By Gai Anderson
Huonville Town Hall
As part of Ten Days on the Island , 2013
sprag [spræg]
n. 1) a young man 2) a young cod 3) a wooden prop to support the roof of a mine.
sprag unit auto part with several rotating sprags that lock to provide traction.
adj. 1) quick and lively (Shakespeare) 2) of sprag mind: one’s thought process in constant cognitive motion creating a distracted and wavering personality.
n. 1) a young man 2) a young cod 3) a wooden prop to support the roof of a mine.
sprag unit auto part with several rotating sprags that lock to provide traction.
adj. 1) quick and lively (Shakespeare) 2) of sprag mind: one’s thought process in constant cognitive motion creating a distracted and wavering personality.
I don’t know what
I expected of SPRAG SESSION on Monday
night at Huonville, but as these young energetic musicians from Cape Breton
stepped onto stage and played those first electrifying notes I knew that I was
in for something really special.
As if dropped in
from another place in the midst of full musical flight, their toe tapping wild
energy expanded instantly to fill the room with an intoxicating and multilayered
mix of Celtic traditions with twists of funk and rock.
For these five
smiling young men are no ordinary Celtic band, but one that layers upon the
reels and jigs and Breton dances with their unique and inspired arrangements to
create thoughtful original “toons”. Their music is infectious.
The ever-smiling
sprite that is the toe-tapping frontman Colin Grant, has gathered a group of
amazing musicians around him to create Sprag Session, bringing together a
traditional trio in combination with a blues, funk rhythm
section . Combining virtuosic mandolin, guitar, banjo, drums, wild thumping
piano and the ever soaring fiddle of Grant himself, Sprag Session created
a dynamic range of grooves, beats and melodies, which occasionally slowed for soulful
moments of great beauty.
Grant is also a
great story teller whose impish enthusiasm to connect with
the audience and comic chatter between the sweat-inducing tunes were delightful. His
comic stories of the people from the
community they live in had a great generosity about it and a great familiarity.
In fact the photo of the lads on the Ten Days program,
sitting in the park with the ducks, could be of a bunch of local boys taken in
Huonville.
And that’s a bit
how the whole night felt, like we had known these boys forever and they were playing to their home crowd. Except
we were definitely not all up and dancing as we much as they
would have been at home when these boys were “driving the ceilidih bus”.
But it was a
Monday night in Huonville.
