Andy Sheppard, St George's, Bristol, 9th November, 2017 - gig review

And I Loved It

[for Isobel]

Can you have convivial jazz? I should say you can have any adjectival music you care to describe, especially jazz with its expansive range, but for this review my naming is set up by the prelude to attending this fine show by the warm welcome and meal I enjoyed before travelling into Bristol. My thanks to our hosts for the early evening where a most pleasant dinner and company segued so precisely into a most pleasant performance from Sheppard and band.

Pleasant is seemingly faint praise for a jazz gig, but when I attach the other descriptors of mellow, pretty, soft, breathy and melodic to what could be a longer totally positive list, you’ll get the gist and link to convivial. This was a performance based in melody and gentle delivery overall, Sheppard’s breathy sax playing setting up each song to grow into the fuller playing, with Eivind Aarset’s guitar and electronics providing often ambient landscapes to the whole, and also including a lovely echoplex-esque a la John Martyn accompaniment to a signature song of the night based as it was on three notes, according to Sheppard, sung by a bird in his garden, assuming he wasn’t telling us a magpie. This also reminded of JM and Sheppard’s accompaniment to the gorgeous My Creator on The Cobbles album.

Michel Benita on bass provided tight mirrorings of melodic lines in most of the songs, and in one he also established and sustained a great riff that livened up the pace – a little. Indeed, those wanting a rip-up of notes might have been disappointed, but that wasn’t the case with me. There was one song near the end where Aarset demonstrated the wonderful growl and argument of his electronics, and Sheppard did run some speedy rise and falls around this. Sebastian Rochford on drums was a precise anchor throughout, often dancing around his cymbals.

Most of the beautiful songs played last night were from Sheppard’s upcoming album Romaria due for release in January 2018. I do look forward to that. It will have its own nuances, no doubt, but I can’t imagine it capturing the finesse of Sheppard’s playing live – the sweet shifts into higher octaves when he plays, especially in the gentleness of it all, is sublime. As my aural companion on the night said at one point in the performance, playing at such a pace and relative calm requires great skill.

This skill and pleasing/pleasant/palpable control was most evident in the sweet surprise of the band’s encore, a calming, convivial cover of The Beatles’ And I Love Her. A lovely end to a lovely gig.

Richmond Fontaine, with support from Fernando - The Tunnels, Bristol, 18th April, 2016

The End

Willy Vlautin with The Delines, and Fernando in support, last played The Tunnels in November 2014 and that was a brilliant gig.

Last night's return had Fernando playing a sweet set with long time recording and performing partner guitarist Dan Eccles [also from RF]. So much of the material Fernando played consisted of gentle ballads so this highlights his wonderful vocal but also quality as a performer because it is hard, it seems to me, to engage an audience - as he did fully - with that kind of thoughtful, meditative pace, as you might expect in a totally acoustic folk setting. It has to be said that Eccles' amped-up guitar work adds phenomenal depth to the live presentation of Fernando's great songs, including covers, and the reverb/tremolo he gets from vibrating the neck is amazing 

This return also had Willy now with long-time band Richmond Fontaine playing on their farewell tour, and songs from their final album You Can't Go Back If There's Nothing To Go Back To featured throughout: those familiar plaintive Vlautin narratives in Wake Up Ray, I Can't Black It Out If I Can't Wake Up, I Got Off The Bus and A Night In The City. These are so moving in their storytelling core, but the band playing live fill this out with other emotional depths, with Freddy Trujillo on thumping bass and some lovely harmony vocals, and the great Sean Oldham on backbone drums and also vocal duties. Eccles is again so influential in this, the haunting resonance of his guitar work on A Night in the City a fine example. And as a whole tight band! In addition to these musical vignettes, the band rocked in older, earlier RF numbers [and hard-core fans from that past clearly enjoyed this selection from the archives] as well as from a Ventures-esque instrumental to a psychedelic jam like The Door's The End in Apocalypse Now.

But I hope they all return again in whatever formation brings them back to the UK.

My reviews of both Fernando's latest here and Richmond Fontaine's here.

Gregory Porter - Colston Hall, Bristol, 6th April, 2016

Outstanding Man and Band

To melt and to funk and to jazz it up. I think Gregory Porter pretty much covered this and more. He’s quite a presence: a big guy and that trademark cap. So when he strolls on after his fine, fine band has laid some grooved foundations, there is considerable appreciative and expectant applause; when he croons his first notes, the females [it was that noticeable, c’mon] melted – one in front of me laid her head on her friend’s shoulder, a musically empathetic swoon. To my left, another’s dazzled smiling was palpable. Hey, I was touched. He has the voice.

I’ve wanted to see Porter live since the beginning, and last night at Bristol he delivered on all of my hopeful expectations. He isn’t chatty on stage, but he puts all his vocal energy into the songs and covered the ‘hits’ as well as new material from his forthcoming. Indeed, I’m so glad to have heard Take Me To the Alley live because it carries weight on stage, and listening on record will resonate of that hearing.

There’s little point naming all the songs, but I did look forward to and loved 1960 What?. Wonderful. And that hooker/snippet of Papa Was a Rolling Stone! And that band! Great to see Chip Crawford on piano, and he controls with skill and talent: liked in particular a duet segment with saxophonist Tivon Pennicott where their sweet interplay was gorgeous.

All in the band got solo spots and all excelled. It takes a great band to work with a great singer. The encore was Free from Liquid Spirit – a rousing rouser – and after delivering to the crowd’s absolute delight, Porter was the first to leave the stage as the band continued playing, each eventually departing in turn until they had all gone. The ovation was for the band, but Porter obviously, yet he had long gone: I quite liked the humility of that.

My previous reviews of his work can be read here.

Kandace Springs - support act, Gregory Porter, Bristol, 6th April

I will be reviewing Gregory Porter's outstanding show last night a little later, but first a mention of the support act Kandace Springs who in a short set demonstrated what a huge talent she is. Set up for Porter's performance, Kandace played at Chip Crawford's grand piano which meant she had to play with her back to the audience. Odd and annoying. But all the more remarkable that she still captivated with her soulful vocal as well as excellent piano playing, here jazz infused and supported by double bass and drums for this trio presentation. I have been researching Springs on YouTube this morning and she sings well beyond jazz, with what seems a more prevalent leaning to soul with funk and some hip hop: the set at Daryl Hall's home - with the great man himself - is impressive. It's all impressive, as was last night's talent taster. Looking forward to her album Blue Eyes in July. Kandace performed First Time I Ever Saw Your Face last night - a sweet and affecting delivery. What a salutary reminder to never miss the support.....

Mary Spender - support for the Walker/Thompson gig, St George's, Bristol, 17th February, 2016

Brilliant In and From Bristol

Her Vigier guitar in Revolution Green will for the moment serve as a partial metaphor for the elegant as well as sassy talent that is Mary Spender. It is a pretty guitar, yet that is mere show if played with little skill – I imagine my amateurish attempts – but when Mary picks it up at the start of her support slot, the immediate fluidity of her setting-up is impressive as well as tempting. There is a blues run that is suggestive too, and when she sings, this is where the promise is fully realised.

Supporting Ryley Walker with Danny Thompson at last night’s St George’s gig would seem a daunting task – as it so often is with an expectant audience – but Spender instantly performs with confidence and clarity: a voice that is pure and ranging; her guitar playing with such felicity, a slap and picking that has a jazzy characteristic as much as the blues. Her fine songs are often sung in tandem with the guitar work deftly picking out the key melodies, and her vocal tone resonates wonderfully – especially in the fulsome acoustics of the venue. There is a beautiful self-harmonising [I am guessing] vocal work-out on her The Electric EP I picked up with two others last night.

I was generally impressed, and having picked up and listened to those three available cds [two studio eps and one live recording in Philadelphia] as well as all the music on her web site – which includes a sweet video cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit – I feel excited to have heard this emerging talent on that stage.

To anyone reading this review, I would recommend an immediate visit of Spender’s site here to listen to the music available. And it is all in the listening, and I can confirm that she excels both live and in recording [if you can make her The Louisiana gig in hometown Bristol on the 31^st March, she will be playing with a band and that will be interesting, but the soloing is damn fine enough].

I don’t think I quite accounted for the ‘sass’ I wanted from my opening metaphor. This is for me always a positive quality, and I take from it the essence of being confident. I liked her confidence in making it clear to the audience last night that she has taken her journey: she has travelled, played in America, recorded in Nashville, and this has taken some years. She is now ready and releasing her debut album in October of this year, and I look forward to that. I look forward to seeing her play again and sharing this discovery with a wider audience.

Ryley Walker with Danny Thompson, St George's, Bristol, 17th February, 2016

Ryley and Reverie

Ryley Walker is a young American guitar artist, his artistry clearly in the instrumental work across a variety of open tunings and finger-picking dexterity that is quite outstanding, and also in the jazz-infused songcraft where, on record - especially his most recent Primrose Green - his backing band augments those inflections, and, in live performance, the extended jamming as with last night at the wonderful St George’s in Bristol. That he was accompanied there by the legendary Danny Thompson on double bass augmented this performance to levels of bliss.

Midway through last night’s gig Walker referred to one of the instrumental improvs as a ‘boogie jam’ which I quite like as an upbeat assessment, but it struck me that they were most like ragas, and his performance of these seems characterised by a trance-like immersion in the soloing where sudden bursts of chord strikes are balanced by delicate finger-picks and occasionally the sweetest minor chord sequences.

All the time Thompson played his exquisite bass where dropping into the lower notes resonates with such soothing power, and then he bends glorious notes to meander within the tunes. The audience was clearly gathered to see Danny playing as much as Ryley – judging from his reception – but it was palpable how Walker asserted his presence in a mutually assured construction of folkjazz symmetry, this their first gig of a tour and perfectly at ease in the virtuoso partnership.

Walker is also a consummate folk artist, this also more evident I would guess in a live performance of acoustic guitar – though amped – and double bass, compared with on record, though his first All Kinds of You veers more to this than the jazzier and at times psychedelic PG. His singing is also heavily influenced by a folk tradition, the obvious echoes of influences like Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and John Martyn. In his more trance-vocals, one can hear Tim Buckley and Van Morrison with yelps and hollers and grunts and other guttural expressions of emotion. His vocal variations on the singular word alright were hypnotic.

The main set last night ended on Primrose Green, and its distinctive riff remained with me long afterwards. Most affecting personally, however, was the first song of the subsequent encore, a gentle acoustic playing and singing of Sweet Satisfaction, the most poignant of the John Martyn echoes of the evening. Walker doesn’t use his voice quite like the instrument Martyn eventually made his own distinctive sound, but he did sing with the beautiful clarity of earlier Martyn, and the chord sequence, as well as slap playing, could have been a song from JM’s early period too. All the time this was being performed I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of nostalgic reverie was going through Thompson’s mind, such a long-time musical collaborator and great friend of John Martyn. I think I saw these two play live together twice many, many years ago, and Thompson must have a sense of fond memory when performing with the youthful Walker, reminding of those days. I have no doubt that any such sentimentality – nothing wrong in that – is wrapped in a profound professional regard from the senior legend to the emerging talent of Walker, whose volatile life exploits and experiences would seem to mirror some of the boisterous existentialism of the Thompson/Martyn years! 

Review/comments previously on Ryley Walker on this blog can be found here. 

The Delines - The Tunnels, Bristol, 4th November, 2014 gig review

Consummate

Enjoyed a great gig by The Delines at The Tunnels in Bristol as the band began their UK tour having just returned from New Zealand and Australia. The show was supported by the band’s, and Willy Vlautin’s, Portland-based good friend Fernando Viciconte who played a fine acoustic set having returned to performing after a longish spell of being ill. Fernando was clearly very pleased to be playing, and he was a warm and enthusiastic person to talk with. His songs are largely intense personal stories sung with a powerful, emotive vocal that reminded me of Jimmy LaFave. You can hear one of his latest songs The Dogs here, and there are further downloads available here.

Fernando at The Tunnels

The Delines played a wonderfully engaging set including key tracks from their album Colfax, including Calling In, Colfax Avenue, The Oil Rigs at Night, State Line, Flight 31, and in the encore, I Won’t Slip Up [all reviewed here]. I don’t need to say much more really on how highly I rate these, but as with Vlautin’s other band Richmond Fontaine and their last album The High Country, on which Amy Boone also took the storytelling vocal - here - the despondency and [if it isn’t an exaggeration] everyday nihilism of the narratives are less foreboding when performed within the high spirits and band repartee of a live gig. This doesn’t in any way diminish the emotive impact when being sung live by Amy where they are in fact even more poignant. But as a live experience it is as uplifting as it is a touchstone to the power of consummate storytelling about the often harsh realities of our lives.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Colston Hall, Bristol, 17th October, 2013: encore

Excellent Review

There is an excellent review of the same CS&N concert I saw at Bristol in the current edition of Classic Rock magazine. The dropline quote is 'It's a swirling but unified set, more than the sum of its parts', and the article closes with 'if it really does prove to be their UK swansong, let it be marked as a great one'. The rest captures perfectly what I also heard and felt, though no admission of almost-tears: recommended.

Roy Harper - Colston Hall, Bristol, 27th October, 2013

Still Batting at the Crease

On the same day as septuagenarian Lou Reed passed, I was watching septuagenarian Roy Harper playing a blissful if understandably reflective gig at Bristol. Many of his generation of musical greats are leaving us, not surprisingly because of their age and the ravages of, for quite a few, lives lived in a lane most of us could only ever imagine travelling – through we have journeyed by proxy through their wonderful songs – and this vulnerability on the continuing spiral of life’s mortal coil for those still performing adds that extra poignancy, if a little sentimental, in seeing them perhaps one last time.

Not that Harper seemed ready to go anywhere, other than home for a deserved rest after a truly wonderful and full performance on a night that presaged storms which never really bothered us in Bristol, nor on the still uplifted journey back to my home afterwards. Indeed, with respect to aging, Harper was self-effacing – and a little naughty, for two reasons – when he introduced the beautiful song January Man from his latest album Man and Myth. It was ‘naughty’ because he firstly claimed it was a song about a 70 year old man lusting after 25 year old women and being ignored [joking he’d forgotten to look in the mirror in the morning], and secondly because he actually made light of the song’s meaning in this way where in fact it is so clearly and tenderly and movingly about growing older, having regrets but also the honesty to articulate this.

Accompanied by a beautiful string and brass ensemble, playing arrangements by David Bedford who Harper remembered fondly, and by Jonathan Wilson who produced Harper’s latest [and performed an opening solo spot, a delightful bonus on the night], Roy played a surprising number from Man and Myth – pleasing me and my close friend also there, and who had seen Roy with Led Zeppelin at Bath in 1969 – and these included the other sweet track Time is Temporary and the epic Heaven is Here. Roy’s vocal was so strong. As I recently commented when reviewing M&M, his bass to falsetto range is still impressive on record, and now confirmed live too: absolutely startling. And the guitar work also continues to be so distinctive and brilliant.

Other highlights in two sets of sustained highlights were Me and My Woman and the delicate, gorgeous North Country Girl. I thought that after my emotional reaction to seeing Crosby, Stills and Nash recently I might have a similar response, a response born from an accumulation of overwrought nostalgia through seeing these great artists in the twilight of their careers and lives: it is in what they represent through their talents and how the music prompts the reverie of times gone and, as a consequence, the brush with that fragility and vulnerability I mentioned at the start of this review – but I didn’t. And when Roy closed on an encore of When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease, I simply wanted him to play on and on, uplifted, as I have said, by his commanding presence in the here and now and by his continuing intellect, wry humour and enjoyment in performing.