The hospitable Sharon & Arnie Loughrin began to open their home, in rural Co. Tyrone in Northern Ireland, for bluegrass house concerts several years ago. Since then, the venture has grown to become a well known and popular venue for roots music, particularly featuring bands from the USA, and is a ‘home from home’ for many of them. Arnie’s versatility and hard work has resulted in the building of a spectacular venue in the form of a rustic red brick barn which seats 80, complete with an open turf fire, decorated with quirky farm implements and found objects, and completed with Sharon’s famed quilts. And so, it was a pleasure for Lonesome Highway to return to the Red Room for the much anticipated first Irish tour of the Caleb & Reeb Country Band with their full line up. It’s expensive to put a big band like this on the road, especially when they have to travel from the US, so hats off to promoter Uri Kohen for pulling it all together. Principal songwriter and co-band leader Caleb Klauder is, of course, very familiar to Irish audiences, having first visited here over twenty years ago with his then fledgling Foghorn String Band. It feels like he has returned every year since then, either with various iterations of the Foghorns, or with his partner Reeb Willms. Americana and bluegrass bassist and producer, Nashville based Mike Bub was on his first visit to the lovely Red Room. They were also joined by Louisiana music royalty in the form of fiddler Joel Savoy, from the famous Savoy Family Band. On snare drum was Michael Carroll from California, and the line up was completed by Portland, Oregon’s Rusty Blake on his Sho-Bud pedal steel and Telecaster.
The very tight band (all real pros but also all very familiar with each other) put on a dream of a show with a selection of old fashioned country songs, many penned by Caleb, but all sounding like they could have originated from any part of the last century. As well as being an all round great human being, Caleb is proficient on mandolin and acoustic guitar and is a very prolific songwriter. In the first half of the show we were treated to new songs like Too Far Gone and Gold In Your Pocket, whetting our appetite for the imminent new record. Reeb Willms took lead vocals and guitar for her own compositions, the lovely cowgirl song High Desert Plain and another Western themed one, The Montana Cowboy. They launched into duets on two Buck Owens numbers, the deliciously slow It Don’t Show On Me and then There Goes My Love. Caleb gave us the moving background to the recent passing of his ‘second father’, Duff, and sang the affectionate tribute to him that he has recorded for the next album. He’s Gone Where He’s Never Been Before refers to Duff as ‘a legend that needed no folklore’. Reeb and Caleb’s voices meld together beautifully for a cover of the George Jones & Melba Montgomery hit Please Be My Love, and after another of Caleb’s timeless love songs, Can I Go Home With You, we all take a break for the obligatory tea and buns and chat in the kitchen.
Herded back to the barn by the clang of Arnie’s bell, we were treated to another equally fun set for the second half. Highlights included Reeb’s rendition of the gentle, slow, romantic, cowboy ballad The Faraway Skies, which they dedicated to the much missed Brian Crawford, a friend to all in bluegrass and a fixture at The Red Room. Mike Bub stepped up to the mic with his bass and went down a bomb with his rendition of Jimmy Martin’s I Got My Future On Ice. Rusty Knox treated us to his pedal steel instrumental Freckles, which allowed room for a fiddle break from Joel Savoy. There were more new songs from Caleb, including the fiddle-led Chained By Desire, Shame Shame Shame and the duet Sad Songs. The encore started with Caleb’s solo cover of Norman Blake’s Billy Gray, then eager audience participation in the a capella Surrounded By Love, and finally another new Louisiana-influenced dance song, New Shoes.
It was just a pity there wasn’t room to dance … that’s Arnie’s next project?
Review and photogrphy by Eilís Boland