In his introduction, El Supremo, Tony K, clearly chuffed that he had managed to secure Bruce Molsky for our wee village let us in on the challenges of delivering top flight talent to Crail... 'it's the agents, they think we're in the middle of nowhere'. It reminded me of the old TV advert for Miller Beer where an American, wearing an elaborate fur hat with a tail, walks up to the camera in front of some Scottish scenery and says 'when I told the folks back home, I was going to Ack-ter-mach-tee, they said wear the fox hat'. I checked - and you can too in Peter's photos - Bruce Molsky's hat, a groovy red and black number was completely fox-free. Crail 1 Auchtermuchty nil! 

Bruce, a charming and interesting house guest sings, has two fiddles, a banjo and a guitar. I hadn't heard anyone singing whilst playing the fiddle before so that was a first for me.

He primarily performs old-time music of the Appalachian region and truly transports you there, we were lifted from a Baltic night in Crail to a campfire in the Appalachian Mountains, sipping from a jug, slapping a thigh in time with expertly executed bluesy, bluegrassy ragtime-y spirit lifters.

But that's not all, for Bruce offers the listener a lens on a world of music, he's travelled and he's played with some of the greats of world music!

It's hard to pick out highlights from the evening, everything was good, but here goes.

'Bye Bye Baby Blues', a 1930 blues tune by Little Hat Jones. And demonstrating the transportive vibe of the evening, Little Hat was born in 1899 on a farm near the Sulphur River in Bowie County, Texas - we're not in Crail any more folks.

'Fare Thee Well Blues' by Mississippi Joe Callicott had fine syncopated ragtime finger picking.

But now ... to Sweden and Shetland. 'Hjalta Dance' - a collection of tune elements from the isle of Fetlar in Shetland rescued and assembled by Swedish music maestro Ale Möller. Bruce has played with Ale - he tells us that 'Hjalta Dance' is the 'Dance of the Limping Trolls'... and, amusingly ... 'that's your visual'. And linked is 'Hunter’s Grove', fiddler Garry Harrison’s interpretation of a Breton dance.