Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The Bodacious Balalaika Band, Threshold 2019. photograph by Ian D. Hall.

You have to go a fair distance to find yourself in Runcorn, it is not just a case of crossing a bridge out of the country of Merseyside, it is the will to hear something new and unusual and then think back to that the moment in just a few short years and see how influential it was. The first airing of the Russian instrument the balalaika, that debut moment when the astonishing aspect of power that three strings can bring to your soul, to fish in the waters of a memory that delighted you and now makes you completely hooked and wanting more.

One of the first occasions in which Jamie Clague brought the instrument to the attention of others was inside the studio of the radio community inside a purpose-built studio in Runcorn, a short distance, but leagues aside from where the listener may have believed they were heading as the stirring music began to play. Roll forward a few short years, plenty of blood, sweat and tears later, the strange and inquisitive looks as the player takes out the strange but alluring; all was worth it as Jamie Clague, Cal Carty and Mark Daniels brought The Bodacious Balalaika Band steaming into view like a Russian navy ship carrying crates of vodka to share with the population and was greeted with the same cheer of expression and good fortune deserving such an aural adventure.

It is perhaps the music of memory that seeks out the faithful listener, a stirring of wanting to understand another’s culture, to embrace it as if it were your own and without betraying your own foundations and drives, that makes the music of the balalaika so deserving of praise, a machine in the hands of one who has mastered the apparent simplicity but who knows that it is the art which carries into the hearts of those who listen.

A small drive from Runcorn to the Threshold experience, a large platform in which to showcase the unusual but highly enjoyable; there is no difference between us all, only the limitations on what we dare to see with our open and our hearts engaged.

For the threesome that make up The Bodacious Balalaika Band the sound of stirring heights could be found playing in the end of March’s sun trap that beamed down heavily on 92 Degrees at the Baltic Triangle. Tunes and monuments such as Moonshine, Minor Swing, Hava Nagila, The Slender Rowan Tree, Akh Natasha, Korobushka and Kalinka all drove home the importance of keeping all folk music alive, of experiencing what makes others dance.

You might travel from Runcorn to Liverpool in relative comfort, the Mersey River taking you from point a to b in a manner of expression, but as part of the 2019 Threshold Festival the sound of Russian joy delivered by one of the most charismatic bands to come from the area was full, enticing and most bodacious indeed.

Ian D. Hall