So how about five great gigs this year? Well, I’ve had plenty to choose from and I can’t say that I’ve seen a bad one, so it hasn’t been an easy choice to whittle it down to the top five (and no cheating this time either). These are all gigs that I walked away from feeling elated, feeling that I’d seen something special that I wanted to tell the world about. So I did, and here’s a reminder of how good these gigs were.

John Fairhurst @Rich Mix

On a freezing February Friday night in Shoreditch, Rich Mix was a welcome respite from bars full of bankers and ‘exclusive’ lap-dancing joints. The venue is a social enterprise where the motivation isn’t purely profit and programming of events is always interesting. On this particular night, John Fairhurst, along with Pete Episcopo (bass) and Toby Murray (drums) played a raw and raucous set of blues focussing on the 2014 album “Saltwater”. Some of the album versions of the songs were fairly big production numbers but the live performance was strictly a power trio affair with John’s blistering guitar topping off the mixture. The journey back through Shoreditch didn’t seem quite so bad after a night of proper blues with electric guitars playing way up loud. You can see some photos from the gig here.

Mollie Marriott @The Half Moon

This one was firmly in the eagerly-anticipated category. Mollie’s been working quietly for some time putting together a great band for live and studio work featuring her Jim Stapley bandmates Izzy Chase-Phillmore, Sam Tanner and Johnson-Jay Medwik-Daley. After an interesting acoustic support set from her nephew, Mo Evans, Mollie’s full band made their first live appearance in a Half Moon packed with fans and a few well-known faces as well. It was obvious from the start that this isn’t just a bunch of hired hands; this is a bunch of really good mates as well. None of their playing is showy or attention-seeking; everything serves the songs and underpins Mollie’s phenomenal voice, and it all works perfectly. The audience were onside anyway, but Mollie and the band gave a great performance of material from the upcoming debut album and a couple of covers as well. Here are some photos of this one.

Mad Dog Mcrea and Sound of the Sirens @The Half Moon

This was a very special gig. I’d been invited along to see Mad Dog Mcrea and I had no idea about the support on the night, Sound of the Sirens. It’s such a great feeling when you see an artist for the first time and you know instantly that they’re something special. And it’s not just me; apparently Chris Evans was quite impressed with them as well. Anyway, they played a storming set completely winning over the audience with their powerful songs, dynamics, and harmonies. If the night had stopped at that point, I would have been perfectly happy, but we still had Mad Dog Mcrea to come, with an energetic run through material from their album “Almost Home” plus a few old favourites and crowd pleasers. Two great bands with enough in common to appeal to the whole audience but with enough differences to create a very varied night. And there are some photos here.

Squeeze and Dr John Cooper Clarke @Indigo2

Another interesting double bill, this time with two very different artists, linked by the era which saw the start of their careers. John Cooper Clarke (now making the most of his honorary doctorate) has been doing poetry and comedy events for a few years but the tour with Squeeze put him back in front of big audiences filled with people who remembered him from the first time round. He throws more one-liners and gags into his routine now but a lot of the old favourite poems are still there, although some of them, particularly “Twat”, have evolved over time. On this night he was a barnstorming crowd-pleaser, building up the audience nicely for the headline act.

This year Squeeze had a new album to promote so the setlist was varied, to say the least, with material covering almost forty years from “Take Me I’m Yours” to new songs like “Cradle to the grave” with the usual smattering of different interpretations of Squeeze classics. What made this performance so special was the group of musicians (mainly Glenn Tilbrook’s Fluffers) now making up the rest of Squeeze who add upright bass, melodica and other esoteric instruments to the mix as well as adding rich vocal harmonies. Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook have never sounded better and what an incredible set of songs. Guess what, some photos here.

Graham Parker and Brinsley Schwarz & The Union Chapel

And finally. One of the greatest talents never to break through in the seventies and eighties, Graham Parker, who toured twice this year; once with The Rumour and once with Brinsley Schwarz. With a songbook which again covers almost forty years and a new album to promote as well, Graham Parker mixed up some established classics, some surprises and some new songs to delight an audience which might have been a little biased anyway. His voice is still remarkable and the songs are all strong enough to work in stripped-back arrangements. This wasn’t just a nostalgia thing; there were new songs to promote and they all sounded as good as anything he’s done before. He’s a remarkable man and it was a real pleasure to hear these songs in such a beautiful venue. How about a look at GP in the seventies and now?

 

 

I don’t know how I managed to miss this one for so long, but this was my first visit to Dingwalls, and what a great music venue it is; good visibility all round, nice lighting for a few photos and a perfect atmosphere for this line-up of Gaz Brookfield, Mad Dog Mcrea and Ferocious Dog. The omens for the night were all good when we had a quick chat with Michael Mathieson of Mad Dog Mcrea on the way in to the gig and got in just in time to catch the opening set from Bristol-based Gaz Brookfield whose fast and furious acoustic songs set the tone for the evening.

The names Mad Dog Mcrea and Ferocious Dog seem to be inextricably interlinked in certain musical circles and, having been really impressed by Mad Dog Mcrea at The Half Moon earlier this year, I was curious to find out more about Ferocious Dog. I may be in a small minority here (although Plus One certainly agreed), but the running order didn’t really do Ferocious Dog any favours; Mad Dog Mcrea are a very difficult act to follow.

Ferocious Dog have built up a substantial following over the last few years with their high energy blend of folk and rock with punk attitudes and that’s exactly what they delivered on the night. They were visually striking as well (you can see the photos in a few days) but that added to my misgivings about the performance, particularly when compared to Mad Dog Mcrea. It felt a bit like things hadn’t moved on since the days of The Levellers or Chumbawamba and that some of the feeling for the music had been swamped by the attitude. It might just have worked out if they hadn’t been the last band on.

For a band supposedly promoting their “Almost Home” album (it’s very, very good and you should listen to it), Mad Dog Mcrea played a set that was much more of a greatest hits package based on requests from their many fans in the crowd. So, although “Heart of Stone” appeared near the start of the set, it was all about the crowd pleasers, from the traditional “Raggle-Taggle Gipsy” through “Johnny no Legs”, “Climb a Hill” and “Am I Drinking Enough?”, to the madness of “Little Black Fly” and “The Happy Bus”. Michael Mathieson (acoustic guitar and vocals) fronts up the party, but it’s also about the interplay between Pete Chart, Jimi Galvin, Dave Podmore, Dan Crimp and Nicki Powell, who create fascinating textures and glide effortlessly through changes of style and tempo. The band might try to make it look like it’s all just a bit of fun, but the music is everything, and that’s what connects them with the fans, who love the commitment and sheer joy of the band’s performance. Another triumph for Mad Dog Mcrea.

It must have been difficult for Ferocious Dog to follow that set. They didn’t do anything that was bad, but the bar had already been set way too high.

Ok, life lessons for music lovers part two. First, don’t just turn up to watch the headline band; not all support bands have paid to get on a tour, some of them are actually there because the headliners like them or just because they’re good. That was certainly the case with Sound of the Sirens (that’s the temptresses who play enchanting music, not the minor third you hear before an emergency vehicle knocks you down) at The Half Moon. Second, if you’re watching bands at smaller, independent venues, buy something at the merchandising stall. The band’s probably playing for peanuts (if they’re being paid at all) and buying their CDs or memorabilia means that they actually get some kind of income and, let’s face it, they probably need it a lot more than you do.

So, rant over, what were the bands like? Brilliant, thanks, I’m done. What, more specific? Ok, bloody brilliant.

No seriously, Abbe Martin and Hannah Wood (Sound of the Sirens) are from Exeter and they claiming they’re stalking Mad Dog Mcrea on tour. Abbe plays guitar and mandolin, Hannah plays guitar, both sing beautifully and it’s all underpinned by kick drum and stomp box percussion. They shift the mood from happy to sad and back again through the set and they sound equally at ease with the slow, reflective songs and the barnstorming foot-tappers. What they also have is a gently charismatic stage presence; there’s a lot of self-deprecation but it doesn’t hide the fact that they’re very, very good. The playing is spot on and two voices complement each other perfectly whether they’re singing harmony or counterpoint. There you go, I’m happy and the headliners aren’t even tuning up yet.

I’ve heard some really good things about Mad Dog Mcrea, I love “Almost Home”, and I’ve been looking forward to this gig, but how do you follow a support band after they’ve put in a storming shift like Sound of the Sirens have? Well, you could have most of the band starting up on stage while the singer makes an entrance through the audience banging a bloody great drum. That would do it; we’re off and running, but how do you describe what happens when Mad Dog Mcrea hit the loud pedal?

Well, at the risk of repeating my colleague Klare, I think a teamsheet might help. The team is Michael Mathieson (guitar and vocals), Dan Crimp (whistles, flute and vocals), Jimi Galvin (bass), Dave Podmore (banjo, bouzouki and vocals), Pete Chart (drums and percussion) and Nicki Powell (fiddle). The instruments hint at a folky, Celtic feel and that’s part of it but there are an awful lot of other elements in there as well. You can hear jazz, gypsy and eastern European, klezmer, bluegrass, country and bit of straightforward rock and pop all mixed together and marinated in bootleg hooch until its effects are wildly unpredictable. Now that sounds like my kind of night.

It’s no surprise that there isn’t a setlist; the band likes to respond to requests and shift direction if that’s what the audience needs so what we get is a selection of songs from “Almost Home” (the tempo-shifting “Heart of Stone”, the banjo-led “You Can’t Find Me”, the infuriatingly catchy “Cher” with its clever lyrical references, “Almost Home” , “The Sound” featuring Suzie Mac on backing vocals, and the Rory Gallagher cover – not that Rory Gallagher – “Mad Dog Coll”) and a few old favourites like “Raggle Taggle Gypsy”, “Climb a Hill”, “Little Black Fly”, “Am I Drinking Enough?”, the Richard Thompson cover “Bee’s Wing” and “Pikeys Killed my Goldfish”.

But even that isn’t eclectic enough because, on top of all the musical references that are dropped in, there’s a cover of “The Devil Came Down to Georgia” showcasing Nicki’s fiddle playing (with a sneaky reference to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) and a medley starting with “The Bare Necessities”. After ninety minutes of that, the band and the audience are drained and you can see why the band have built up such a fanatical following; the audience don’t know what’s coming next but they know that the band will give everything until the show’s over (and way beyond if we didn’t have music curfews), night after night.

This was easily the best headliner and support I’ve seen in ages. Just don’t ask me how I felt when the alarm went off at 5:45 this morning.

“Almost Home” is out now on God Dam Records Ltd (GDR004). CDs and downloads available from Amazon and downloads from iTunes.

“Sound of the Sirens” CDs and downloads available here.

Mad Dog Mcrea hail from Plymouth, Devon and comprise: Michael Mathieson – guitar & vocals, Dan Crimp – whistles & flute, Jimi Galvin – bass, Dave Podmore – Bazooki & banjo, Pete Chart – drums & Nicki Powell – Fiddle. But that line up of instruments doesn’t even begin to describe the rich fruitiness of the energetic soundscape they create.

A heady punch of mainly uptempo folk, acoustic rock, gypsy strains of bluegrass and jazz touches, with some Brit humour and delivery. They also have some rock’n’roll anecdotes and a buccaneering approach to music, throwing lots of influences into the pot and creating something very listenable from it. They have a good reputation as a live gigging band, having done at least their fair share of festivals and are currently on tour;” Almost Home” translates their live energy well to digital. I don’t know who the writing talent is in the band but the overall sound is very collaborative throughout. The arrangements aren‘t necessarily straight-ahead but they are not meandering either. Sean Lakeman takes credit for the even and bright production.

As well as local nods (“Devonside”) and peopled by gangsters, pirates, faeries and gypsies and the themes are quite diverse from the tunnellers of WWI(“You Can’t Find Me”) to the comically romantic “Cher”.

Overall it’s a good listen that entertains and uplifts.   I should imagine this would be a good drinking soundtrack, though there are cautionary tales about alcohol use, and a tinge of melancholy, “The Sound”, for home time.