Review: John Kelly/Big Al Whittle... at the Loughborough Acoustic Club, Thursday March 12th, 2009...

Back from Berlin... and a wander down to the Loughborough Acoustic Club with Mr Marmion to see John Kelly in a double-header with Big Al Whittle. An intriguing combo – Kelly mainly focuses on traditional materials, deployed in a unique style that uses harmonium and guitar as backing for his high, pure voice. Big Al – rumbustious blues/old jazz/nouveau music hall for want of a better term. The latter better suited to the venue – one would have thought. Yet John Kelly, seated at his harmonium in front of the stage and eschewing the p.a. - which is usually considered necessary in this club given the proximity to the bar, managed to weave his spell, drawing a rapt audience deep into his unique sound world. Performing, with his usual relaxed and gentle humour, a run through half a dozen or so songs – 'Banks of Ponchartrain,' Leasy Lindsay,' 'Lady Gregory,' among them... I have written before about John – here – but to repeat – he has a refreshing purity of vision that is not the stifling ignorant 'purism' of so much English folk music. Rather: a strong sense of purpose and skill that transforms even familiar material, spinning well-loved songs sideways to reveal new emotional depths.

Big Al Whittle has a George Melly-ish side to him – larger than life and rooted in American blues and jazz. Without the annoying campness and overwrought bathos of the late Melly... Al's Americana accent whips back into local dialect when necessary to refute any 'blackfacing' and his broad good humour is buttressed by his crisp, accurate picking skills – opening on a couple of standards – missed the first one as I was in the jakes releasing some of the Guinness, but I caught up with 'It's a sin to tell a lie,' - which had the bar staff singing along and doing some nice steps. Al writes songs such as 'Trish' (whose mini-skirt went 'swish, swish swish') – an evocation of long-lost and unrequited student love back in the earnest revolutionary day of Mao's red book and other murderer classics of late marxism: 'Trish, Trish, she was a communist.' 'Aunty Nellie,' a celebration of a game young lass's exploits during WW2 with our American cousins. Set in a 12 bar blues structure but sung in broad local accent – 'you've been having hankie pankie with those Yankees down in Burton Wood.' Great ribald stuff. Mr Marmion was laughing so much I feared for his health. As was I. Other joys – 'Buster the Line Dancing Dawg.' (Further explanation here...)... plus a link to a version of the song by the great Jack Hudson(!)). And 'Big Red Sausage.' Hmmmm... As for his song about Brides in the Bath murderer 'George Joseph Smith' – almost finished us off – 'drown 'em in the bath, drown 'em in the bath, drown 'em in the bath because I'm a psychopath.'

Note that Big Al's web site has links to all these songs. Worth buying the album, I'd say...

A great night – the contrast in styles created an interesting dynamic and spread the time further than I would have thought – two half-hour-ish spots seeming much longer with being so crammed with fascinating and funny musics...

As a footnote – Big Al reminded me glancingly of a local musician, Dave Turner, whom I saw many years ago playing in his hometown of Nottingham and surrounding areas. Dave also fused blues picking with baroque streams of comedic thought. Unfortunately I discovered he had died recently. But the anarchic spirit lives on...

Review: John Kelly at the Pack Horse, 21st November, 2008

Sometimes the best gigs are the ones you fall over in the dark, unexpected treats... I struggled out Friday night down to the Pack Horse because I had agreed to do the door for Mr Marmion – was feeling tired and a bit rough but did not want to let him down so duly reported for duty. After last weekend's concentrated blast of jazz- from fire musics and back via various ambles into the Asian sub continent – plus the great Roma buskers I heard - somehow folk music was not high on the acoustic agenda. So: it is good to have one's expectations wrenched sideways... To be fair, John Kelly had come with high recommendations from sources I respect, but my mood was not ready for the usual sad wander through the Arc of Loss that I perceive much contemporary English folk music to describe. In the event – the Harmonium Hero conquered all, despatching my misgivings immediately... Possessed of a light, lithe voice, more vocal technique than the average folkie but used expressively, for the benefit of the song, he accompanies on harmonium, backed up with cittern (I think) and guitar. All of which he plays masterfully. This is a man who has thought about his chosen music deep and long I suspect – there is a steely intellectual base to his performance, evidenced in the instrumental backings, (and discretely hidden under a quiet, dryly humourous demeanour) that lets his wonderful voice ride freely over. Use of the harmonium especially means he can match breath to air, as it were, in an organic flow, swaying and bending with the words. This gives the sea songs the movement of waves almost, the long ballads he likes, room for the narrative to flow. His playing on the stringed instruments was equally fluent, displaying technique enough to bend the songs into his use and avoiding the lockstep of orthodox folk clawhammer on his fingerstyle excursions. The material: intriguing... A couple of songs I did not know plus those I know well but haven't heard for a while, 'Polly on the shore,' ' Leazy Lindsay' (he bravely used the 'Lord Ronald McDonald' version and no one tittered!) 'Lakes of Pontchartrain,' 'Lord Gregory.' A nice surprise - 'Captain Kidd,' underpinned by fast, flatpicked cittern which echoed the first time I ever heard it, on a record of the late, wonderful Alex Campbell's back in the early sixties. (Which I found recently on the internet, a warm reminder of a great guy – 'Hell, yeah.'). John has been around, as they say, starting out back in Liverpool way back and retiring from the scene for a few years. Yet in his recent return he displays freshness of vision, rather than retreads of past glories. A rare talent – to be uncompromising musically yet be also accessible. Summed up, perhaps, by his encore: not a belter but a thoughtful meditation on 'The Plains of Waterloo.' A downbeat move – which gripped throughout. A special night... maybe there is something to this folk music lark after all... John gave a performance of grace and subtle power...

A final thought. Mr Marmion told me over lemonade on Saturday afternoon that John had been travelling around the country doing spots in the local clubs in the old pre-internet/MySpace fashion of building a base of support – and had been camping in a van during this endeavour. Which in the weather we are experiencing at the moment shows some steel and dedication. Harmoniums were instruments that were exported to the colonies and beyond in the nineteenth century, because they were not too adversely affected by the climate and were reasonably portable. Missionaries especially would have used them. Fancifully, I see John Kelly as a kind of poetic musical missionary, the long beard giving images of Walt Whitman and the Old Testament in equal measure, taking his music to the heathen. (Walt's beard 'full of butterflies' perhaps, after Lorca... Leviticus 19:27 'Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.'). He converted me back, that's for sure...