Great fun, such a gig in the big Alpha tent on Lowlands, and because of the scale rather lucrative too. But David Eugene Edwards, a devout, godfearing man from around Denver, Colorado, is in place nowhere better than below the 'Soli Deo Gloria' in the ridge of the Paradiso, a former church of the liberal parish on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam.

Moreover Edwards is in his element in 16 Horsepower, the band with which he makes the biggest share of his living. Earlier this year he already dropped in a number of Dutch rock venues with his side project Woven Hand, a trio in which his unique delivery and style of composing were so dominant that the whole actually did sound very much like 16 Horsepower, even though that was not the intention it appears.

Anyhow, Woven Hand above all things made you look out for the new 16 Horsepower album. Which was released last month. Folklore is its title, a album, decked out in black, consisting for more than one half of covers and interpretations of traditionals and that sounds distinctively basic and modest, compared to the rocking Secret South (2000).

The material from both albums agreed extremely well at the Paradiso, where the five-man-band opened humbly and timidly with among others the new song Hutterite Mile, but gradually opened the throttle, like in the rocking Clogger, from Secret South.

A section of the fans does not like the grandiosity and prefers to hear the band as rural as possible, with Edwards thrumming his banjo. But that ominous swelling, the slowly increasing volume, is 16 Horsepower's greatest strength - and at the same time a quality that you missed in Woven Hand.

What you missed most at Lowlands was the look in Edwards' eyes. Only in a small venue can you see how they sometimes turn away, flash to and fro, so feverishly and full of fire that he almost seems mad. God - Edwards' most important, if not only source of inspiration - unlooses grand emotions in the singer: love, admiration and fear.

In no other 16 Horsepower song if finds expression better than in the multi-staged Splinters, slowly swelling into the level of an enormous church organ, an anxious dream about a divine whirlwind, 'going to bust my house to splinters and take all that's dear to me'.

It's Edwards' saving that he can unload himself through his songs. His lot is travelling about and singing. Good. Then we at least know he will come by every now and then.