About
Photo: Adam Trussell
Once upon a time there was a band. Before that, there were merely five musical folk with a shared love of fruit, tea, fun and a jaunty tune, but the fates and these shared loves brought them together. In time, ideas were scribbled, the kettle worked almost as hard as their strange musical minds, many curvy yellow fruits were eaten, and the first songs were born. These were the Banana Sessions, and so it began…
The Banana Sessions sing songs of sunshine, caterpillars, brews, Buckfast, pirates and stranger encounters, plus a few unconventional interpretations of classics too (one crowd favourite being 90s techno classic No Limit by 2Unlimited). Their style is not one easily described, but they have been described in their time as folky, proggy, breezy, bouncy, jazzy, quirky, and ‘unashamedly good fun’. Whatever genre they may be, the band have rapidly gained a reputation as purveyors of quality musicianship with equal quantities of humour in Edinburgh and beyond.
The Banana Sessions’ love for all things spontaneous has introduced and endeared them to new fans from all backgrounds in recent months, with a busy schedule including guerilla gigging and musical adventures to Dublin and London amongst others. An impromptu set to an enthusiastic train carriage of music lovers returning from gigs in Glasgow late one night even gained them a 4 star write-up by reviewers from arts magazine The Skinny, who were also onboard.
This led them to the organizers of Glasgow’s Subway festival, and the band were featured heavily in the promotion of this weekend of underground entertainment on Glasgow’s tube, The Banana Sessions themselves playing a well received set on the 1523 from Govan on a sunny Sunday afternoon. As for more conventional festivals, the band are now regular fixture at the Knockengorroch festival in Dumfries, & summer 2009 saw them booked for many more festivals, including the legendary Wickerman, Knockengorroch, Edinburgh’s Meadows Festival and a main stage slot at Lancashire’s Beatherder.
The band’s second EP, simply entitled the Green EP, was recorded in a bothy in the highlands by up-and-coming producer Garry Boyle and was released during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This year’s festival saw the band playing about 30 gigs in three weeks, including nightly upon ‘The Pink Bus’, a double decker filled with bric-a-brac. That’s just the sort of stuff that this band does. What next?
“The Banana Sessions … are one of the quirkiest bands kicking around Edinburgh just now. Swapping a bass guitar for a tuba, and featuring one seriously creepy sounding flute, one minute they sound like a gypsy circus band, the next they’re imitating the bombastic marching band sounds of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club. And just when you find your feet tapping along to the tunes, they sneakily change rhythm and tempo to ear-pleasing effect. A great band to watch…” – The Scotsman, July 2009
