Damn Tall Buildings at the Orkney Folk Festival 2026

Photographing the Orkney Folk Festival was a blast. They booked an incredible earthen house for me to stay in, left a wonderful welcome pack, designed a programme which allowed time to enjoy the photography and get the best images I could, and even made sure I could photograph my favourite artists. What a great organisation!

A band I had never heard of is Damn Tall Buildings, who play folk-bluegrass music and is based in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. It’s a place which has damn tall buildings, clearly. Max Capistran, Sasha Dubyk, and Avery Ballotta have been playing together for a decade and their enjoyment of playing together is undiminished.

Their style of playing around a central vocal microphone made taking band photographs a breeze.

Sasha’s lead vocals are perfect.

And although they take the music seriously, they clearly don’t take themselves seriously at all.

What a pleasure to hear them and try to capture something of their style and personality.

Thanks to them for a great show.

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