3 Daft Monkeys at Bideford Palladium – February 2011

Too many bands end concerts by asking people to dance because their music clearly hadn’t got them going enough to shed their inhibitions. Not so with 3 Daft Monkeys at The Palladium. If you measure a good gig by how many people got stuck in and really danced the night away, then this was a belter!

The Club was heaving, the gig having sold out well in advance and the crowd revelled in a fabulous mix of so much more than just folk music. 3 Daft Monkeys have been called many things - latino, gypsy, dance, traditional folk, celtic roots - but what really counted was the infectious joy in everything they played.

3 Daft Moneys make a lot of noise for just a 12 string guitar, a bass, a fiddle and a kick drum and it was the perfect mix to get the whole place up and dancing along.

Guitarist Tim Ashton kept things bubbling along nicely between songs whilst Athene’s brilliant fiddle playing lifted everything again and again.

Their new album, The Antiquated and the Arcane, apparently a homage to Helston’s pagan society but then that’s folk music for you, featured strongly on the night but with such a large back catalogue to draw on, there were plenty of old favourites too.

We even got a history lesson in the intro to “Days of the Dance”, set in Strasbourg in 1518 and telling the story of a woman who started dancing in the streets and couldn’t stop. A bit like the crowd really.

It always helps when the support band get the crowd nicely warmed up and The Chloe Bix Band did just that with a fine set that, bizarrely, was being filmed by her tutor as part of a degree assignment. Well that’ll be a first then!