Peter Knight’s Gigspanner – The Hub @ St Marys, Lichfield – 12th May 2024
Starter for ten, then: so what, actually, is a gigspanner? Hands down if you know, but, until last night, I didn’t. Yes, of course, it is, as well, the name of Peter Knight’s main gainful this last 16 years, and exists in a variety of forms, trio, big band and big band multimedia. (Multimedia, darling? Knight would surely baulk at such a description, but how else to describe the Big Band Saltlines project, with spoken word from Raynor Winn.) Oddly it seems the big band that catches most the coverage these days, perhaps unsurprising given the bombast from the stage of the six-piece, so much so that this was the a first sighting for me of the ball that started it all rolling.
Another first for me was this newish venue in my home town. New? Well, the building stems from 1870, itself built on the site of an earlier iteration, dating from 700 years before that. However, it no longer is active as a church, being now the home of the local library, a community centre and an arts complex. Subject to an extravagant refurb in 2018, I am ashamed it has taken me so long to visit, the concert area upstairs being ideal for this sort of show, with perhaps room for a hundred or so punters, in a bright an airy space, bedecked, as is usual(!?) for Lichfield venues, with massive stained glass windows. There were about a hundred here tonight, not bad for a Sunday evening.
Bang on 7.35, lights already down, on strode Knight and his two partners in sublime, Roger Flack and Sacha Trochet. Knight present a Catweazle-esque figure these day, his brow perpetually muddled and demeanour on the side of an amused bewilderment. His grey locks tied back, and bushy of eyebrows, ‘tache and chin puff, the room is under his control in an instant. Flack sports more the fraught folkie look, hirsute and bestubbled, toting a natty electro-acoustic guitar, whereas Trochet is more the medallion man, densely coiffed quiff and jazzy shirt, tucked behind his kit of hand drums, electronic kickdrum and hi-hat. No messing, Knight bows right in with a dense chicane of notes that emerges into the barely discernible melody of She Moved Through The Fair, a delightfully extended and seemingly free-form variation that had Flack plucking some curveball notes and Trochet’s hands a flurry of fingers and palms. That Knight is a master of his craft is understood, but the symmetrical sympathy of his two co-players is extravagant, honed from precisioned rehearsal and shared lack of boundary.
A belated good evening, with apology for that foresight, and old faithful, The Seagull, gets an airing, Knight’s vocal a light and easy instrument, somewhere a little adrift from received finger in the ear, and pleasingly so, with a hint of a lower pitched Hastings Syd or Julian, an essentially English tone. Knight plays his fiddle here totally pizzicato, at times treating it more like a mandolin, where it combines beautifully with Flacks well-chosen picking. E Flat English followed, a working title that has never managed a name. This glorious melody filled all the spaces in this deconsecrated church as if it had been waiting for this very tune, quintessentially English, all Lark Ascending and that sort of thing. Trochet has switched to bass, providing low resonant notes that sound almost like cello. Absolutely stunning.
Time then for a bit of folk, with Bows Of London, complete with an explanation of all the gory detail. This steers between the tradition and wider horizons with aplomb, Knight flitting between Olde England and the Balkans in his playing. Butterfly and Blackbird, respectively, close the first half, an hour having slipped by without realisation. Knight says he left Steeleye Span because he felt restricted by the restraints compelled on him by the rigidity of the idiom: no such limitations here, we having had English and Celtic folk flavours, classical, jazz, let alone tastes of an ambient ambivalence, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Himalayas.
Refreshed by a rather jolly Cherry Porter from Titanic’s expanding roster of tasty beers, and the trio’s first session at the merch table over, it was time for part two. With a tasty emerald green cutaway electric fiddle, with which he was clearly proud, a lingering and mournful Death And The Lady had him channeling Jean-Luc Ponty for this splendid dirge. Switching back to his amplified wooden fiddle, Knight now sat for Bonnie Birdie, an Irish set dance tune, learnt from the pubs of North London when he was a callow youth, fresh from the Royal Academy Of Music. Music was there played sat down and with ample liquid supplies, cue slurp, and this is how he played it, the guitar and percussion adding distinctly un-Hibernian lustre.
Louisiana Flack is rightly the band’s party piece, involving as-tight-as-this dexterity between Knight and Flack, with, at the same time as Knight is playing, Flack beating out a hammered dulcimer like effect, with two, possibly, chopsticks, on Knights strings, the two of them somehow managing to avoid each others fretwork. And, lest this seem a mere triumph of style over substance, Knight lets Flack play a middle section without his bowing, showing that this is so much more than visual spectacle. Trochet isn’t idle, either, maintaining a fervent barrage of rhythmic clatter.
But that isn’t any reason to stop now, this show still far from spent. Sharp Goes Walkabout, as in Cecil Sharp and Australia is another tune sans frontières, The week Before Easter a powerful ballad and Urban’s Reel, which, um, reels from Floydy guitar, through a percussion solo that could have come direct from Santana at Woodstock and ends up a weird psychedelic variant of the Hot Club de Paris. Beat that for eclecticism! Well, they did, sort of, eschewing any stage exit, for a roof lifting King Of The Fairies, encapsulating all and every the varied influences and ideas that reference this consummate group of musicians. (My fingers started typing magicians, and, you know, they weren’t wrong!) Two hours of exceptional music and home by 10. Grand!
Oh, and gigspanner? It’s a bottle opener, and you can now get bespoke Gigspanner gigspanners, dontcha know. A special price tonight, at £10 a pop from the merch table!
The video below isn’t new, but captures the MO of the trio and gives a good idea of what you get:
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Categories: Live Reviews
Always fresh, exciting, masterful musicianship and standing ovations well deserved whether Peter Knight is taking tunes for an improvised walk as a duo with John Spiers (Bellowhead) or giving traditional tunes a contemporary makeover as Gigspanner trio with Roger Flack and Sasha Trochet or exploring new tunes and re-interpretating the well-known with Gigspanner Big Band (sextet or hexad?) with the above plus Phil Henry and Hannah Martin (Edgelarks) or even with the wider addition of spoken word with best selling author Raynor Winn.
Magical, innovative, inspiring, compelling, intelligent music of the highest order. And with a feel good factor.