Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

There is something tremendously satisfying about sitting in a place of worship all day, feeling the sense of a different presence wash over you, especially when it from a song book you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing before.

The writer of the solemn text standing in the arena, the musical pulpit and with guitar in hand, keyboards and backing vocalists ready to praise the written word and laid down tune, worship is something you feel compelled to do. Though Constellations is far from a church as you can imagine, if your belief is in the power of the art that lays within us all, then the final act of Beerdfest 2016 would have anyone clutching their hearts and straining their ears to hear the words of Joe Kelly.

Regardless of where you catch him, that sense of poise and panache will cause you dedicate or reaffirm your belief that there is so much young talent in the city plying their trade and that they deserve the full backing of all; these are the people, the artists that the public should be seeing, the dead after all have had their day and whilst it is not polite to remember those dearly departed souls who have kept us going from their time before the turn of the last century, people with songs in their youthful hearts need to be heard.

The wash of good feeling towards Joe Kelly is impossible to ignore, it is the pull of his music that makes salvation possible and like all who stood upon the Constellation stage that day as they celebrated all things beard, the stars looked down through the thunderstorm and the driving rain and applauded what it saw.

With Joe Kelly performing the songs Good Lookin’ Girl, Midnight Man, Get it, Valentino and Coming Home, the good natured crowd were serenaded towards the afternoon’s end and with that little spark of the afterlife entrusted into their souls. This is one of the reasons that whilst seeing the big names come to the Echo is right and proper, the next generation, those who take the chances that some of us in our middle age forgot to do, are courageously angry; they are biting down and hoping they will somehow be heard.

A great finish to a very groovy hair-raising day, Joe Kelly was in magnificent form and the music he provided lived long into the night.

Ian D. Hall