CityLife

The Bad Shepherds

FOLK REVELATION: The Bad Shepherds

“AND you thought you didn’t like folk music,” states comedian and musician Adrian Edmondson after the crowd have lapped up several of his and his band's interpretations of punk classics filtered through the medium of folk.

Despite the hybrid recordings of recent years where the likes of Nouvelle Vague took punk and made it bossa nova and Hayseed Dixie have given the banjo treatment to heavy metal, at the top of the show you’re still wondering just how The Bad Shepherds are going to pull this one off – the answer is beautifully.

When Edmondson took part in Comic Relief Does Fame Academy a few years back it gave the first inkling of what a beguiling front man he would make.

In 2007 he joined Phill Jupitus in guest fronting an original line up of the legendary Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band - replacing their late flamboyant front man Vivian Stanshall.

Then last year he formed the Bad Shepherds to head out on the road and do his own thing.

Though there’s plenty of Edmondson’s charisma on show in the outfit, the other three members of the band Andy Dinan, Martin Allcock and Troy Donockley are all superlative musicians in their respective fields.

Thrash

Meanwhile Edmondson also plays ‘thrash’ mandolin, which gives up a string after only two song’s worth of abuse.   

They kick off with I Fought The Law, there’s a euphoric version of PiL’s Rise and an atmospheric Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.

Their rendition of Squeeze’s Up The Junction is incredibly moving plus there’s a cheeky interpretation of Kraftwerk’s down beat The Model so re-jigged that’s only recognisable when the lyrics kick in.

From The Sex Pistols stable there’s God Save the Queen and to even up the balance a folk classic is given the punk treatment – we won’t spoil it and tell you which one.

Interspersed are Edmondson’s witticisms including his reworking of passages from the bible – the logic being if Christ is the Good Shepherd leading his sheep and they are the Bad Shepherds who have lost theirs (‘Do you see any sheep?’ Cries Edmondson. ‘That’s how bad shepherds we are.’) then they are the-anti Christ.

Well we know which one we’d rather follow…