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Torhout-Werchter Festival
For an interview held at the festival by Belgian TV, click here. Thanks for clapping
Interview by DS - Picture by Alex Vanhee
Last summer they had already been the revelation of the Bruges Cactus Festival and they also made a good impression at the Pukkelpop Festival. This time around, they even got the chance to perform on the second stage of the Torhout/Werchter festival: the reputation of David Eugene Edwards and his band mates is spreading like an oil slick. It certainly is no mere chance that 16 Horsepower sells the blues wholesale, the only music style that seemed to fit the drizzling weather that we were treated with on Friday. And as Muddy Waters is no longer with us ... The trio that surprised us only last year with their excellent "Sackcloth 'n Ashes" album and that has recently recorded their new record aided by producer John Parish (Polly Jean Harvey's right-hand), has recently become a quintet. A good thing, we quickly noticed, since the recruitment of new members allowed the group to broaden their existing instrumental range by adding violin, cello and slide-guitar, and explore new territories. Edwards still sings lyrics interlarded with religious images in the lamenting and preaching tone he's known for, as if he is constantly being chased by Jeffrey Lee Pierce's ghost. And although the sound of 16 Horsepower is an adventurous mixture of blues, folk, country, bluegrass and bandoneon waltzes, the new material sounds remarkably stronger and more strapping than that on their debut album. But two highlights did come from that debut album: the elegiac 'Harm's Way' and inspired set-closer 'Haw'. David Eugene Edwards is a well-bred lad, who politely thanks the audience 'for clapping' after nearly every song. But despite a very enjoyable set by his band indeed, the soggy field of Torhout seemed too large a place for his personal and intense music. 16 Horsepower's music does flourish in a more intimate setting. Translation by Gregory
from Belgian magazine Humo, 15 July 1997 No, we prefer the eccentric, deathly pale oddball Dave Eugene Edwards. With his gang 16 Horsepower, he tried to submerge us, by means of an arsenal of banjos, lap-steels and bandoneons, in the godfearing, Flannery O'Connor-esque atmosphere of a part of America where time stopped in the nineteenth century, but the even afternoon light and the moderate response from the crowd thwarted him.
Beautiful songs like 'Scrawled In Sap', 'Black Soul Choir' or 'Haw',
which seize you by the throat and throttle you under normal
circumstances, now sadly blew away over the audience. It speaks well for
16 Horsepower that they played on bravely and spirited, as if they
turned the show into a public rehearsal for other and better occasions.
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