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The Treacherous Orchestra scored an all-round triumphant double last night, having sold out the 1300-capacity O2 ABC in very short order, for the launch of their debut album Origins, after which they returned to blow the roof off their Festival Club spawning-ground. An altogether spine-tinglingly magnificent ABC performance was crowned when they came back for the encore with bodhran player Martin O’Neill resplendently dressed up as Stevie Wonder – with whom he famously toured a year or so back – posing centre-stage behind a pretend piano for the opening measures of perennial crowd-pleaser ‘Sausages’. And it must have been a particularly proud moment earlier on for flute player and native Glaswegian Kevin O’Neill – individually not the highest-profile member of the band – when the mere mention of his name as author of the next tune raised an almighty cheer.
 
Back at the Festival Club, having laudably refrained from over-celebrating after the main gig, they did it all again and then some, as epitomised by the sight of one punter up in the crowd astride someone’s shoulders, punching the air, bare-chested and – for reasons best known to himself – wearing a Mr Bean mask. The set once again climaxed with ‘Sausages’, its nonsensical, maniacal opening followed by a signature Treacherous set of strathspeys – that most uniquely Scottish of traditional tune forms, driving the dancefloor into a seething euphoric frenzy. When 21st-century teenagers and 20-somethings are screaming and headbanging to strathspeys – albeit strathspeys souped up with heavy dub reggae and what might be called Celto-orchestral thrash – things are surely looking pretty darned rosy in the Scottish cultural garden. Or as Aidan O’Rourke put it, in a self-evidently rhetorical question as he surveyed the merry melée: “Folk music’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
 
Which may be a less than welcome prospect for the middle-aged, somewhat inebriated and decidedly discombobulated gentleman encountered on the ABC stairs during the Treacherous gig, just one flight down from the main room. “Where’s the music?” he demanded, a distinct note of panic in his voice. We pointed upstairs, suggesting he should simply follow the noise. “No, no, not that,” he said. “I’m looking for Johnny Cash.” Though tempted to suggest he was looking in the wrong place, or even dimension, we had noticed the sign on the way in with stage-times for a Johnny Cash tribute band, playing simultaneously in one of the venue’s smaller spaces, so were able to point him in the right direction, and he fled the Treacherous racket with evident relief.
 
Rounding off the night at the club were the very wonderful Federation of the Disco Pimp, a self-styled ‘extreme funk’ combo from Glasgow, for whom it must have cost a certain amount of apprehension to take the Celtic festival club stage at 3am on the final Saturday night, but whose wickedly booty-shaking grooves were abundantly rewarded with a still-packed and joyfully gyrating dance-floor, with a whole host of leading folk musicians throwing some very interesting shapes.
 
There’s been a Post-It note floating around the press office (not literally. . .) for the last few days, of which no one can work out the origins, bearing as it does only the hastily-scrawled words, “18 musicians, beer & water”. Any clues or suggestions gratefully received. And while we also happened to notice yesterday that a couch had been moved into the press office, we were emphatically assured it was not for emergency naps.
 
Hearty congratulations to this year’s six Danny Kyle Open Stage Winners: Glasgow five-piece Barluath, Belfast trio Réalta, local singer-songwriter Rory Butler, alternative blues combo Black Diamond Express, Geordie balladeer/guitarist Ben Church and Nordic/Scottish duo Marit Fait & Rona Wilkie – worthy victors by definition, in a contest that’s more hotly fought each year. We look forward to seeing them on the bill in 2013.
 
(Ahead of this evening’s final, and also of the climactic Transatlantic Sessions show in the Main Auditorium, the Concert Hall’s catering department delivered two cases of champagne backstage, accompanied by the instruction that, “One’s for the Dannys, and one’s for the Trannys.”)
 
And what a totally fantastic buzz there was filling the Concert Hall right to the rafters about 7.15 tonight, as the happy throng spilling out of the Dannys final mingled with that heading into the Transatlantic Sessions: the unmistakably rich, gladsome ambience of a festival well spent.
 
And so now, somehow – unbelievably; inevitably; tragically, thankfully; all these and more – here we are at Night 18 , one last hurrah in front of us; once more unto the breach. Gird your loins, Glasgow. . . Have a great last gig, and we’ll see you in the club.