James Yorkston / The Pictish Trail / Seamus Fogarty

The Pleasance in March is a very different beast to the Pleasance in August when the Fringe Festival takes over and you cannot turn a corner without bumping in to the likes of Paul Daniels, the Hamiltons or Gyles bloody Brandreth. Thankfully none of them were present to witness a fine set of laid-back tunes on offer under the umbrella of ‘The Pleasance Sessions presents’.
James Yorkston, The Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch) and the relatively unknown Seamus Fogarty took to the stage together and gave the audience a couple of hours of well-crafted, beautifully played tunes. There was no real order to the night with each singer taking random turns to play one of their own songs or accompany each other on backing vocals; the personal highlight for me being Yorkston playing a lovely version of ‘Tortoise Regrets Hare’.
There was an obvious rapport between all three built up while the they toured the UK and Ireland together in late 2013, but particularly between Johnny Lynch and Yorkston, who have played together many times. Their on stage chat included the qualities of Gary Barlow as a songwriter versus Robbie Williams’ showmanship and the non-removal of James’ cardigan. They also performed an acoustic version of Erasure’s 1980’s hit ‘Respect’, which might have lost the disco beats of the original but thankfully kept its emotion and tenderness as well as its wonderful campness.
Lynch was clearly enjoying the night, sharing banter with the audience with topics ranging from his headgear (nice woolly beanie) to why his songs are good enough for Mumford and Sons to cover to the name for the new Scottish currency should be: the winning suggestion being “a London cu*t”, which might just catch on if the Yes vote wins in September.
Seamus Fogarty was a newcomer to most and sang songs about mountains stealing t-shirts and told stories of his time working on a building site in Chicago. Signed to Lynch’s Lost Maps label his newly re-released album ‘God Damn You Mountain’ is well worth checking out.