For a change the emphasis was on British bands, and what a line up! Apart from local outfits The Britannia Band, The Rainy City Bluegrass Band, there had top-flight groups The Acme Band (bluegrass/gospel) and The Down County Boys, plus star flatpicker Chris Moreton. But 'Super-Group of the Show' was resident outfit Silver Hill, comprising just Bill Hyde on banjo and JK himself on guitar/vocals, plus a synth rhythm machine (a what????). All the concerts were held in the centre's lecture theatre, which already had enough stars of its'own... The room isn't very big but the size was adequate as things turned out.

Bill Hyde & John Keegan: Silver Hill

The celebrations began on Friday night with reportedly outstanding performances from The Rainy City, Silver Hill and Dave Pope's outfit The Rocky Mountain Ploughboys, with support from Ian Reynolds and others.

Saturday dawned sunny;a surprise in view of the bad weather forecast. But it rapidly regressed through cloudy to dull and drizzle. Just before little Todmorden we passed through tiny Walsden, where we were surprised to see crowds with police on horseback in control. "Hope we can get in!" we thought, with visions of a complete sell-out and a queue right to the top of the hill. No such good luck (for John) or bad luck (for us). We started up the hill and the higher we got the wetter it became. The locals knew all about the weather at over 1,000 feet and not a lot turned up, so parking was no problem.

The afternoon started of with an excellent jam session - lots of talent, not too many playing and a very appreciative audience (small at first but well swelled by the time the concerts started).

One of the good things about the Planetarium is that they have no license for alcoholic beverages so we could take our own (the cheap option!) but in the concert/lecture room they have a service counter where one could buy tea & coffee, baked potatoes & chilli, sandwiches and the like - all good and excellent value! The 'bar' was open only between sets; at other times curtains were drawn across it, allowing MC Bev Williams to quip "The Punch & Judy Show is now open!"

The Britannia Bluegrass Band

First on, from their own club in Aintree (ex-Liverpool, ex-Upholland) were our home-grown NW band the Britannia: Pete Mackie (bass/vocals), Ted Costello (fiddle/mandolin/vocals), Barry Flynn (guitar/banjo/harmony vocals) and Pat Lyndon (banjo/dobro). The Britannia showed off their versatility quite well with a varied programme of material including something from the 'country-side', for example Stone Wall All Around Your Heart and I'm Goin' To Love You Like There's No Tomorrow and a varied selection of ballads which included On my Mind (their signature tune), My Baby's Gone and instrumentals like Rag Time Annie and Orange Blossom Special, to name but two. But on-the-nose bluegrass wasn't overlooked: numbers like Little Whitewashed Chimney, Columbus Stockade Blues where sung with gusto. The Britannia are a tight bunch (musical arrangement speaking) and use lots of 'split-into-four' breaks.

The Down County Boys - new lineup with Geoff Bowers

The Down County Boys (who, with The Acme Band, were a little late back after discovering the excellent ales in the pub at the bottom of the road...) played second, with their new member Geoff Bowers (who hadn't heard of the pub). DCB old-timers Peter Parker (fiddle/harmony vocals), Guy Rogers (lead guitar/vocals), Mick Cooper (bass/vocals) and Jim Irvine (Banjo) were enhanced by recently-new member Geoff (mandolin/vocals), who held his own admirably. This band has been reported several times in NWBN, always in glowing terms and tonight's performance was no exception. They cut through several real tradgrass numbers with a humorous presentation.... though I think it's time Mick got a wig, to stop Jim using his follically-challenged pate as a mirror to comb his hair in...

The Acme Band (cover photo) played last, again great gospel and bluegrass with humorous intros from Brian Curtis. Lots of a-capella numbers and the audience audibly gasped at the hair-raising, spine-tingling endings on some of their songs, as in Lover Of The Lord, for example. They also sang several of their self-penned numbers, which can be heard on their recent CD Old Favourites - New Songs (reviewed NWBN

Biggest surprise to this writer was Chris Moreton  (photo, right) - always a grade A-1 guitarist but now an excellent entertainer to boot - something the British BG Scene is short of...  He drew the audience in at every opportunity and had attention-grabbing introductions to songs. The Chris that I remember concentrated on flatpicking solos (of which there were enough here!) with a few bluegrassy songs like Hand Me down My Walking Cane, but now he has comedy numbers such as The Sheep Of Aberdare (sic) and sing-along as well. As a result he gets lots of folk-club-type work now.

As the day and evening drew on the weather just got worse and worse until the concert hall was separated from the car park by a river. When we left we had difficulty driving down the drive to the road, which was a real river. We retraced our tracks down the hill (bad choice!) and found the car being washed sideways on bends.... Todmorden, at the bottom was flooded to 6 feet in places... we ran on 4 cylinders, then 3, 2, 1... a taxi rescued us, towing us out from 2 foot deep water... It would take forever to describe how bad it was. Suffice to say that tiny Todmorden made the National TV and BBC Radio 4 main news the next day....
Our 3½ hour journey was 3 times longer than usual. But despite all that, Best Wishes to the happy couple!

Derek Brandon, Chester.

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21st Sept 2000