Having seen Dansaul on a number of occasions over the past 5 years I was very much looking forward to seeing them. Unfortunately the counter attractions of "Shave the Monkey" in Cookley and "Show of Hands" in Worcester had a detrimental effect on the attendance which did detract from the atmosphere somewhat.

Dansaul are a 4 piece band comprising of Dan Plews, Saul Rose, Guy Fletcher and Mark Woolley and together they play a mixture of self penned material, contemporary material from the likes of Richard Thompson and traditional music. With such strong personalities as Dan and Saul you would expect high energy and entertainment and that is just what you get!

To be absolutely honest, I have to say that their first set, which started out with a couple of well crafted tunes (New Years Resolution and The Drummers Daughter) seemed strangely nervous to begin with but that soon disappeared as the evening progressed; each member of the band displaying a very high level of musicianship. Guy Fletcher’s violin always supportive without being intrusive and Mark Woolley driving the band forward on a considerable variety of percussion instruments. For me the highlight of the first half was Dan Plews’ song "Reason Behind The Rhyme". This was quite outstanding.

The second half began with the traditional "I Am A Youth Inclined To Ramble" a solo offering from Dan, demonstrating a very Nic Jones influenced style of guitar playing. The rest of the band then joined Dan on stage for the rest of the evening for a set that contained a large proportion of traditional material. It came as no surprise to hear that the band were huge fans of Nic Jones and this was ably demonstrated by their rendition of the classic "Canadi I O" and " 10,000 Miles"

All too soon the evening came to an end and Dan almost got away without breaking any strings. However, during the instrumental introduction of the encore "Dance All Night" the inevitable happened. We then had the delight of seeing Dan frantically replacing the string whilst Saul, Guy and Mark continued to "jam" tunes until he was ready!

Yes, I enjoyed Dansaul and look forward to seeing them again soon. Next time I really hope that they have CD’s for sale!