Lewes Guitar Festival: round-up

The late Irish guitarist and author Eric Roche said of him “I was his teacher once. For about five minutes. Then I heard him play.” Guthrie Govan, the former Asia guitarist, adds, ‘I don’t know what he does with his guitar, but I wonder if it’s legal.” All meant positively, you understand. He’s been called a ‘guitar acrobat,’ a ‘guitar wizard’ and a ‘20-finger guitarist’. Of himself, he says he plays ‘the bastard son of acoustic fingerstyle.’ Whatever all this means, he doesn’t just pluck strings. “My style owes as much to percussive techniques as traditional fingerstyle… it’s punctuated by slaps, pops and beats.” He’s Austrian, his name is Thomas Leeb, you can watch him here. And he’s playing in the latest venue to be added to the Guitar Festival roster of stages, the White Hart, at 5.15pm.

All this precedes the ‘Roots Hoedown’ in the massive Big Top, erected in the Convent Field and holding 1500 spectators. The Mountain Firework Country, a hard-drinking, deadpan alt.country lot from Brighton kick off proceedings, followed by punchy cusp-of-greatness Passenger, another Brighton band, whose lead singer sounds like David Beckham and looks like a third  Mitchell brother. Nice sound, though, with a touch of electronica behind all that guitar riffery (watch them here).The great Seth Lakeman (see next page) finishes off proceedings. At lunchtime in the Gun Garden there’s a second performance (this time for free) from the Catalan Jazz Manouche outfit, The Biel Ballester Trio (1pm see page 10). AL