Abstracted with permission from The Alston Moor Newsletter, Summer 1996. It is reprinted now as an insight to the next festival, which is on May 3rd and also features The Acme Band.

TOPPING THE BILL at the North Pennines Festival inaugural concert, held in the Garrigill Village Hall, was the talented five-piece Acme Bluegrass Band. They played Bluegrass and Gospel music with multi-instrumental virtuosity and a powerful song-style, often in close harmony.

Anyone familiar with the music from the movie Bonnie and Clyde or the TV series The Beverley Hillbillies, or who remembers Duelling Banjos in the film Deliverance, will be familiar with the tradition from which the Acme Bluegrass Band draws its major inspiration. Bluegrass music was a post-war USA development of traditional folk instrumental and song styles. Its roots lie in blues, ragtime, a capella (unaccompanied harmony) singing and other sources both sacred and secular. The famous American song collector and musicologist Alan Lomax characterised Bluegrass as the unique and haunting sound of hillbilly mountain music brought forward into the post-war world of 1950s America. This he called 'folk music with an overdrive'. The music was always acoustic and never electrified - resulting in a clarity that produces 'music without gimmicks'. The Acme Bluegrass Band conforms to this purity.

While the instrumental line-up of the band sparkles with talent, focus must fall upon Bill Foster whose three-finger picking on the banjo has to be experienced to be believed. To hear him handle the subtleties of the melody in Siempre, a quiet reflective piece, was a joy. Bill then exhibited musical brilliance of a different kind in the driving power of Remington Ride, a fast, finger-busting tune. However, to many there on Saturday the untitled, unaccompanied banjo piece will go down as the highlight of the evening. The speed and delivery and the up-the-neck playing were quite exceptional.

Bob Armstrong, our own Nenthead artist in residence, brought out fine and mellow sounds from the Dobro guitar and his uncanny ability to swap parts with Bill on the 5-string added wonderful colour to many of the instrumental breaks between and within the songs. Riverboat Fantasy and Teardrops In My Eyes were memorable for both song delivery and instrumental breaks. Bob is one of the few British musicians to have fully mastered the subtleties inherent in the art of the Dobro-guitar. His lead vocal line, with a velvet-like quality, was also much to the fore, adding to the overall Carter Family sound which so typifies the band's vocal style and presentation.

Lead singer and guitarist Brian Curtis, with his soaring tenor voice, captures elementally that 'high lonesome sound' basic to both Mountain and Bluegrass music. Favourites here were Beneath Still Waters and Elma Turtle - a song once heard not easily forgotten for its comic content so strong on innuendo.

The line-up of the old Bluegrass bands almost always included a bass player who doubled as the comic and with the Acme John Allen's rocking bass sound keeps the music's feet firmly on the ground despite the flights of instrumental dexterity indulged in by the others. His bass singing was also heard throughout the evening, a particular favourite of mine being the old Gospel song He Will Set Your Fields On Fire.

Important to the 'old-timey' sound of Bluegrass music is the mandolin, here in the skilful hands of the last member to join the Acme Bluegrass line-up, Ron Stevens. Ron also supported on vocals.

The concert of Saturday night was brought to a noisy close by a joint performance of Mama Don't Allow including individual spots by everyone who had played and sung throughout the evening. A spirited end to a great evening's entertainment.

Sunday 28th April found the Acme at work again playing a lunch-time session for the mid-day clientele in the bar at the Miners' Arms in Nenthead. And at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon a select congregation at Saint Augustine's Church in Alston heard them perform. This time the instrumental virtuosity of the group took a back seat as those present were treated to a spirited rendering in a capella singing of American traditional and post-war gospel and sacred songs.

Tony Brown

Updated 23rd Jan 1999