It’s a decidedly warm Wednesday night in the back room of Kings Cross’s The Water Rats, and Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons are onstage. After forty-five minutes they’ve just wound up their opening number and the clock’s hit 10.30. I’m thinking about my flight at 7am the next morning and whether I should go home…

Four hours later I’m walking south on Kingsway towards Aldwych and the starting point of the N9 to Heathrow. You’ve heard about crazy night-buses, well this is one of them. Heading west through Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Hammersmith, Brentford, Hounslow, at some point it begins picking up airport workers, probably around the same time the sun starts coming up.

The reward is a still quiet airport, an easy flight, and just after 9am I’m on the ground in Dusseldorf. I finally get to visit the impressive Kunstpalast, then wander along the Rhine taking the breeze as the sun burns through the late morning haze. It’s probably as well my favoured bars aren’t open, and no familiar faces materialise, so before long I’m back to the station and rolling towards Oberhausen.

My fourth trip to Oberhausen for Static Roots; its tenth anniversary and its ninth iteration; Dietmar Leibecke’s festival is an amazing paradox; the event is now bigger than the line-up, and yet the line-ups make the festival. There’s always a little bit of grit to the bill, though no two attendees will agree exactly which act that is. The familiar collides with the challenge and, more than likely, the challenge becomes the familiar, and it’s why people keep on coming back. Well that and the craic.

Thursday night now sees the Static Roots Welcome Night. This year’s held in Essen with The Southern Fold and Lincoln Skins – both from Kilkenny – proved a sell-out success in an upgraded outdoor venue and eased people in nicely for the main event. The sun by then had well and truly arrived and from then on the weekend was most definitely a ‘hot one’.

A Friday morning drift towards the Rhein-Herne Canal and an afternoon in the Transatlantik were the prelude to renewing acquaintance with the Zentrum Altenberg. Having missed last year it was my first time in the new room and a relief to find it retaining all the warmth of the old one.

MC Jeff Robson was winding up his welcome as adjusting my eyes Silver Lining took the stage. The Norwegian trio made for a gentle start with a mixture of their own songs – ‘Time’, ‘Heart And Mind Alike’, and ‘My Sweet Love’ – before dipping into their covers jar. ‘Look At Miss Ohio’ and ‘If We Were Vampires’ proved sure-fire crowd-pleasers.

“I feel tales of my darkness have been greatly exaggerated” claimed Ben de la Cour, though somewhat undercutting himself in asking “any Idi Amin fans in the audience?”. Accompanied by Ger Moloney on accordion he showed exactly why his Americanoir stylings must be just on the verge of breakout. ‘Amazing Grace (Slight Return)’ is soaked in Townes while ‘Appalachian Book of the Dead’ and ‘Uncle Boudreaux Went to Texas’ were similarly riveting, even while his reading of the traditional ‘Lakes of Pontchartrain’ proved the highlight.

Kirsten Adamson takes the stage with a Rickenbacker, a Linda Ronstadt T-shirt, and her Tanagers. A lively set to raise the mid-evening mood; notably ‘Whenever You’re Around’, ‘Heart Is Burning Blue’, before inevitably and rightly ‘My Father’s Songs’. She’s followed briskly by Leeroy Stagger – alongside Steve Wynn a Static Roots Hall of Famer. He’s fronting a five-piece band with Ryland Morantz on, variously, mandolin, fiddle and banjo, and Tyler Lieb on pedal steel. Opener ‘River Rats’ starts like a Dead song and then we’re away; ‘Bangor’, ‘Summer Rain’, and ‘Fiddler’s Daughter’ from the new Pilgrimage album, then ‘These Days’ from 3AM Revelations with massive Danny & The Champs vibes, before the heart-warming, inclusive ‘Carry Me’.

A stonker of a set from a serious songwriter who should be as popular as Isbell. It left Jesper Lindell with a bit of a task which he and his band totally rose to. Their Van/Band/Muscle Shoals sound mesmerised with two keyboards prominent. By this point I was just leaning into it; bits of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, ‘Iko Iko’, something about Willie, were all in the mix, and a final blast of ‘Polk Salad Annie’ sent everyone out into the courtyard happy.

Saturday afternoon reconvened with one of those performances Static Rooters will talk about all down the ages. Irish Mythen, playing for Willie Meighan, conjured a succession of pin-drop moments. To solo folk guitar accompaniment their powerful voice delivered their signature ‘Tullamore Blues’ along with the sharply political ‘Let Them In’ and ‘Little Bones’, the humorously iconoclastic ‘Jesus’ (“sung this for a couple of bishops”) finishing with a jaw-dropping take on ‘The Auld Triangle’. A benchmark well and truly set for the rest of the day.

Two favourites followed in Jerry Joseph and Joana Serrat. The former here accompanied by Sweden’s Dimpker Brothers delivered a disciplined song set drawing ‘Days Of Heaven’, ‘San Arcacia’ and ‘Bone Towers’ from 2020’s landmark The Beautiful Madness and digging back for ‘Beautiful Child Of God’. Adam Dimpker’s sympathetic electric soloing and Martin’s acoustic along with heel-powered bass drum kept everything nicely anchored. The set finishing on a high with ‘Loving Kindness’ morphing into ‘That’s The Way God Planned It’.

Joana then appeared with her now-settled English band featuring two former Hanging Stars in guitarist Sam Fermin and drummer Paulie Cobra along with bassist Gaz Playford. There’s a quiet confidence and surety about them, and this set of predominantly new songs – notably ‘Sweeter Shores’, ‘Blurry Thoughts’, and ‘Yellow Brick Road’ – grew in stature as it proceeded. Sam with his array of boards has space for adventure, and the lush, psych-adjacent sound reached ever new highs as the set climaxed with ‘Sufferer’, ‘Pictures’, and what might be her signature song ‘Take Me Back Where I Belong’.

A little moment out in the courtyard to recalibrate drifted into the late afternoon break before the anticipation of The Dreaming Spires took us all back into the hall. With their Normal Town album of last autumn they’ve carried an air of renewal and maturity; the theme is place and specifically their place in South Oxfordshire where the Bennett brothers still live and hold their Wood and Septembersong events. Playing as a four-piece on borrowed instruments, bar Robin’s 12-string Rickenbacker, they mixed up newer songs – ‘Normal Town’, ‘Cooling Towers’, and ‘21st Century Light Industrial Park’ with old favourites. The bright jangle of ‘Everything All Of The Time’ never tarnishes, and a piece of early morning inspiration set them to segue ‘Not Every Song From The Sixties Is A Classic’ into ‘Strength Of Strings’; an absolute joy, then followed by the Ardent-facing ‘Paisley Overground’ and ‘Dusty In Memphis’.

For Emily Nenni it could have been a hard act to follow but she’s a consummate, prolific professional, and she just went about her business taking the room with her. Fronting five-piece band with pedal steel and dancing bassist she delivered a set of tunes rooted in honky-tonk, soulful and smart. Striking originals like ‘Hurt All Over’ and ‘On The Ranch’ hit the spot but I couldn’t help but smile at Mama Cass’s ‘Talkin’ To Your Toothbrush’.

This just left the headline act The Vandoliers. They’d played here in 2022 and this was the final show of a twenty-two date run in Europe meaning they were road-hardened, demob-happy, and among friends. They’re old school insurgent-country with a Pogues/Mekons/Levellers vibe and a righteous front-woman in Jenni Rose. With opener ‘Girl On The Run’ they hit the groove – a party band with a message – and never let up; ‘Dead In A Ditch’, ‘You Can’t Party With The Lights On’, ‘Cigarettes In The Rain’, even their Proclaimers cover encore ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ – it was simply a killer set with band and room in lock-step and an appropriate climax to a great couple of days.

And it wasn’t quite finished yet… the balmy night stretched out into the courtyard where big-screened football from the Azteca played out to a Lincoln Skins soundtrack. This ‘actual slice of heaven’ had once again lived up to its billing; no-one wanted to leave, everyone was sure they’d return. Over to you Dietmar.