Fresh from their success of being named Best Duo at the
recent BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin continue to
make substantial waves in the world of traditional roots music. As a duo they
are inventive, energetic and passionate about their specific areas of interest
which spans three continents in an attempt to tap into sources of enchanting
song and majestic slide guitar playing. The Kitchen Garden Café is an established
Midlands venue on the roots music scene and, despite the sounds in the past of
many fine artists reverberating around its acoustic friendly brick walls, there
cannot have been many better 45 minute slots than the second half of Phillip
and Hannah’s set on this mild Sunday evening.
It may have taken the award winning duo a little while to
warm up and adjust to the surroundings, including a few teething technical
issues, but eventually the quality kicked in to leave a near sell out audience
thrilled to be in the company of two inspiring musicians. For those who like
their traditional music with an Americana flavour then the impressive Dobro
playing of Phillip Henry is served gift wrapped with the soul of the south.
Throw in some enigmatic gospel and blues style harmonica segments and a couple
of covers of songs made famous by Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss, then there
was more than enough to keep any transatlantic music enthusiast satisfied.
This need not detract too much from the duo having a strong
foothold in the world of traditional English song and Hannah’s stylish vocals
are more than suited to interpret tales such as ‘Death & The Lady’, the audience participating ‘The Nailmakers' Strike’and the self-composed
‘The Painter’. A song inspired by its
Wiltshire location ‘Silbury Hill’ was
perhaps the highlight of the first set where we were now fully acquainted with
the fiddle, viola and banjo playing of Hannah to supplement her soothing
vocals.
In addition to his mightily impressive Dobro playing and
harmonica interludes, Phillip utilised the stomp box and beat box to good
effect as well as providing the vocals for Gillian Welch’s ‘Wichita’. The sub-continent is another
fertile source for Phillip’s inspiration and we learned of the importance of
his trip to India several years ago to immerse into the culture of the
centuries-old tradition of slide guitar playing. When the duo performed their
version of ‘The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn’,
revived by Alison Krauss and the Union Station, you couldn’t help but compare Phillip
to the Tennessee Dobro maestro himself Jerry Douglas.
By the time the evening had been brought to a serene closing
with a gorgeous version of James Taylor’s ‘Close
Your Eyes’, there could not have been a Kitchen Garden Café inhabitant not
in awe of the performance of this highly talented duo. Their second studio and
most recent release MYND, of which we were entertained with a debate about its
old English name origins, supplied a fair amount of this evening’s material and is
an album worth acquainting yourself with.
Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin have great crossover
potential, with that being straddling several strands of folk and Americana
instead of delving into the saccharine world of pop. This performance when
hitting its stride was one which gave marvellous entertainment and catching
them again sometime in the future was added to the wish list.