Venue:
Back Stage, Green Hotel, Kinross
Date: 08/12/2017
They’ve been around in one form or another, for ever. I’ve never heard anything new from them for well over 30 years, yet they only played 4 songs that I wasn’t familiar with. I suppose you could call it a greatest hits tour, because that’s more or less what they played. Rod Clements is the only original, though I think everyone else has been there for over 20 years. Dave Hull- Denholm takes on most of the lead singing and front man duties as he’s much younger and fitter than Clements, though Clements still gives his all as a multi instrumentalist. Hull-Denholm is married to Alan Hull’s daughter. I think he had 4 different 12 string guitars on stage. In fact, I counted 14 guitars in total! This was the first night of their winter tour, and I felt it showed in the first few numbers, but from then on they were as tight as a gnat’s chuff, with Steve Dagget encouraging the crowd to join in on the anthemic parts…which, of course, we all did.
The audience:
I’m not quite 60, but I was probably the youngest there.
It made me think..
Live music, sitting down in a smsll intimate venue is magic!
Have loved Lindisfarne ever since Fog on the Tyne and seeing them on a Charisma headlining tour with Genesis supporting them. Bigger fan still of Alan Hull and Pipedream remains a favourite album of mine.
Did they play January song? I love that one.
Yes, they did Steve. Hull’s son in law had everyone in the audience singing their lungs out. I don’t have Pipedream. I think I’ll put it on my xmas wish list.
The bloke sitting next to me said he saw them on the tour with Genesis. I got the impression that Genesis were the headliners….no?
I saw them twice in Edinburgh in the 70s. Once, in the gods somewhere, and once in the moshpit at the Usher Hall. Sweaty days! Last night, most of the 120 audience were seated.
They swapped bill positions every night on the tour with Genesis & VDGG.
That may have been another tour Colin as VDGG were not on the bill. I only ever saw them separately as a headliner but quite a number of years later.
Lindisfare definitely the headliner when I saw them as I didn’t know Genesis. It was as they were releasing Foxtrot and was a big fan for a couple of years but not now. Still love Lindisfarne though.
I believe they did more than one tour with Gen, but the first was the triple bill.
https://vintagerock.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/lindisfarne-1971-and-1972/
30p
Genesis came on first. No time for an encore before Rab Noakes played a set, followed by Linda’s Farm. I saw the tour date at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
When Rab was onstage I nipped down to the dressing room and got the Genesis lads to sign my programme. Seemed like nice boys. Whatever became of them?
Rab Noakes still touring too!
But, for @moose-the-mooche , how was the Great Paul Thompson on drums?
I wasn’t familiar with him. It was obvious he was working the hardest, as he probably doesn’t know the material backwards, like the rest of them. More 100% concentration than smiling. Great job though!
The Thomp’ don’t be smilin’ when he be wilin’!
You can’t really see it in the picture, but on the left side of his bass drum, there’s a sheild, with his initials PT in it. Not knowing who he was, I didn’t get the significance until Clements introduced the individual band members.
A shield! A tradition started by Buddy Rich. Along with paradiddles (hurrr)
Was it a South Shield?*
(* laboured Geordieland reference)
Makes me pissed I missed ’em at Lichfield a year ago.
Lindisfarne have been added as Friday headliners for Southwell folk fest in shine next year, along with Cara Dillon, John Smith, Blue Rose Code and Kris Drever its shaping up to be a great line up
Given I am picking my fests for 2018, this is of interest.
Given the regional aspect of the individuals involved, Steve, did anyone say ‘Whyeayeyaboogaman’ during the show?
It’s a nice venue isn’t it? Feels like somebody’s labour of love.
I think it is a labour of love. He used to have the Bein Inn in Glenfarg, then the Inn at Lathones. They were small hotels but he hosted a couple of small gigs every week. I’ve been at them all, and stayed overnight, many times. Stacey Earle, Steve Forbert, Rod Picott, 9 Below Zero, Rab Noakes off the top of my head.
You could spend all day just looking at the memorabilia on the walls.
I`ve only seen the `Farne once, supporting Bob Dylan at St. James` Park in 1984(?). Santana were also on the bill. They, the `Farne, must have kicked 50 footballs into the crowd. Mind you, they made a better job of kicking a football than the present incumbents.
Their performance was basically a load of balls?
Colin, those puns/one liners are getting worse.
I’m afraid I have entire conversations with a few friends in the form of puns, sometimes. Usually in coffee shops. It’s got to the stage where I can set up a labyrinthine scenario and a friend – tuned in to the wavelength sufficiently – will be able to follow it around all the twists and turns to get to the punchline without me needing to say it. Bliss! 🙂
I bought their first three albums then lost interest but I have seen a couple of permutations of the band in recent years: Ray Jackson (As Ray Jackson & Friends, I think) played the Great British Folk Festival in Skeggy and Rod Clements played the following night with his version of Lindisfarne. It’s a shame they didn’t perform together.
By the way – both versions of Lindisfarne battled through snow and ice to get to Skeggy but the Unthanks cancelled. The youth of today, eh? Found wanting by a bunch of pensioners.
More recently, I saw the Ray Laidlaw/Billy Mitchell version at Costa del Folk.
Getting there was clearly an Unthankless task. Was there fog on the Tyne that night as well?
Wouldn’t that be a thankful task?
….I fear this discussion may descend into pointlessnessnessless.
Quite a few of us were Unhankful that they’d not shown up – we’d all made it, as well as those Lindisfarne old boys. John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee didn’t make it either but they were Southern Softies so nobody was surprised.
The two parts of this recent GeordieInternetTV show are nice – ‘Cooooookin’ in thaaa Kitchenyabooga’:
Here’s the other bit. No need to watch them in order:
Great stuff Colin! Thanks for that!
Impossible to see in my picture, but Charlie Hardcourt was hooked up to an oxygen bottle the whole night. At least, that’s what I think it was. Doc would know.
Anyway, good luck to him and I hope he’s ok.
Sorry to hear that, Steve. Good luck to him, as you say.
He looks very COPD-y, emphysema. What Swarb had before his lung transplant
I had always thought the singer was Hull’s son, not s-i-l. He sounds blood more than marriage. Wonderful.
A pal gave me a loan of ‘The Hull Story’ dvd and I watched it last night. It’s a tribute concert to Alan Hull by various Lindisfarne members and other well known geordies in 2005, at Newcastle Town Hall, 10 years after his death. Strangely, no Rod Clements or Dave Hull Denholm??
Anyway, there is video footage shown on a big screen in the hall of ‘Winter Song’. At the beginning, it’s Alan Hull and bass player, but then it changes to Hull-Denholm singing and playing with a bass player from different footage. It then goes back and forwards between the two singers and it works perfectly. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t be able to spot the joins. Uncanny stuff!
I believe at that time Rod Clements (and presumably Hull-Denholm) felt the carcass of Lindisfarne was being flogged to death and didn’t want another ‘Geordie sobfest’. He’s changed his mind since. And fair enough, it’s a good body of work to keep alive and everyone needs to make a living. I read a piece in R2 a while back about the myriad different versions/homages to Lindisfarne going on and it was mind-boggling. It would take a thousand words and a great feat of memory to explain it all.