CELTIC CELTIC-PUNK. BLACK FRIDAY LIVE IN CORNWALL FEBRUARY 13th 2016

Traditional celtic punk for a real shanty knees up!

Straight out of Kernow and heading our way to London real soon here’s a review of a recent Black Friday gig to wet your whistles for the real thing. A high energy Celtic folk band from St Germans in Cornwall. They play a fine mix of original songs, traditional Irish jigs, reels and ballads and a few cover’s thrown in by bands such as the Pogues, Flogging Molly and the Mahones. 

They have toured all over England and Europe including a variety of venues and festivals such as The Maker Festival, The Port Eliot Lit Fest, The Electric Picnic in Ireland, The Plymouth Folk Festival, Calstock Biker Festival, Burnham-on-Sea Folk Festival and Wimbourne Folk Festival as well as a tour of Austria, which including playing at the worlds largest festival, the Donauinsel Fest. After playing at the reknowned Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues Club in London they were spotted by top Radio DJ, Marc Lamarr, who invited them to record a 6 song session at the famous Maida Vale studio in London for his show. Whilst they were there, they played for and met their hero and Pogues singer, Shane MacGowan. In 2015 the band got into the Guinness Book of Records for performing the most gigs in one day, 30 gigs in 12 hours!

Live at The Inn On The Shore, Downderry, Cornwall

OK, full disclosure here, I was really in attendance at this gig to help a good friend celebrate a significant birthday in my local but, by happy accident, this coincided with the chance to see one of the most highly respected bands currently working the circuit in Cornwall. Black Friday ply their trade in the realms of celtic folk but there is so, so much more to them than that. With all seven members squeezed in to one corner of the pub, the group set about winding up the atmosphere slowly, raising the temperature and creating an atmosphere. Original compositions mixed in amongst classics like ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘Whiskey In The Jar’ without missing a beat, showing the quality of the band’s rendition of these classic songs.

It is, however, in the live arena that this collective excels and, even in a tiny space, they can’t help but perform like the natural entertainers they are. From the lowest slung Banjo I’ve ever seen to some seriously fierce Mandolin work, Black Friday an absolute joy to watch if you can manage to take it all in.

The folk ethos is up front for everyone to see but then you’ve got elements of Blues, Country, Rock’n’Roll and, when that wah-wah pedal kicks in, things get a little funky as well. I’ll admit that alcohol and socialising deflected my full attention but I’ll definitely be checking these guys out again. On first impressions, if you want a band to turn up, play fiercely uplifting music that will get the place jumping and have any audience eating out of the palm of their hands then Black Friday are the guys and girls for you, make no mistake.

Review by LISTEN WITH MONGER

check out their blog here

Black Friday make a rare foray into enemy territory and play a gig in good old London town soon in the run up to St Patrick’s Day. Performing at the infamous ‘Gaz’s Rockin Blues’ club at the St. Moritz, 159 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1 (nearest tube Tottenham Court Road). An amazing club run by Gaz Mayall from the legendary celtic-ska band The Trojans who has been running this night every Thursday for the past 30 years. So as you can see it’s not to be missed and you can check out what’s happening at the Facebook event page here. One thing though the gig doesn’t start till 10pm so might be worth throwing a sickie and enjoying a long weekend!

Contact Black Friday

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for an excellent resource on Cornwall go check out ‘An Omsav- The Cornish Republican’ here

“It’s not that Cornwall became part of England, it’s just that the English forgot Cornwall was not part of their country”

ALBUM REVIEW: TOM O’REILLY AND THE SWAGGERS- ‘One Fine Day’ (2016)

SWAGGER, SWAMP AND SLIDE!

“Celebration of people and their homelands, loves desired and lost. West country original country folk songs with soul, conjuring images of landscapes, oceans and the haunts of both the living and dead. Guaranteed to take the listener on a magical journey”

Just as I was planning on reviewing this great album from Tom O’Reilly And The Swaggers the news came in from Facebookland that the band had won the ‘Kan Rag Kernow/Song for Cornwall’ competition held in Redruth and will now go on to represent Kernow in the Pan Celtic Song Competition to be held in Ceatharlach, Co. Carlow, Eire/Ireland at the end of March. They won by performing the tin miners song ‘Lugh Glow’ in Cornish. The song appears on One Fine Day but is sang in English as ‘Black Lung’ and is accompanied by eleven more original folk songs tinged with country and celtic music.

Tom O’Reilly And The Swaggers (from l to r) Tomo – Vocals and Acoustic Guitar, Sam – Fiddle, Helen – Double Bass and Bass Guitar, Dr Bod – Acoustic Guitar and Kick Drum

Tom O’Reilly And The Swaggers as you may have guessed hail from Kernow/Cornwall and feature four members of the notorious fellow Cornish celtic punk band Black Friday. Don’t worry though this is only a side project for the quartet and Black Friday continue to go from strength to strength both at home in Cornwall, and in England.

One Fine Day’s first of its dozen tracks is the short ‘Intro- On My Way Home’ before morphing into ‘Final Resting Place’ and you can hear Black Friday but it’s Black Friday playing their alternative country sound. A brooding song and like a lot of the songs here the subject matter is dark but it’s presented to us in a joyous way. Next up is title song ‘One Fine Day’ and great fiddling again and Tom’s vocals dominate and its more of that alto-country sound. Aye its country but not quite as you’d know it!

‘Black Lung’ is up next and if you’ve ever wondered why their doesn’t seem to be any happy miners songs then reflect on the tough, hard life of the miner both in the job and after he retires. My own father worked as a coal miner and didn’t see past 57. Like a lot of the people he worked with down the mine he never got to enjoy retirement as his lungs were fucked up by breathing in shit for year on end. Mining is just a distant memory in Cornwall now and sadly, recently, is in Yorkshire too. It’s a beautifully played song dripping with emotion and is followed by a spot of Cornish republicanism with ‘The King In The Crown’. A story of escaping your home to sail the sea.

“The king in the crown in London town you’re not the king of me”

Fiddle begins ‘Standing There’ and dominates ‘Good To Be Free’ as well. The album is tripping along really nicely. Real foot-tapping music and to be placed on the celtic folk side of things. Its mostly country influenced i would say but coloured by Black Friday and their music.

‘Watch Me Fall’ adds in a bit of calypso before ‘Scream Softly’ comes in and reminds me a lot of an old band I really loved called The 1926 Committee from South London (anyone know where they are now?) with acoustic guitar and Tom’s great distinctive vocals giving the song that bit of extra depth. ‘Sea Bound Sailors’ is as slow as it gets on One Fine Day and is also the closest they sail to celtic music. A real lovely song before they return to a more up tempo sound with ‘Country Boy Blues’. Now this will get your toes-a-tapping believe me!

One Fine Day ends with the short ‘Outro- Farewell And Adieu’ continuing on from that opening track. This is a fantastic album that like I said is more to the folkier side of celtic-punk and you’d recognise more of bands like The Levellers in it than The Pogues but they have taken something of The Pogues anarchic side to do what they have done. Think of of Cash and Strummer rather than the usual Shane and Strummer. Tom O’Reilly’s vocals suit the music 100% and his first class song-writing delivers with charisma and depth. What you get is refreshingly authentic music with raw folk energy, the attitude of punk and the rebel yells of country music. Yee Har!

Buy The Album

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Contact The Band

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(here’s a snippet of their other band Black Friday)

Black Friday-  Facebook  WebSite  Twitter  Soundcloud

*you can catch Black Friday playing live in London on Thursday 12th March at the St. Moritz club in Soho. Go to our ‘What’s On’ page here for all the details of that and a whole host of other happening’s in London town!