Bringing together traditional Scottish folk songs, bluegrass and Americana, Ragged Glory present an hour of curated folk for a more discerning Fringe audience.Situated in the West End, the Acoustic Music Centre, which operates out of St Bride’s Church, is well off the radar of most festival visitors. So too is traditional folk music, but fans of the folk revival will be delighted by Ragged Glory’s act.
Their hour-long set was a mix of Scottish coal-mining songs, travelling Americana and highway bluegrass tunes, punctuated by a couple of their own compositions. Ragged Glory, though clearly enthusiastic amateurs like their audience, are highly musically competent, performing gorgeous vocal harmonies and simple guitar melodies.
It’s on the older, more traditional songs that they come into their own – playing miner’s working songs that they ‘found’ on travels through north-east Scotland and the lowlands – though the carefully selected covers of Robert Plant and Ian Black tracks alongside Robbie Burns compositions sung fully in Scots are also highlights of the set.
It’s a pity that their songwriting does not match their musical ability; the couple of original songs they played were marked by clumsy lyrics and didn’t do justice to the technical aptitude on display elsewhere.
That was made up for by the homespun stories around the songs, and the sense that the members of Ragged Glory are more interested in music for its heritage and folklore rather than achieving artistic perfection. All in all, Ragged Glory present an informal set that exhibits some beautiful traditional folk – and fans of that genre will be rewarded for their diligence.
