Roaming Roots Revue Celtic Connections Review
Roaming Roots Revue
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Celtic Connections Festival
Reviewed by Lorna Templeton
A much-loved fixture of the Glasgow music scene for many years, Celtic Connections remains a piece of scheduling genius. Every year it rolls into town in the middle of January, at precisely the moment when post-Christmas blues and the associated cabin fever tend to reach their peak.
With more than 300 events on this year’s bill, encompassing a wide variety of music, there’s something to get everyone out the house and into an entirely more pleasant headspace.
A celebration of folk, roots and world music, the festival prides itself on offering up one-night-only combinations and collaborations between performers who you’d otherwise struggle to find in the same country, never mind the same room.
Roaming Roots Revue, held at the Royal Concert Hall on Sunday 19 January, was a brilliantly well executed example of this trait. Hosted by Glaswegian singer-songwriter Roddy Hart and his band Lonesome Fire, the night brought together talent from across the UK and United States to revisit classics from the Laurel Canyon counterculture rock scene in the 1960s and 70s.
As well as these more familiar numbers, the acts also performed self-penned songs that draw on the Laurel Canyon greats for influence. Dawes, Lindi Ortega and young Scot Siobhan Wilson all went down a storm, the latter’s take on Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You the undoubted highlight of the night. As Hart himself put it, “If your goosebumps don’t have goosebumps, there’s maybe something wrong with you.”
Fast-paced, beautifully random and a real diverse feast of talent. The night ends with everyone on stage for California Dreaming, a lovely piece of escapism before we head back out into the cold and rain.
Rating: 5/5 
For more information or to book tickets for Celtic Connections show visit www.celticconnections.com.
