Folk, jazz, etc: A distinctive voice that remains unsung

Published on Tuesday 10 March 2009 18:45

EDINBURGH'S seaside suburb of Portobello is becoming something of a musos' haven these days, the EH15 address of such folk and jazz names as clarinetist Dick Lee and trumpeter Colin Steele, cellist-singer Wendy Weatherby, fiddler Derek Hoy and Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis – who crop up singing Auld Lang Syne on the soundtrack of the Sex and the City movie – while US-based Garbage singer Shirley Manson maintains her Scottish home in the area.

Yet one distinctive resident voice remains… well, unsung. For, despite a loyal fanbase and frequent radio exposure from the likes of Mary Ann Kennedy, Iain Anderson and Radio nan Gidheal's Niall Iain MacDonald, the powerful voice of singer-songwriter Lee Patterson still lacks the kind of profile it deserves.

His impassioned solo delivery, riding on driving guitar or basic percussion, has been described as "acoustic stomp blues". Ask him what he calls it these days, and Patterson, a lean 46-year-old, chuckles: "I just don't know what to call it. Someone said I'd gone all Leonard Cohen for this new album."

The old Canadian groaner isn't necessarily the figure called to mind by Patterson's intense, sometimes frenzied live performances, described by one enthusiastic reviewer as "pure sweat-soaked madness".

Yet his voice can slide seamlessly from the raw to the utterly soulful, and his songs are frequently infused with humanity and compassion. Certainly his newly released third self-produced album, Stella Maris, is a slightly more mellow clutch of songs compared to its predecessors, The Grinder's Monkey , Razum Frazum, plus a download-only "EP" Sufferin' Succotash.

"I think on Razum Frazum and The Grinder's Monkey a lot of the songs were written with performance in mind – what's going to grab people and keep them listening," he says. "I thought for the next one I'd write for writing's sake."

If much of Stella Maris shows Patterson in gentler mode – the mellifluous warmth of Winter Bonnet or the wry reminiscence of Mary Queen of Scotch come to mind – he breaks out in no uncertain manner with the relentless drive and crashing guitar of Little Girl. It closes with a heartfelt nod to the gospel influences that have partly shaped his singing, with an old revivalist hymn, The Good Old Way, which he delivers over gentle banjo, complete with background "78 crackle".

In fact Patterson's delivery of another religious song, the bluesy Working on a Building, from Razum Frazum, has been something of a showstopper of his, and a few years ago made him the first white singer to receive a British Gospel Award, while his appearance at Glasgow's State Bar last May was enshrined as top gig of the year by the Glasgow-based Blues Bunny website. Yet he remains something of a well-kept secret, possibly due to the unclassifiable nature of his music and the pigeon-hole mentality of audiences – is it folk, is it blues, is it rock?

"I kind of straddle all the camps, and none of them will take me on fully. But I don't want to be bound. I like music, I like rhythm, I like what it does," he laughs, recalling a short-notice session he did on Saturday at Edinburgh's Whistlebinkies music pub on Saturday: "There were 200 people jammed into the place… and me. But it was great fun, and afterwards this Danish guy came up to me and said, 'The hairs on my arms stand up!'" Levitating arm hairs apart, perhaps it's time for audiences to sit up and take notice.

• Lee Patterson appears in the band EskimoGo at the Twisted Wheel, Glasgow, tomorrow night; solo at The Village, Leith, with Little Pebble and Iona Marshall on 26 March, and at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh on 27 March. See www.lpmusic.org.uk