Kris Drever

High and slightly ungainly having a seemingly laid-back method of both music and existence, Kris Drever seemed an improbable figure to become acclaimed in 2007 among the front-line fresh youthful heroes of Brit folk. However his gently calm singing, dexterous acoustic guitar accompaniments, and subtly inventive plans not only produced an instantaneous impression on his peers, they struck a chord with a fresh young audience looking for music of origins, substance, and identification. Yet, despite becoming the child of Ivan Drever (vocalist with folk-rockers Wolfstone) and becoming raised inside a folk music hotbed within the Scottish isle of Orkney, he in the beginning rejected everything and only the pungent metallic guitar noises of Pantera and Metallica. He was 13 when he began playing guitar, nonetheless it wasn’t until 1995 when — at age 17 — he remaining Orkney for Edinburgh and became embroiled in the flourishing weekly classes at Sandy Bell’s pub that he began to consider his music significantly. He also began playing banjo and dual bass in the Tron Ceilidh Home, and his flexibility and mastery of a number of designs — including jazz, trad, and rock and roll — produced him a favorite figure over the exploding Edinburgh program picture. He was shortly being asked to execute professionally with several Scots-based rings and music artists. During regular Fri night periods at Sandy Bell’s, he fulfilled Irish vocalist/flute/whistle participant Nuala Kennedy and Edinburgh fiddler Anna-Wendy Stevenson and produced the band Great Fri with them, blending traditional materials with music by contemporary authors like Boo Hewerdine and Steve Tilston. They toured European countries and Australia, documented two CDs jointly, Gone Dance (2002) and Mowing the Machair (2004), and had been nominated for Greatest New Band on the 2004 Scottish Folk Honours. With Kennedy, he also became a member of the acoustic group Harem Scarem (playing on the recording Allow Them Eat Fishcake, 2002) and continued to create a collaboration with another Harem Scarem bandmember and fellow Orcadian, fiddle player Sarah McFadyen, also an associate of pop strap Aberfeldy. Drever and McFadyen produced a duet recording, Sarah McFadyen & Kris Drever, and released their own every week Sunday evening music program in Edinburgh in the Royal Oak. Drever also caused the Battlefield Music group, Cathie Ryan, John McCusker, and Karine Polwart, and additional widened his musical horizons on tour playing jazz fusion music with Canadian fiddle participant/trumpeter Daniel Lapp and British accordionist Martin Green. There is also a high-profile tour through the U.S. and Cuba using the dance stage display Celtic Fusion, offering music made up by his dad, Ivan. Additional collaborations included the Gaelic music group Tannas, and duets with Irish accordionist Leo McCann and Irish-American vocalist/songwriter Tim O’Brien. He also became a member of Kate Rusby’s music group and, at a concert one evening in Derby in 2005, Rusby asked him to try out a single song. That melody was more than enough to convince one person in the market, Tom Rose — creator of Derby indie label Reveal Information — that he was prepared to make a single record. Drever had hardly ever played a single gig in his lifestyle up compared to that stage, but jumped at the opportunity. Made by John McCusker, the record Black Water highlighted a top-quality lineup of Brit folk helping music artists, including Eddi Audience, Andy Reducing, Roddy Woomble, and Donald Shaw, and produced an immediate influence when it had been released past due in 2006 using its enlightened agreements of trad classics like “Patrick Spence” and “Green Increases the Laurel” and interesting options of contemporary materials, like Boo Hewerdine’s “Harvest Gypsies” and Sandy Wright’s “Beads and Feathers,” that was released being a limited-issue one. Drever continued to win Greatest New Act on the 2007 BBC Folk Honours, where he also performed live with Rosanne Money, and at age 28 was hailed among the brightest lamps for the Brit folk picture. At that time he had been looking forward, having formed another fresh music group — LAU — with Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke, who released their personal debut recording, Lightweights & Gentlemen, to great acclaim. All three people of LAU will also be area of the periodic left-field seven-piece folk-jazz fusion music group Parallelogram.