The Carrivick Sisters at Turners Hill House Concerts
jelawebb@gmail.com
Posted On February 3, 2016
Twins Charlotte and Laura Carrivick made their third visit to this delightful house concerts series and in the process treated the audience to a selection of original material and a few well-chosen cover songs. The sisters grew up in Devon and much of their original material draws inspiration from the West Country landscape, its inhabitants and stories passed down the family line. They have a wonderful ability to fuse the traditional with the contemporary and combine folk and bluegrass genres so very well.
The accolades these young siblings have received from much more experienced musicians (Ralph McTell describing them as ‘one of the best young duos I’ve ever heard’), are well-deserved and although they are only in their 20’s they’ve released a handful of albums and won awards. Both are multi-instrumentalists and tonight showed off their musical dexterity by variously employing guitars, clawhammer banjo, mandolin, fiddle and dobro.
The beauty of a house concert setting is the intimacy between performer and audience – they seemed right at home playing here and peppered the set list with stories about the songs as well as chiding each other from time to time.
Highlights included their interpretation of the traditional ‘Darling Corey’ with Laura playing accompaniment on the dobro and ‘Lazy John’ featuring Charlotte on mandolin.
In keeping with the relaxed atmosphere, they played the amusing ‘If You Asked Me’ explaining that it was a riposte to the situations in which lovers declare that they would do anything for each other. ‘Over the Edge’ is based on a true story of when a family relative and some friends set fire to some scaffolding that was on a building development they objected to! Some darker material included the tale of the ghostly ‘Lady Howard’ and there was a surprise – a cover of James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James’.
Their crystal clear harmonies and their musicianship are testament to their prodigious talent; they have already garnered much in the way of accolades and I have no doubt that there will be more to come!
Returning for a final encore they asked the audience to join in on ‘Today Is A Good Day’ – I couldn’t have summed it up better myself!
