ‘traditional’ tunes and the lyrics on track 9 being taken from the writings of Sabine Baring-Gould (a fascinating character in his own right!). The vocals have an appropriate untutored rawness to them, which perfectly suits the ‘home made’ quality of these genres, whilst the band harmonies are incredibly tight and melodic and the choice of instrumentation and playing couldn’t really be bettered.
This is certainly one of those all too few albums whose songs could easily be old tales that the 19th century immigrants took with them from Britain to America where they were developed and gradually absorbed into the nations consciousness. The musicians responsible have to possess a great depth of feeling for the music to achieve this, with it being almost impossible to do so through any premeditated contrivance.
Proceedings get underway with Gone, Gone, Gone/Cherokee Shuffle, the excellent, quite raucously speedy album opener with raw vocals, hard driving banjo and fiddle allied to tremendous band harmonies on a song that musically, if not lyrically, has a bluegrass feel thanks to the dominance of the banjo. This is followed by Long Prairie Sunset, a song that as it’s title suggests is pretty much a mellow ‘country and western’ ballad with weeping, mournful fiddle and gentle banjo on a sad evocative tale. June Apple/Moira starts with an eerily haunting musical saw before the slowly strummed banjo joins in followed by a mournful fiddle and half way through speeds up as if playing at a hoe down, all underpinned by the double bass and guitar on a truly excellent and original instrumental. Blackfriars Bridge Waltz is a slow moody tale that has the feel of an English folk song but with a banjo working away in the background allied to fiddle and accordion. The whole song has a dark otherworldly atmosphere that genuinely evokes a dark foggy night on the old London bridge of the title. Finally, The Ballad of Brinning Moor has the threatening, sinister sound of a bowed bass and saw intro, soon joined by banjo and fiddle bringing a strange otherworldly feel to the song, then the vocals slowly come in on a tale that could as easily be located in an eerie old Appalachian ‘holler’ as the broad Devon moorland. An appropriate location for the finale on this excellent atmospheric recording.
Ultimately this is an exceptional, high quality album of music that really does blend the basic generic fields of old English folk music and the strain of ‘country music’ that it would decades later segue into. There are varied textures, moods, tempos and experimentation that ensures their ‘moorgrass’ is always a genre of music that has plenty of depth. That this band is able to take 19th century and earlier music, blend in it’s early to mid 20th century off spring culminating with an album that is just as relevant in the 21st century shows the music I and many others love can still accept and thrive on further development. Tremendous album from a tremendous band!
http://kestorstringband.org.uk/
It’s always exciting, as well as reassuring, to discover a band that play their music simply for the pleasure of playing together and blending musical genres that they love and have a feel for. So it is with this tremendous four piece The Kestor Stringband. Old timey hillbilly music, blended with English folk music and with ‘real country music’ tying it all together. In fact, if you take those genres as a very loose starting point they are blended to such a degree that what this band plays is pretty much a unique sub genre of their own making and one that they call ‘Moorgrass,’ with that blend being completely seamless and only achievable by those who really ‘feel’ their music. What is surprising is the fact that this band of ‘hillbillies’ don’t hail from the high Appalachians, but from the ‘wild west’ of England, Dartmoor in Devon to be more precise!
As yet I know very little about them, although this appears to be their first recording. Their lineup is Earl Fontainelle on guitar, saw and vocals, Wynford Dempster plays banjo, Doug Kyle, bass, vocals and harp, with Carl Allerfeldt on fiddle and vocals. Although all six songs and three instrumentals on this tremendous album are written by the band, their grasp of ‘old time’ music is obvious with tracks 1,3,5 and 6 incorporating ‘traditional’ tunes and the lyrics on track 9 being taken from the writings of Sabine Baring-Gould (a fascinating character in his own right!). The vocals have an appropriate untutored rawness to them, which perfectly suits the ‘home made’ quality of these genres, whilst the band harmonies are incredibly tight and melodic and the choice of instrumentation and playing couldn’t really be bettered.
This is certainly one of those all too few albums whose songs could easily be old tales that the 19th century immigrants took with them from Britain to America where they were developed and gradually absorbed into the nations consciousness. The musicians responsible have to possess a great depth of feeling for the music to achieve this, with it being almost impossible to do so through any premeditated contrivance.
Proceedings get underway with Gone, Gone, Gone/Cherokee Shuffle, the excellent, quite raucously speedy album opener with raw vocals, hard driving banjo and fiddle allied to tremendous band harmonies on a song that musically, if not lyrically, has a bluegrass feel thanks to the dominance of the banjo. This is followed by Long Prairie Sunset, a song that as it’s title suggests is pretty much a mellow ‘country and western’ ballad with weeping, mournful fiddle and gentle banjo on a sad evocative tale. June Apple/Moira starts with an eerily haunting musical saw before the slowly strummed banjo joins in followed by a mournful fiddle and half way through speeds up as if playing at a hoe down, all underpinned by the double bass and guitar on a truly excellent and original instrumental. Blackfriars Bridge Waltz is a slow moody tale that has the feel of an English folk song but with a banjo working away in the background allied to fiddle and accordion. The whole song has a dark otherworldly atmosphere that genuinely evokes a dark foggy night on the old London bridge of the title. Finally, The Ballad of Brinning Moor has the threatening, sinister sound of a bowed bass and saw intro, soon joined by banjo and fiddle bringing a strange otherworldly feel to the song, then the vocals slowly come in on a tale that could as easily be located in an eerie old Appalachian ‘holler’ as the broad Devon moorland. An appropriate location for the finale on this excellent atmospheric recording.
Ultimately this is an exceptional, high quality album of music that really does blend the basic generic fields of old English folk music and the strain of ‘country music’ that it would decades later segue into. There are varied textures, moods, tempos and experimentation that ensures their ‘moorgrass’ is always a genre of music that has plenty of depth. That this band is able to take 19th century and earlier music, blend in it’s early to mid 20th century off spring culminating with an album that is just as relevant in the 21st century shows the music I and many others love can still accept and thrive on further development. Tremendous album from a tremendous band!
http://kestorstringband.org.uk/