Salut! Live

There was a dancer on stage for two of the songs in the set, but sadly I didn’t catch her name.

The pieces from Coming Home were the main focus of the evening. They are profoundly personal pieces.

The combination of the work itself, and Cara Dillon’s introduction to each of them, meant that she was conjuring for us quite intimate stories about her family and her background and upbringing in County Derry.

So Giving, for example, is about her mother’s habit of pressing small gifts—often freshly baked—on visitors as they were leaving; Coming Home, in counterpoint, is about homesickness and about her father, who has been dead for 20 years.

I’m not going to run through the whole set, but there are songs in here that are very distinctively about her Irish heritage, in different ways. Carrageen Moss is about the ancient traditions of herbs and healing.

Another, Inishowen, is a piece from her childhood, about going on holiday from their village in the Six Counties to Donegal, across the heavily fortified border checkpoint.

Leaving behind the the tangle of barbed wire

For a tangle of yellow gorse.

Most of these songs start quietly, and then build into a song.

The set also included some songs from earlier records — she opened part one with The Water Is Wide, and part two with Blackwaterside. Sam Lakeman introduced this by saying that Cara Dillon had long resisted singing the song because she thought it was the province of “the great folksingers”, but that he persuaded her eventually, in her early 40s, that she could probably stand company with them by now.

Lakeman and Dillon work well together on stage and are clearly just comfortable in each other’s company. She tells the stories, and leaves the business announcements to him, as he reminds people of the merch outside.

The gig was just before Mother’s Day, and he lets us know that there are tea towels for sale as well as CDs, although I’m not sure how many mothers would have thanked you for that. And a note to the man who chose that moment to say something about the tea towels from one of the front rows: you’re always going to lose that exchange.

Although Cara Dillon introduced the band, it was down to Sam to let us know that the bass player, Edwin Ireland, had literally met them for the very first time at 1.30 that afternoon. He played spotlessly.

But the look on her face as Sam cut in to do this told you that she was expecting yet another merch reminder.

The songs on Coming Home are interesting and personal. All the same, I think I’d have liked to have heard a bit more of her other repertoire. Cara Dillon has a fantastic voice, with a big range and a lot of power. Much as I enjoyed these quiet everyday stories, I’d have happily swapped out one or two of them for some songs that showcased her voice, especially in the second half of the show.

After the band had done a final number, Cara and Sam come back together for one last encore. It was the traditional Scots’ song, The Parting Glass. “We always finish with this”, she explained.

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More on Irish music:

See: Our St Patrick’s Day playlist

And: our readers’ guide to the best Irish songs and musicians