CrowdMateFrom Thursday 29 October through Sunday 1 November, a particularly coherent folk route runs through the live calendar: steel-string instrumentals at Ancienne Belgique, sharply economical indie songs in the same building two nights later, then Alela Diane’s songbook at De Roma. These shows share an interest in guitar as a means of framing a story, a landscape or a private room. The route begins with a lineage-conscious double bill, passes through the close-up writing of Greg Mendez and Lily Seabird, and reaches a songwriter whose recent work grew from collaboration and renewed musical community.[1][2][3][5][6]
Thursday: a living American Primitive lineage at Ancienne Belgique
Glenn Jones and Liam Grant bring the most specific musical vocabulary of the three nights to Ancienne Belgique on Thursday at 19:00. Jones works in American Primitive guitar, the fingerpicked, open-tuned tradition associated with John Fahey; his own artist page points to custom partial capos, idiosyncratic tunings and compositions for guitar and banjo. Ancienne Belgique frames the pairing as an evening of American Primitive fingerpicking, placing Jones’s deeply personal melodic work beside Grant’s modal pieces, rags and improvisations. Grant’s presence makes the bill feel like a conversation inside a still-active practice, with his approach explicitly informed by Fahey, Takoma Records and Jones himself.[1][4]
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Saturday: the song becomes the room
Greg Mendez arrives at Ancienne Belgique on Saturday at 19:00 with Lily Seabird and Brett Summers. The venue describes Mendez as an economical writer whose songs use simplicity and restraint, and locates Beauty Land in a home-recorded, tape-based process in Philadelphia. That compressed scale gives the evening its place in this thread: where Jones and Grant make a whole terrain from strings, Mendez works with pop melody, guitar and an unguarded vocal presence. Seabird brings a useful grain to the supporting slot. Her label describes her current writing as moving between troubadour-like folk, grungy sentiment and spacious guitar-led passages, widening the bill beyond hushed confession.[2][5]
Friday in Borgerhout: Alela Diane’s communal folk
Between those Brussels nights, De Roma hosts Alela Diane on Friday at 20:00. Her official biography presents Who’s Keeping Time? as her seventh full-length album and traces its making to a return to local musical connection, with collaborators gathered in her attic to record live. De Roma likewise places the concert in folk, guitar and singer-songwriter territory. That makes this the expansive stop on the route: Diane’s work holds close personal writing, live-band energy and a sense of shared making in the same frame. Start Thursday with the detail of fingerstyle, choose Saturday for Mendez’s concentrated songs, or take Friday’s seated De Roma concert as the broader, song-led entry point. Recheck Ancienne Belgique and De Roma’s official pages for tickets, door times and any programme changes.[3][6]
Sources
- Double bill: Glenn Jones & Liam Grant — Ancienne Belgique
- Greg Mendez — Ancienne Belgique
- Alela Diane — De Roma
- Music — Glenn Jones
- Lily Seabird: Biography — Lame-O Records
- About — Alela Diane