Preview: Innerleithen Music Festival

The baton of proving that festival life continues outwith Edinburgh in August passed at the weekend to the comely Borders town of Innerleithen, whose eighth annual folk-based gathering drew capacity crowds for its two headline concerts, among ticket sales totalling around 1,500.

Small-scale compared with the behemoth 30-odd miles north, but every bed in Innerleithen was booked and the campsite was full. The core concert programme boasted its very own fringe, with free and informal music not only in various pubs, but also in the local charity shop and the lounge of a B&B, plus the late-night Festival Club.

The extensive bill of fare also including workshops, kids entertainment and an open stage originally evolved from the Both Sides the Tweed festival, which moved round the Borders during its six-year lifespan, with its two sojourns in Innerleithen sowing the seeds now bearing such fruit.

There has also been a renewed focus recently on the region's own rich musical traditions, with such ascendant talents as Lori Watson (of whom more shortly) and Shona Mooney reinvigorating that heritage via both research and new compositions.

A festival is always stronger for some home-grown talent to showcase alongside the imported sounds, and one such slot this year, opening Saturday night's big show, was occupied by the young Galashiels-born singer-songwriter Craig Jeffrey, whose rootsy melodic ballads are widely tipped for major mainstream success. Jeffrey was also in residence all weekend at Music Shak, a new year-round project partly spawned by the festival, which organises cross-genre jam-sessions among Borders musicians under 25, plenty of whom were rocking it up throughout the weekend.

The local flag was proudly flown at Saturday's afternoon concert by fiddler and singer Lori Watson, with younger brother Innes on guitar, and accordionist John Somerville. Her gracefully poised, resonantly spirited playing and vivid, crystalline voice were set off to lovely advantage by the calibre and craft of her colleagues' accompaniment, with the arrangements' full-bodied impact sounding far bigger than a trio.

A further ideal complement came from the show's other act, The Bevvy Sisters, whose richly and inventively intermingled three-part harmonies, in an adroitly diverse selection of Americana covers and sophisticated originals, achieved a comparable though contrasting synergy, deftly framed and underpinned by crisp, stripped-back guitar and percussion.

The previous night's sellout was occasioned by a superb double bill featuring arguably England and Scotland's hottest respective folk bands of the moment, The Unthanks, an 11-piece line-up adorning the eponymous sisters' hauntingly aligned voices with atmospheric layers of strings, brass and piano, and the three-man full-frontal assault of Lau, as monstrously bare-knuckle as it was marvellously virtuosic.

And following Jeffrey's short but sweet warm-up set, the crowd's unanimous delight at Capercaillie's debut at this festival - with the band themselves clearly relishing the chance to perform acoustically, and revisit material from their long-ago back catalogue - was pithily summed up after the encore by a local lady sitting behind me: "Well, whatever they cost, they were worth it."

SUE WILSON