Our Canadian friends drove from Nova Scotia to Maine to see SKERRYVORE, a “Contemporary Scottish Celtic Rock band” (“With a mix of bagpipes, fiddles, accordions, and whistles, alongside guitar and vocals, underpinned by driving bass, drums and keys” Sherryvore Website) so when we saw they were playing locally we decided to see why someone would drive that far to see a band. Not that we don’t fly to Nova Scotia every year to hear Scottish, Irish, Canadian etc bands or have driven to Winnipeg, Manitoba (which is a six to eight hour drive from MSP) to see John Prine once and David Francey another time. So we got tickets.
The show was at the Dakota, once a jazz only venue originally at Bandanda Square in St. Paul but now located in Minneapolis and no longer exclusively jazz. Its always tricky picking seats because of the way the place is laid out. It’s a restaurant/music club so not a typical concert venue in terms of layout. The stage is thrust style, with mainfloor tables surrounding the semicircle. To the right of the tables there is limited bar seating and to the left there is more extensive hightop tables set up with two to four two seaters pushed together. If you don’t bring two friends you will make new ones , if you’re lucky, over the course of the evening. We landed in this area and did have a typical St Small/Small Paul conversation with the couple next to us. “oh yes, our children went to that school” ” I know exactly the house you are talking about” “right, we know them”
There is also a mezzanine that runs the along the length of the space and the two ends. These can be great seats if you are on the rail at one of the four tops. Nice high view of the band.
We were prepared for volume. Any band with two highland pipers, a fiddle, accordion and guitar is going to crank out some decibels. Add a full drum kit, electric guitar and electric bass to the mix and there is the chance you might want to bring you earplugs along. Maybe it was where we were sitting, how they mixed the sound, or the acoustics of the space, but the sound never hit the “wish I’d brought my earplugs” level.
It is always interesting, and sometimes too predictable, what the demographics are for Celtic groups of any kind. Audiences tend to skew toward high ranking AARPers with some junior members scattered around. It was good to see that the old guard was represented, Skerryvore drew a decidely more diverse and younger group of fans. If you gotta have drums, electric keyboards and electric guitars to “rock up” traditional tunes to draw a younger demographic that’s okay with me. The tradition carries on only if the younger ones are drawn to it.
Skerryvore mixes power ballads with country/rock overtones with hard charging reels and jigs played on pipes, accordion and fiddle and the occasional gentle song that could be 300 years old. Throwing a jig or reel in the middle of a newly constructed ballad or song is something I appreciate and the lads did a great job of that. There could be at times more swirly snythizer effects than necessary; I’d prefer none honestly. But…….
The energy Skerryvore brought to the show was infectious. Sometimes this kind of band can seem a little canned, and no doubt some of the bits they do are well rehearsed and done at every show, but these guys were having fun. So the audience was having fun. Lots of older folks chair swaying and foot tapping and lots of the younger crowd up on their feet dancing or just hopping up and down. (I guess that is a thing?)
We saw Enter The Haggis in Maine last summer and there are similarities here. Celtic rock mixed with more traditional tunes. If both bands were playing the same night across the street from each other I would most likely go with the Haggis, but would be sorry that I missed Skerryvore.
On the drive home from the show we both remarked that we should go ahead and get tickets to see our favorite Bagpipe intense band, Diamh, in Milwaukee this weekend. (as this is written that would be tonight). We do love our pipes and pipers. But we will most likely have to wait til Celtic Colours in October for our next fix.
