Ewen Carruthers at Bromborough Folk Club

John at Bromborough has a habit of providing acts still new to me that delight me with their performances Ewen Carruthers was one of these - I had absolutely no prior knowledge of either him or his material other than that he was from the North East but had moved out to the States some years ago.

Ewen turned out to be older than I'd pre-conceived, but nonetheless impressive for all that - in fact his mellowed out songs had a ring of experience that made them a pleasure to listen to - the product of a man that had been around a bit, but who wasn't frightened to write about what he had found and how he felt about it.

Opening with "In the Course of Bassano" - a World War One song, he soon got diverted from his intended set and was persuaded to re-discover some of his older songs, "Traveler" for example. Ewen played his guitar (he only needed one) with a seemingly easy style that managed to hide the amount of picking that must of been going on, and I later heard that his right hand had been operated on to relieve some problems. This makes his sound even more impressive, because you just can't see how he does it, because his fingers seem to cover each other as he plays. He moved on to "Little White Fluffy Clouds" and the fab ""Little Bit of Me", completing the first half with "Was it You?", a song about Scott of the Antarctic.

Part 2 kicked off with "Old Dog Blues" which contained the line "I don't do fetch, somebody pass me that ball" but got a bit more serious with his "On the Mission", "One More Story" and "The Marriage" which cover the American Goldrush, his first grandchild and a black and white dream.

By the time he'd finished is was so dark that my notes are now unreadable, but he'd done more than enough to sell his CD and book his place in our list of names to watch out for - hope he comes back soon.