The Alehouse Sessions – Live in Leeds 2025 – “fire in the belly chutzpah”

The Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds 8^th June 2025

A simply astonishing night of laughs, dancing, singing, virtuoso musicianship and a teeny bit of history. Initially disappointed it wasn’t the usual in-the-round immersive sort of layout the promoter, ThroughTheNoise, goes for; I rapidly understood that the band HAD to be on stage because the audience was packed to capacity. Also disappointed that the venue didn’t smell of sawdust, tobacco, stale body odour and pox for maximum seventeenth century authenticity; all reservations fell aside immediately thanks to the compelling presence of band leader, Bjarte Eike. Leading his troops, Barokksolistene, he swaggered, informed, joked and informed with a dry humour that cracked everyone up and pockets of hooting friends around the room kept up the ribaldry.

The concept is a strange one: These are songs and tunes from the seventeenth century, focused around the interregnum, when puritan Cromwell shut the alehouses. Unemployed musicians would roam the streets door to door, seeking work, instruments hidden under cloaks. When they found it, there would be ballads, jigs, dances, dancing, jokes and stories – and that’s what we got tonight, mixing Purcell, folk tunes, sea shanties, some Scandanavian songs and even a campfire song my primary school boy taught me. Back then, Bjarte tells us, people subsisted on 8 pints of small beer a day, or as he puts it, what Norwegians call breakfast – so gatherings might be jolly and a lot of the songs are boozing songs. He leads the crowd in call and response, playing the audience like his fiddle with a triumphant swagger.

An assemblage of baroque musicians shift from the classical to the traditional to the bawdy. The band play the part, joking, teasing, acting the fool and putting on being pissed, culminating in a staged brawl. They jump on the raised section to dance, with Steven Player throwing in a number of flamenco-style routines, and duets, triplets and horsing around are performed on a dais. Mostly Scandinavian, there’s plenty of inter-country mickey-taking and good natured teasing. The crowd is entirely won over and when asked to do a kids song with actions, do it no questions asked. So when called on to sing a sea shanty, that goes down even better.

Songs range from the traditional ‘Hey Ho, Nobody Home’ (recast from carolling to jobless musicians in 1651) – “meat, drink, money have I none; yet I will be merry” to ‘Whisky Johnny’ (last heard in the hands of Bellowhead) to the sea shanties ‘Haul Away Joe’ and ‘Leave Her Johnny’ to the anachronistic ‘My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose’ (Rabbie Burns, late 1700s). The energy of everything from the slow to the fast is full on and the energy of Bjarte Eike captivates.

An incredibly involving evening, packed full of skill and energy and spirit. The ensemble has a couple of fantastic albums of the material but they don’t come close to the fire in the belly chutzpah of the band live.