THE ST.AUSTELL BREWERY (19TH OCTOBER)

RORY MCLEOD AND RADJEL

Restormel Arts` Autumnal season this year launched a unique and intimate venue with their first live gig on Friday at St.Austell Brewery`s visitor centre with the multi-talented Rory McLeod supported by local cornish folk band Radjel. I don`t imagine Walter Hicks would have ever had intended this event occuring on his brewery site when he established it in 1893, but music and ale have long been close bedfellows in the eyes of the common man and so the logic of opening the visitor centre to live music is not really as strange as it may seem.

First up were the local three piece Radjel, a traditional Cornish celtic folk band led by Will Coleman, who happily attacked the ears of the largely middle-aged audience with bagpipe and drumming tunes that often sounded quite Turkish and had no need of amplification as they droned through the ancient brewery. Completing their jolly three song set, it was left to Will to introduce the main attraction for most of the audience, in the shape of Rory McLeod.

Travelling is a way of life for this modern troubadour and so a journey all the way from the Orkney Islands in Scotland to headline the opening of this unusual musical venue, is all in a couple of days work for Rory. Admitting a propensity towards `blathering` between songs, his style of modern folk music has more in common with Billy Bragg than Euan MacColl and with a storyteller`s ear for placing the audience within the epicentre of the song, he explains how his travels have enlightened his perception of the global frailty of man. Rory`s songs deal with hardship and politics, but mainly they are about love and the human condition. Starting with an extended harmonica workout, Rory played songs from all points of his large back catalogue right through to his most recent album Brave Faces and showed his diverse musical talents by employing not only his guitar, harmonica and tap shoe rhythm, but also the rarely seen-these-days, spoons. Songs such as The Emperor`s New Clothes, When Mum and Dad Made Me and London Kisses delighted the enraptured audience and brought tapping feet, joining clapping hands to the smiling faces all around.

A fantastic start to the Restormel Arts season and a "Proper Job", as the keepers of this modern day brewery would undoubtably say.

(Photos by Lord Itchfield)

www.rorymcleod.com