If there’s one thing that separates folk club performers from, say, jazz, rock or classical is their sheer conviviality. There are no posturing and preening self-appointed genius-heroes of the guitar; no two-hour god-bothering saxophone prayers to the infinite; no baton-waving tuxedoed and imperious conductors guiding watch-glancing orchestras through four nights of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. No... folk club performers are, in the main, people you would delight to have in your kitchen – they’re good fun!

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And I certainly would delight in having Kit Hawes and Aaron Catlow in my kitchen, for their sheer good natured and warm banter would make for a lovely afternoon or evening. Even my dog, given Kit and Aaron’s names, would flip his ears up in misguided anticipation of something to chase.

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And this warmth was a fine setting for beautiful music.

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If I casually toss around the notion of musical ‘arrangement’, I might think, oh, a bit of A minor here, then put a quiet bit of D major seventh in, then thrash out four bars of G major to finish. Nothing so crude with Kit and Aaron. To say their music is ‘arranged’ - in that fashion - would be criminal. I think ‘composed’ would be a better description. Tightly structured with the aural acuity of the finest composers, the guitar and fiddle danced with each other in my musical synapses, they embraced, they wrapped around one another, they lifted into the air and flew like swallows in flight, agile, gravity defying and full of life. So well-conceived and played were the compositions that you could hear right into the workings of the music so transparent was it.

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