Luke Daniels and The Cobhers – Luke Daniels and The Cobhers

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Everything on this collection from Luke Daniels and The Cobhers is attacked with such life-affirming urgency… These are songs that have cut across the eras, the sub-cultures and age restrictions, and now, they are hoping to knock down genre fences as well.

Should any of you be unsure, Cobhers is pronounced ‘covers’ and the song title ‘Staying Alive’ is indeed the classic Bee Gees disco anthem, which is covered here alongside other titles that have never so much as glanced at the word ‘folk.’ They are presented alongside progressive interpretations of traditional material and a sprinkling of Luke Daniels‘ original compositions. This project is part of a clear, focused, planned and executed initiative by Daniels, acclaimed melodeon player, folk guitarist and all-round folk music font, designed to snatch and grab the attention of a wider listenership and cunningly steer them to folk and acoustic music. By punctuating this set with popular classics, the Cobhers are going for the jugular, interpreting songs absolutely worthy of the claim “known by everyone, young and old”, thanks to their ubiquitous plays at weddings, parties and wherever folk gather in social harmony, driven by a DJ playing the floor fillers. These are songs that have cut across the eras, the sub-cultures and age restrictions, and now, they are hoping to knock down genre fences as well.

The seed of the idea lies in Luke Daniels’s desire to push folk and traditional music toward new audiences. He has plenty of experience, particularly in the live arena and knows all too well the effect a popular song, which also happens to be danceable, can have on a crowd. Once you have their attention, a crowd are much more likely to be receptive when you hit them with a new song or a piece of music outside their usual tastes. Now I accept there are those who believe that folk music should not have to tout itself in this manner, that there is enough meat on the bone of the whole culture and history of the music for explorative minds to come to it eventually, but I fear that does not always happen. I have reviewed albums here on Folk Radio that deserved a wider, mainstream audience and allowed frustration at the unlikelihood of that to seep into the text. Sometimes, just as cricket is doing with The Hundred (and I like that too), you have to reel people into things they had not previously considered. Some will drift away again, but for others, this opens the door to walk through and immerse themselves in the deeper, hardcore stuff; that is where this new album comes in.

The record begins with that Bee Gees track, played as a pumping melodeon-driven instrumental, an irresistible pop boiler. The way Daniels playing sails into those Gibb melodies really emphasises what fine composers they were underneath the Disco sheen. Dee-Lite’s dance classic ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ retains the backbone groove while sweeping violin recalls the distinctive whoops of the original, unfolding into a pure fiddly-diddly delight. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ features electric keys as a familiar reference point, but again those hypnotic melodeon and fiddle combinations take the piece in exciting new directions; folk-funk indeed. And talking of fusion, the Cobhers also uncover the previously undiscovered Ceilidh heartbeat within the Average White Band’s big soul instrumental hit ‘Pick Up The Pieces.’

Interspersed among these front-page headline grabbers are jubilant mash-ups of hand-picked jigs and reels such as ‘Kinny Cally Hill,’ which knits together two pieces learned from a live clip of Derick Hickey and then concludes on a bright, breezy tune by the fiddler Tommy Peoples. There is a brace of Luke Daniels compositions from the early days of the pandemic; ‘Some Will Fall’ is self-explanatory, while the tasty ‘Not In The Yeast’ was inspired by the home bread baking trend that became popular in 2020. Throughout the album, the panoramic feelgood factor is unrelenting; the penultimate set, a flight into some jigs named after the Irish tune ‘Doodly Doodly Dank’, before we end on a bouncy Syrian composition used to show an instrumentalist’s dexterity. In fact, everything on this collection is attacked with such life-affirming urgency that one can only conclude that staying alive is exactly what this whole joyous affair is about. I sincerely hope that Luke Daniels’s ambitions for the project are realised; music such as this can stimulate both the ears and the feet in large, celebratory and emphatic numbers.

Luke Daniels and The Cobhers are our Artists of the Month for September; keep an eye out for our upcoming interview.

Pre-Order Luke Daniels and The Cobhers via Bandcamp: https://lukedanielsthecobhers.bandcamp.com/album/luke-daniels-the-cobhers

Luke Daniels and The Cobhers are:

Luke Daniels – melodeon, guitar and vocals
Matt Tighe – fiddle
Eleanor Dunsdon – clasarch
Scott Turnbull – guitar
Michael Biggins – piano

Their next live show is at Costa Del Folk in 4-8 October.

More here:

https://www.lukedanielsmusic.com/