BAP KENNEDY – Above All, Love (Lonely Street Discs LSD1910)

The older brother of Brian Kennedy, born in Belfast as Martin Christopher Kennedy, Bap first found fame as frontman with Energy Orchard before embarking on a solo career, his debut album being produced by Steve Earle, working with, among others Mark Knopfler, Shane MacGowan and Van Morrison. Shortly after diagnosis, he died of pancreatic and bowel cancer in 2016. Now, ten years on, working with producer Rod McVey and adding some occasional embellishments, his widow Brenda has put together Above All, Love. an album of ten previously unreleased songs he’d recorded as demos across the years, as opposed to an unfinished album, paying testament to his voice, musicianship and the musical genres he embraced.

The title track opens proceedings, a strummed, piano accompanied barroom swayer that, as she says, serves as a salvational mission statement (“Love only love/Nothing else is above/It brings peace to your heart and your mind/As you walk on down the years/Through this valley of tears/Love will find you in its own sweet time”) and, while the last song written before his diagnosis comes with the prescient lyric “It’s a long long road/And I’m ready to go/But something is holding me up”.

While of a similar lyrical persuasion (“When I see you on the street/My poor heart it just skips a beat/Don’t you know you ring my bell?/I’m like a dog in kitten hell/Come on, baby, won’t you throw me a bone?/And I promise not to wreck your home”), ‘Don’t Be Like That’ rings the changes with a brass embellished jazzy swing. It’s back Then to a country sway with Brenda co-write ‘Old Majestic Moon’ (“Once my heart was broken/I gave my love too soon/But love is always hoping/Neath that old majestic moon”) keeping the mood country for another lunar title, the spare strummed lonesome Hank Williams vibe of ‘Red Moon’ with its pedal steel and gospel cooing backing vocals, sketching out a story of having to carry the world and the family legacy on your shoulders (“Joe took that plane and was gone/And it came down to me to carry on/Now everybody can see/That my daddy has big plans for me…And in this big house I’d pretend/That I was a man among men… Well now Joe how I wish you, you were here/You always knew what to do you had no fear/I used to walk behind you on the street/But now the world is at my feet”). Referenced in the lyrics, Hank’s spirit also hovers over the dobro-laced, finger-snapping ‘Going Back To Nashville’, his vocals taking on a slight Dylan shade to complement the music’s bluesy lope

There’s a ‘Nashville Skyline’ air also to the slow, piano-backed., organ-swirling, relationship-failing ‘ It’s Just A Game’, (“You don’t love me anymore/It’s plain to see/I’m living in the lap of misery”) ‘another co-write with Brenda, while keeping things at a slow tempo with pedal steel and harmonica weeping the notes, ‘Silent Sea’ casts a cloud of defeatist resignation over proceedings (“The old west is lost/Every frontier gone/What will they remember/ If they remember us at all?”) as he asks “Who will give their life/For the greatest show on earth?”. I may be wrong but the lines “Reaching ever higher/From a raging fire/To tranquillity/Into that silent sea” suggests it’s rooted in the NASA lunar missions.

There’s more country Dylan echoes to the tumbling chords, chiming steel and shuffling rhythm of the subtly sad ‘Sugar Love’ where a transactional relationship is better than no relationship at all (“I just want to find somebody/Who makes me feel alive”).

Etched in strummed guitar and piano with musical echoes of ‘Lay Lady Lay’ and Van Morrison soul, the penultimate ‘Something’s Working On Me’ is a quietly sad song of despair (“Too many dark nights of the soul/Waiting for the cavalry/Too many lost days on the road/There’s a place I need to be/I’m just trying to get back home/But there’s something in my way/Every time I try to go/Something leads me astray”).

He does, though, make it home on the final song, the jaunty, accordion and banjo breezing Celtic folk rock of the autobiographical ‘A’town’ (“London is a strange place/But I think I’ll stick around /See what happens baby/You know that I’m a chancer/Let them see what I can do”), where he speaks of paying off his guitar week by week, penned in response to his mother Lily’s request to write a song about their native Andersonstown, namechecking Belfast’s Castle Street, the track fading out with a clip from a voice mail she sent that ends with the words “talk to you later, son”.

Shortly before his death, he said that all he ever wanted was for people to feel what he felt, the magic of music. There’s spellbinding magic here.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.bapkennedy.com

One of  Bap’s last performances, recorded in 2016:

---

We all give our spare time to run folking.com. Our aim has always been to keep folking a free service for our visitors, artists, PR agencies and tour promoters. If you wish help out and donate something (running costs currently funded by Paul Miles), please click the PayPal link below to send us a small one off payment or a monthly contribution.

---