The Shires - Bringing new Country music to the Rivertown Festival

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A touch of The Shires

The Shires **** have been one of the acts leading the country music surge in the UK for the past few years along with The Wandering Hearts, Ward Thomas, Wildwood Kin and more.  In fact the scene has been having such a resurgence that Bristol now has it’s own Americana/ Country Music festival in Rivertown, which throughout the month or so it runs for also has The Mavericks and Keifer Sutherland headlining their own events.

St Georges itself, the first time we have visited, is a cross between a church and a theatre space, seemingly welcoming many acts and theatrical performance while going back to a higher purpose on Sunday mornings. This does give a space with great acoustics though for such an act and creates a welcoming space, despite the fact that upstairs at least where we are the air temperature seems to be similar to that on the inside of an oven.

This is a very stripped back set all very acoustic based again suiting the surroundings, though both of the lead members of the Shires, Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes, although they could have both been in very different places both having been failed X Factor constants in the early part of the decade. I think it has probably worked out well for them in the end though. They open with title track of their second album ‘My Universe’ and from the start they have crowd captivated with their melodies.

They pay homage to other acts with a couple of stand out covers including a slight reworking of ‘Young hearts run Free’ and a version of ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac’ where they ditched the mics and did it on their own at the front of the stage. Of course many of their own songs stood out too, in particular ‘Daddy’s little Girl’ in which Chrissie sings of the loss of her dad when she was young, as recognised by Ben an emotionally strong thing to choose to do night on night in front of a room full of strangers.

‘Other peoples Things’ about how to you it is all important but to everybody else your belongings is just stuff was interesting. Final track of the set everybody was literally on their feet and reaching for the skies for ‘A thousand Hallelujahs’, perhaps fitting for the sometime church that we found ourselves in, the venue certainly added to the occasion and gave it a different feel from a normal gig. Maybe it’s a bit much to call it a spiritual experience but certainly one to be remembered and revered.

Check Out! the Video for 'Daddy's little Girl' Below...