overlap

Three gigs in three nights earlier this week means I'm neither caught
up with my blog nor my sleep, but with another very late night ahead
tonight I do need to try and clear the decks.

I saw Evan Dando doing a set of Lemonheads songs solo acoustic at a
festival a few years ago, and he was fantastic, but I'd never seen any
incarnation of The Lemonheads as a band. Drummers seem to be
particularly attracting my attention at the moment, and that's without
ever mentioning the great simplicity and economy in Ian Paice's
drumming from a couple of weeks ago. In this case it's Devon Ashley
who speeds up and slows down in perfect timing with Evan several times
a song, and while nothing outstanding or extra special, this was a
perfectly good gig.

My expectation was that I might be almost on my own going to see Duke
Special, but either quality has a way of getting through to people, or
I'm even more out of touch with the musical zeitgeist than I thought.
Either way it was a pleasant surprise to find the place close to full.

Beth Rowley's support slot was remarkable, and for someone like me who
doesn't often get much closer to the blues than the blues-rock of Free
or Bad Company to be this impressed with someone doing what might
vaguely be described as vocal-led blues torch singing tends to suggest
it was a bit out of the ordinary. Stunning voice.

For my third Duke Special show in under a year, I mostly knew what to
expect. In the drummer category you have the very special Chip Bailey
who is undoubtedly capable of filling a stage all on his own. Looking
like a cross between Bill Bailey and Wurzel Gummidge is possibly not a
calculated move suitable for the manufactured boy bands of our time,
but all adds to the ramshackle, slightly unhinged charm in his case.

One of the things I particularly like is the way Pete Wilson's Belfast
accent creeps through in certain places in the songs - we have enough
identical sounding midlantic or eshtry voices as it is, and it's a
refreshing change to get something different. Rowley comes back out
for a couple of duet pieces towards the end of a great show, and
there's a sense that this is a band really hitting its stride now.
Worth catching while you can still see the whites of their eyes
anyway.

There are a couple of pictures of Evan and Devon, and half a dozen
shots from Duke Special now on flickr, and there's still an extra busy
day to catch up on between this lot and what awaits me tonight, of
which undoubtedly more in a day or two.

Labels: Beth Rowley, Chip Bailey, Duke Special, Evan Dando, Lemonheads, Peter Wilson