Notwithstanding the competition from Newcastle Herring Gutters Festival, just down the road, this year's Celtic Fusion festival, in Castlewellan, got off to a flying start, writes Siobhán Long.
A somewhat low-key line-up might have tempted some of the audience to leave their pacemakers on the mantelpiece, but once Eleanor McEvoy launched into her fiery set, accompanied by nothing more than her guitar, fiddle and glass-shattering vocal cords, we knew we were in for a fearsome night of music. McEvoy has hit more than her share of high notes with her last two CDs, Early Hours and Yola, and it showed: quietly confident and enviably self-possessed, she lured reluctant stragglers tentwards as she cherry-picked from a catalogue that spans Chuck Berry (Memphis Tennessee), Eleanor McEvoy (Easy In Love, Driving Home From Butler's) and, er, Eleanor McEvoy (A Woman's Heart, etc). A lone performer plying a singular trade with considerable élan.
From the lonesome six strings of McEvoy's guitar to the rabid incursions of all five members of Lúnasa, gaps were bridged, pelvic girdles challenged and tunes allowed to collide in mid-air, where they shattered into a million crystalline pieces, translating traditional music into a currency everyone could trade in. Somehow Kevin Crawford, Seán Smyth and company sail high into the ether with every live performance. Taking their fuel largely from their most recent live CD, The Kinnity Sessions, they wove flute, low whistles, pipes, double bass and fiddle into all manner of exotic patterns, particularly during the Bulgarian-scented set Split Rock/Djinovsko Horo. Killian Vallely's pipes are increasingly occupying a backbone position, scaffolded by Trevor Hutchinson's double bass and Crawford's occasional percussive excursions on bodhrán.
After that we'd have figured on a slow-release sleeping pill, courtesy of Don McLean, a headliner who clearly couldn't believe his luck to be topping a bill in his 59th year. But, backed by a four-piece band, this was a man who had no plans for a cocoa-fuelled early night.
He hurtled through a rollicking set that included Buddy Holly's Everyday, Dylan's Masters Of War and a whole mess of his own material, from Vincent to that rarest of breeds the happy love song (And I Love You So) - and, of course, American Pie. The Mountains Of Mourne was an inevitability - and he caressed it lovingly, hammocked by a fieldful of backing singers.
And back he came for an extended encore, telling us that we made him feel 50 again - but really, it was the music that saved his mortal soul. August weekends don't come much more sublime than this one.
