Maybe you already know that Allan’s a bit of a Southside Johnny fan. Ok, a lot of a Southside Johnny fan. So, we decided to invite Johnny to contribute to the 2017 High Fives. And he did, with not one but four sets of High Fives chosen by our random category generator. That’s the kind of value you get at a Jukes gig. Take it away, Southside…

 

5 songwriting heroes

Cole Porter

Tom Waits

Steven Van Zandt

Bob Dylan

Smokey Robinson

 

5 places he’d play every night 

Paradiso, Amsterdam

Shepherd’s Bush, London

Birchmere, Alexandria, Virginia

Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park, NJ

Anywhere in Cleveland, Ohio

 

5 people he’d like to meet 

Mark Twain

Big Bill Shakespeare

Barack Obama

Willie Dixon

My mother’s father

 

5 favourite harmonica solos

Big Walter, “Walking By Myself”,

Sonny Boy Williamson “Don’t Start Me Talking”,

Little Walter, “Tell me Mama” and “Lights Out”,

Paul Butterfield, “Born in Chicago” and a thousand others.

 

5 covers he hasn’t done yet

Way too many to list.  Happy New Year!

 

“Uncouth Pilgrims”: the title’s a quotation from Mark Twain’s travelogue, “The Innocents Abroad”. It’s Keegan McInroe’s fourth solo album and it pulls together various strands of Americana, weaving them together with (mainly) stories of Keegan’s own musical pilgrimage around the world. He succeeds in uniting some diverse styles with his travelling minstrel theme and honest lyrics that shift easily from gentle and pastoral to the raw and urban. It’s difficult to pin him down to a single genre as the album shifts from the Nashville country of the openers, “Country Music Outlaw” and “Tonight” through the boogie of “Lumberjack”, the raw electric blues of “Uncouth Pilgrim” and the folk of “Woody and Ruth”.

There’s no doubt about the quality of his voice. He goes all the way from the growling early Bob Seger feel of “Uncouth Pilgrim” to the quiet and close-miked “Verona” and “Resolutions” and he sounds completely convincing all the way, backed by musicians that always sound assured but never flashy. This is all about the voice and the songs, but it helps that the arrangements and the musicians create a backdrop that works superbly whether it’s a full band or just a couple of instruments.

The songs are very much lyric-driven, a wanderer’s tales of hangovers, romantic opportunities missed and lustful opportunities taken across several continents. Virtually everything on the album sounds autobiographical, apart from the folk ballad “Woody and Ruth” which surely has to be a Woody Guthrie story and, with Woody’s reputation, who knows whether it’s true or false. It’s a very sparse arrangement built around simple guitar and drum parts with a very laconic vocal, but it works beautifully, connecting Woody’s journeys around America with the modern troubadour’s journeys around the world. And it’s not just about quality, the album weighs in at a hefty fourteen songs, so no-one’s going to feel short-changed.

The album’s a fine piece of work, pulling together Keegan’s roots in various forms of American music to create an evocative musical picture of the life of ‘Just another shaggy singer of songs’. It’s also a shoo-in for the ‘Most Cities and Countries Mentioned on One Album’ category at the next AMA UK awards.

“Uncouth Pilgrims” is released on Friday May 27^th and you can get a CD copy here.