By David O’Neill
Since COVID, the Steelhouse aficionados have been treated to a revisiting of the annual festival to reminisce on the successes of the annual sojourn up the mountain and also pre-announce some of the following year’s festival. This year was no exception. However, it had already been announced that following the early passing of the Steelhouse legend Bernie Marsden, that the Friday would be respectfully called Berniefest.
Max Rhead introduced The Karma Effect with the teaser of the announcement coming later in the evening. Whilst Skin/Hand of Dimes (HoD) vocalist Nev MacDonald and FMs guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick had already been announced everyone was eager to hear the rest of the Friday lineup. However, there was the matter of one or two bands prior to this. The Karma Effect surprised everyone at Steelhouse and I even thought they had a bit of Hand of Dimes about their musical style, albeit Henry Gotellier doesn’t quite have the grit that Nev has (although I’m sure it will come). To look at he has the same styling as Cormac Neeson from the Answer too.
Kicking things off with the bluesey laid back riffage from ‘Wrong Again’ (and there is the similarity to HoD straight off the bat), the sound of the Hammond-esque settings on the keyboard of Seb Emmins and the jazzy funky guitar riff helps to cement the sound and was well received by the crowd. The only thing missing was the female backing vocals off the album track, but its still a good track. The band were obviously enjoying the show as much as the crowd with Henry’s smile getting broader with every track. Stylistically, I didn’t see them going wrong in the Steelhouse homies setting. So it continued through the remainder of the set: these guys are as tight as a rusted wheelnut on a 1965 Massey Ferguson tractor and ‘Testify’, a real blues belter, closed out the set to rapturous applause and cheers.
Next up was Dan Byrne, a young man (introduced by Mikey Evans) who has been making an impression with his powerhouse vocals since he first hit the South Wales scene with the now sadly demised Revival Black. However, he has sung for Myke Gray (ex Skin) and has recently launched a solo career and new EP. Opening up with ‘Take You Out (from ‘Under The Light‘, the last Revival Black album) the diminutive figure pranced and prowled around the stage climbing on and off the stage risers. The backing band were no slouches either, the lead guitar swapped between both on stage and the drummer gave as good as the rest even though he was stuck away in the depths of the dark back stage.
‘Like Animals’ boomed across the stage before Dan hit his full vocal power, but the musicality of the “scratch” backing band was not lost on me, guitars drums and bass all helped deliver the power of the recorded track. The introduction of new music into an established artists set can be met with one of two reactions-dislike or rapturous reception, the latter is what happened to ‘Hard To Breathe’ and it really demonstrated the vocal range and power of Dan.
Another Revival Black track was next up to check if we’re ‘Wide Awake’, and Hemispheres opened with Dan on acoustic guitar gently lilting through the opening verse before the rest of the band started to support the track with increasing depth and power but succeeding in not overpowering the vocal performance. The guitar solo after the second verse is haunting and emotive but the crescendo at the breakdown was brilliantly played by all. Closing out with ‘Death Of Me’ from the EP was a great ending to a very well performed and supported set.
At the end of this set both Max Rhead and Mikey Evans came on stage so the crowd knew that an announcement was about to happen regarding the Friday of Berniefest. Damn me what an announcement it was too! Apart from Nev and Jim and whoever else is involved in the BM Allstar band (most of us have a good idea who that’s gonna be), we now have the addition of the opening act of Zac Schulze Gang from Gillingham, a seriously talented blues guitarist, Oli Brown and the Dead Collective, Elles Bailey and the larger than life Alan Nimmo and King King. This was seriously well received by all present, (and yours truly is very happy too!) Anyway back to the evenings entertainment.
Coming on at 9pm was the superb slide guitar demonstration of Troy Redfern. Whilst he has a good voice that suits the genre he is performing in it was a bit unfortunate that this was a bit lost in the mix throughout the set and I listened from stage front to back and both sides to see if it was a positional thing, unfortunately it wasn’t. Nevertheless, his guitar playing came through all over the set in absolute spades from the speedy upbeat ‘All Night Long’, ‘Sweet Carolina’ to the latest release, ‘Getaway’, and everything in between. Finishing off with ‘Sanctify’ was a real in your ears slide guitar fest. Anyway the crowd enjoyed it even if the mix was off, which was a shame. Again, he was well supported on bass and drums but I didn’t hear him introduce them (or I missed it more likely).
Last up (and with a few different personnel than at Steelhouse in August), was Rhiannon Hill aka Kira Mac and the now four piece band still including Bret Barnes on bass and Joe Worral on guitar with a new drummer (and absent Max Rhead and Alex Nowakovic). The crowd had swollen to quite a large one, obviously ready for the display of power rock that we all had at Steelhouse this year (and last!). Rattling through the first four tracks – ‘Save Your Whiskey’, ‘Dead Man Walking’ and ‘Chaos Is Calling’ saw me almost lose count in the pit – with ‘Play The Game’ (a new track) and ‘No Way Out’ (another new track) it was a hell of an opening.
So what do you do next? Oh I know, the latest single, ‘Scorned’. OK, after three new tracks you have to go back to ‘Hit Me Again’ and get the crowd to join in on ‘Hellfire and Holy Water’. This was just getting better and better. A little lighter interlude was delivered in ‘Never Gonna Stay’ before my favourite track (currently), ‘Mississippi Burning’.
The last four tracks were expertly delivered but if you want a crowd to join in you have to have a great hook and that is no more readily visible than on ‘One Way Ticket’. Altogether a very solid headline set delivered by a band on the up and up.
- Kira Mac tours in the Spring:
- Steelhouse 2024 takes place at its usual home of Hafod Y Dafal, outside Ebbw Vale, over the weekend of 26-28 July.
- PHOTO CREDIT: All photos © Bandtogs/Über Rock. You can view our full gallery of photographs HERE.
- All content © Über Rock. Not to be reproduced in part or in whole without the express written permission of Über Rock.