Tiny Little Light is Mikey Kenney’s fourth studio album and if you’ve not heard him before you may be in for a big surprise. Mikey is a fiddle-singer (if that term is still in use) from Liverpool noted for his presentation of English and Irish fiddle music from the north-west. The songs are all original and Mikey plays most of the instruments you hear. Cello is provided by Awen Blandford and Beth Porter with Nick Branton adding clarinet to a couple of tracks and John Ellis playing piano on two more including the instrumental, ‘Oh Duet’. There is a remarkable trombone solo by Biff Roxby on the title track.
The songs are mostly reflections on incidents in Mikey’s life retold in music and song. One, ‘A Cornish Journey’, is no more than a passing thought coming in at one minute but that isn’t typical. The opener, ‘Scarecrow Festival’, will strike a chord with any country boy or anyone who has ever been to a rural festival. The images he portrays are redolent of a past time. ‘The Doing Of The Bee’ is a meditation on the fragile balance of the world in just eight lines.
‘On A Blue Day’ is about Mikey’s captivation with music, particularly the old fiddle tunes that he enjoys so much. while ‘Dandelion’ is a love song cast as a study of the humble flower. ‘Desperate Anthem’ is about his distaste for the modern world; “I’m a man who likes to put a pen to a page” he sings while immediately appreciating instantaneous electronic communication. One again, though, he turns to the old music he plays. ‘Wavertree, Shake-A-Bush’ is the second instrumental, starting with traditional-sounding fiddle and drum and building to a climax.
The final two tracks, ‘Tiny Little Light’ and the lengthy closer, ‘The Dish And The Drain’, seem to fit well together although they are very different songs. The former is about standing up to everything life throws at you and the latter is autobiographical incorporating four memories and a contemporary observation profound in its mundaneness.
Mikey has a very flexible voice, not conventionally attractive and reminding me a bit of Jim Eldon, but he never forgets that he’s a fiddle-player at heart so sometimes the songs act as a foundation for the instrumental work. You’ll understand when you hear it.
Dai Jeffries
Artist’s website: https://mikeykenney.co.uk/
‘Dandelion’ – official video:
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