Steve Ashley – Live In Concert (Dusk Fire).
Steve Ashley’s 60th birthday party was recorded for posterity and a number of his friends turned up to help him celebrate. Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg and Simon Nicol help out on the jokey folk of I’m A Radio and Tinderbox contribute to the acoustic The Spirit Of Christmas. Pegg returns with orchestral backing for None Can Tell and Ashley’s voice shows no signs of his age. Springsong is the kind of song that we non-folkies would describe as finger in the ear stuff but Ashley’s Jethro Tull type vocal wins me over. Broken Wing is another gentle song but is not strong throughout and becomes rather bitty. Well Well Well is superbly played and is suited to Ashley’s laid back style whereas The Well At The Worlds End picks up the pace a bit and is the best track so far. Richard Byers on mandolin is the star here.
Back On The Road Again keeps the pace up with Ashley’s tales of bygone tours. There’s a good backing vocal here and Chris Leslie on fiddle fits in supremely. The Weapon makes it three up-tempo songs on the trot. This is an anti-war song but they lose it a bit at times and that’s a real shame. There’s a jug band feel to Easy Come and he provokes some thoughts on Ships Of Shame, a song about the need for our nuclear submarines. Ashley throws in some jolly English Folk on Family Love and he seems to perform better on the slower songs as shown on Once In A While. His gentleness pervades the album and his friends, Pegg, Leslie & Nicol plus Martin Brinsford, certainly back him well throughout. There’s some more of Ashley’s down to earth Folk on Feeling Lazy and the concert finishes with Say Goodbye, appropriately enough, with its earthy lyrics. Steve Ashley sings songs with a social conscience and these days, that’s no bad thing.
http://www.duskfire.co.uk/
David Blue.
Steve Ashley’s 60th birthday party was recorded for posterity and a number of his friends turned up to help him celebrate. Fairport Convention’s Dave Pegg and Simon Nicol help out on the jokey folk of I’m A Radio and Tinderbox contribute to the acoustic The Spirit Of Christmas. Pegg returns with orchestral backing for None Can Tell and Ashley’s voice shows no signs of his age. Springsong is the kind of song that we non-folkies would describe as finger in the ear stuff but Ashley’s Jethro Tull type vocal wins me over. Broken Wing is another gentle song but is not strong throughout and becomes rather bitty. Well Well Well is superbly played and is suited to Ashley’s laid back style whereas The Well At The Worlds End picks up the pace a bit and is the best track so far. Richard Byers on mandolin is the star here.
Back On The Road Again keeps the pace up with Ashley’s tales of bygone tours. There’s a good backing vocal here and Chris Leslie on fiddle fits in supremely. The Weapon makes it three up-tempo songs on the trot. This is an anti-war song but they lose it a bit at times and that’s a real shame. There’s a jug band feel to Easy Come and he provokes some thoughts on Ships Of Shame, a song about the need for our nuclear submarines. Ashley throws in some jolly English Folk on Family Love and he seems to perform better on the slower songs as shown on Once In A While. His gentleness pervades the album and his friends, Pegg, Leslie & Nicol plus Martin Brinsford, certainly back him well throughout. There’s some more of Ashley’s down to earth Folk on Feeling Lazy and the concert finishes with Say Goodbye, appropriately enough, with its earthy lyrics. Steve Ashley sings songs with a social conscience and these days, that’s no bad thing.
http://www.duskfire.co.uk/
David Blue.
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