Music review: Southern Fried Festival, various venues, Perth

If there was a recurring friction at this celebration of American roots music, Donald Trump wasn’t mentioned by name. Beth Nielsen Chapman captured the prevailing feeling when she pointedly declared that she wouldn’t talk about politics lest she say something she regretted. The Nashville singer-songwriter eschewed the here and now for the timeless and universal, closing her set with a lovely paean to the celestial, There Is No Darkness. Chuck Prophet introduced Bad Year For Rock And Roll, his homage to such luminaries as David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen, meanwhile, with a pained lament that 2016 was also the year “we lost any illusions about democracy”. And Loudon Wainwright III interrupted his set to allow his right-hand man, banjo player Chaim Tannenbaum, to deliver a moving rendition of America The Beautiful, highlighting the topicality of the standard despite it being more than a century old.