Snakes on the Stage - Rockin The Social

Snakes, Snakeoil Rattlers, and a folky Scouse sentimentalist shared the bill at What’s Cookin' on Saturday night. It was an even wackier night than usual at Stephen Ferguson’s roots music showcase. Obviously things festive were bound to feature, and in any case a bevvied up audience’s ability to sort the pearls from the swine is always limited. That said there were real turkeys and some total barnstorming brilliance at the ex-Ex-Servicemen’s Club in Leytonstone, East London. Now fashioning itself as ‘The Social’, this century old treasure is an excellent venue for things musical and things affordable in the booze department. In fact ‘The Social’ is a welcome relief from the veritable orgy of bourgeois bacchanalian bullshit on offer at surrounding denizens of winter wankerdom.

Things kicked off at 730pm on the dot when Stephen threw the first of several celebrations of 1977-79 on to his turntable and no less a punk than Joe Walsh reminded us that ‘Life’s Been Good’ so far. Well maybe it hasn’t been for that many of the audience, but who cared. We haven’t had that spirit here since, well, 1978, and it sounded fuggin A. I have to say though, Stephen, that keeping it so cranked up before the bands had hit the stage and when older folks were just trying to chat whilst supping their beers was a challenge for those less hearing-enhanced than younger punters (if there were any).

This was a mere detail though cos by 8pm Danny Jones was on. Bald, and bearing a loud shirt and an acoustic guitar, the man started well, performing the, admittedly tad maudlin, ‘Maggie Mae’ (not that one). A great Liverpudlian folk tune for sure and he does this stuff well. Danny then did a decent, emotionally engaged cover of Paul Simon’s ‘Slip Sliding Away’. Perhaps uncomfortable with the intimacy, he suddenly donned his Everton FC Santa hat (blue, natch) and proceeded to play a couple of Christmas-themed ditties that sounded like utter stuff and nonsense to me. Having plumbed those undesirable depths, Danny then proceeded, admittedly half-embarrassedly, to inform us that he was about to bless us with a Chris De Burgh song. It's not ‘The Lady in Red’, he said. ‘Shame,’ said my friend, audibly. After all, if things were going to be bad then we might as well embrace the full horror, horns and all. It was though that other gooey song by the diminutive songster; the one that conjures up preferably forgotten Christmasses of childhood yore when you carried a candle to bed, but not for midnight self-pleasuring.

Danny Jones at What's Cookin', Leytonstone

Danny finished up his set with a very different number that was self-penned and heartfelt. Sadly though, I’d already switched off after an excess of the ‘La lah la, lah-la lah-dee-dah’ singalong-a- chorus on the De Burgh number, and didn’t fully appreciate that Danny had performed by far his best number of the night.

Before long the first of two Snake-orientated dirty southern rock swaggerers were on the boards. The Snakeoil Rattlers, like the headlining Snakes, make a good fist of their imagined American musical heritage. In fact I reckon the lead singer of the Rattlers, he replete with Lemmy-style black cowboy hat but with tinsel, is an Aussie. Either way he certainly had the grizzled ol’ southern greebo rock schtick thing going on. Not nature’s best voice, but it kind of worked for most of the material. The, by definition, seated steel guitarist took a more measured hand in occasional lead vocal duties, which broadened the band's musical reach. On bass was, well, possibly a graduate of the Sid Vicious school of rhythm discipline, only with a lot less power. Next to him was John O'Sullivan, the link man of the night’s Snakery, a bassist/rhythm guitarist whose whole look (long-haired and balding) and musical demeanour spelt fun; and he definitely was having it. In fact at times it seemed like The Snakeoil Rattlers were just having their own thing going on on the stage almost regardless of the audience.

The Snakeoil Rattlers @WhatsCookin, Leytonstone

The Rattlers feat. steel guitar

Of the numbers whose titles I could almost make out there was (possibly) ‘Johnny Got Shot by a UFO’ (if that isn’t a song title of their’s, it should be). There was an out there rock n' roll/country thing happening with these guys - to the extent that on one number they sounded like The New York Dolls do Country. Things though took an unwelcome turn when Eddy and the Hot Rods’ ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’ was pretty much slaughtered. Not that the audience seemed bothered; a fair few had the signature hand-claps of this (non) punk classic off to a ‘T’. The lead singer managed, as my friend put it, to sing every note flat. Still, undimmed, and with the audience’s ongoing blessing, the boys then dusted off that annually overcooked if not seriously burnt festive offering, Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’; O'Sullivan replete with proffered Noddy-style hat (not that one, unfortunately). I’ve always hated Slade and if I never hear their Christmas song again it’ll be once too often.

At last The Snakes themselves were on stage. When I say ‘stage’ I mean that in the wonderfully egalitarian nature of the ex-ex-servicemen’s club, one end of the top floor room is where the musicians do their thing, surrounded, as you can see, by owls and colourful adornments that are pretty much the venue’s routine display all year round.

The Snakes gettin it on @What'sCookin'

The Snakes were exuding something dirty rock n roll before they’d played a note. I’d spotted the cape-wearing lead guitarist earlier – think an effete Dylan circa The Rolling Thunder Review show. The front man (and guitarist) was more yer archetypal Americana dude; big and grizzly and sporting a cap, lumberjack shirt and denim jacket. His vocals were definitely more present than those of his predecessor. The drummer played his heart (and arms) out. I was hearing southern rock thru the prism of the Stones’ ‘Exile’ period, though the Snakes’ promo material also mentions that Mink Deville is in the mix.

Snake pit boogie

There was one sublime wigged-out moment when the minimalist rock instrumentation just wouldn’t relent and I just didn’t want it to. Kinda like a Byrds’ space rock jam but grittier and without the space. In the bogs I distinctly heard one of the band announce that ‘If you’ve got any heroin, now’s the time to take it.’ Droll and kinda appropriate. There was then a number whose title sounded like ‘Turn Back the Clock’, which is pretty much what these boys do, as reflected in an apparent band signature tune: ‘The Last Days of Rock n’ Roll’. I was pleased that this wasn’t the finale because this isn't how rock n' roll’s last days should be spent at all. It sounded to me like a discarded number from the Ziggy Stardust era, which I guess could be taken as a massive compliment. It’s not meant to be. 

John O'Sullivan kept us entertained with his between numbers banter. He noted at one point that The Snakes had done three albums… in 50 years... and that the upcoming song was ‘from the middle one.’ It's 'a blues’ John said; a style, he gnomically observed, that's hard to play. Another notable song introduction was 'If The Snakes had had a hit' – and he noted that they haven’t – ‘then this would not be it.’ The Snakes were then off but were back on again in a flash. An encore was never in doubt and they served up a couple more good dirty rockin’ dishes to send the rightly satisfied punters home. It had been a great, if occasionally patchy, night.

What’s Cookin' is almost a musical institution, and Mr Ferguson and all of the musicians that play under his umbrella – in Leytonstone and other proximate venues – need to be lauded and supported. Check him and them out.

 

The Prisonaires Live at the Electric Palace, Hastings

“Is this a supergroup?” asked a friend of mine as we took our places last night in the third row of this tiny, historic, yet barely half-full Hastings cinema. If about 250 years of combined experience playing with some of the most important western musicians of the 20^th Century fits the bill, then The Prisonaires are definitely a supergroup. While not household names, any blues, jazz-rock, folk, or rock enthusiast will understand that these gentlemen were pivotal to some of the most ground-breaking music of the 1960s and '70s. Yet there were plenty of empty seats in a venue that only has 48 of them.

Acoustic guitarist and leader of the band, Alan King commented wryly that scheduling a gig during an international football tournament is always a disaster. But can it be that south-coast music buffs preferred staying at home to watch telly in the hope that Argentina would defeat the French, than attending a gig of this quality? When The Prisonaires finished their set a member of the audience stood up and shouted that it was the finest gig he’d seen in Hastings in years. It was one of the finest gigs I’ve seen anywhere in years.

Alan (left) with Bobby Valentino (fiddle), Les Morgan (drums) and Tony Reeves (right,bass)

Musical impresario, Alan King was a doyen of the famed 12 Bar Club, the ‘60s Soho music venue that gives the name to Dr King’s ‘12 Bar Music’, the platform for this and for some forthcoming Electric Palace gigs. King told me outside the Gents – the Electric Palace is so small that the toilets are never far away – that he is lucky enough to have played with his favourite guitarists, Davy Graham and Bert Jansch, and his favourite singer, Miller Anderson. For many years King also played with his favourite songwriter, Alan Hull (of Lindisfarne).

The aura of Graham and Jansch hung over proceedings as King opened the set riffing on the rite of passage folk guitar tune, ‘Anji’. What the advance publicity promised would be a hybrid of The Pentangle and Can, “with a touch of Miles Davis’” jazz-rock-funk fusion, was underway. ‘Anji’ went from sounding like The Pentangle were performing it, to something with a lot more attitude. Almost like Fairport Convention’s ‘A Sailor’s Life’, but lifted beyond even that wonderfully free-flowing, folk-jazz hybrid  However I couldn’t detect the influence of Can on this or on any of the other tunes The Prisonaires performed last night. It was undoubtedly an eclectic set though, and The Prisonaires have certainly embraced Can’s determination to kick against the musical pricks.

What happened on ‘Anji’, and throughout the gig, was a superannuated jam session without the tedium that that would normally imply. Each number, often only loosely based on professed connections to an original tune, has a distinct concept behind it that’s usually conceived of and initially worked up by Alan King. It might be a radical reworking of a known tune or the fusing of diverse tunes and elements together – the second number was inspired by ‘Sketches of Spain’ era Miles but went all over the place. King communicates with some band members via SoundCloud (“or just by text”, grinned guitarist Paul Baverstock). Rehearsals are live. Some band members, like the audience, may be hearing a number for the first time. To carry this off you need musicians of a very high calibre and, as importantly, imagination.

Alongside King in this endeavour last night were virtuoso fiddle player Bobby Valentino, who at 64 is one of the youngest in the band. Valentino was in The Fabulous Poodles, worked extensively with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and has played with Dylan, Knopfler and Petty. He is part Stephane Grappelli, part Jean-Luc Ponty, but is mostly just himself. 

Bobby Valentino

On electric lead guitar was Paul Baverstock. Paul, who also spoke to me outside the Gents, said that he was in the celebrated London band that nearly made it big in the early ‘80s, A Bigger Splash. Their first single, ‘I Don’t Believe A Word’, was produced by Sting who also, with Eddie Reader, sung harmonies on it. It made it to the influential BBC Radio 1 review programme, ‘Roundtable’, but had the misfortune of being followed by Prince’s ‘Kiss’ which, Alan said, blew everything else out of the water that week (or pretty much that decade). Last night Paul’s impressive pedal affects assisted him in alternating between a blues-inflected rock guitar sound that often echoed Dave Gilmour, and being a Hammond organ virtuoso. Paul was loud for a small venue but was darned good. 

To his right in the all-star line-up was Tony Reeves. Tony has a strong jazz feel to his impressive electric bass playing; hardly surprising given that he was founder member of fusion band Colosseum and later joined Curved Air. Like Alan, Tony started out on the folk circuit. He’s on Davy Graham’s first two albums. A few years later he joined John Mayall’s celebrated Bluesbreakers, along with Mick Taylor who a few months later replaced Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones. Reeves has also played with, and produced, John Martyn and is the bassist on a Sandy Denny LP. By contrast, as a Pye Records’ plugger in the mid-60s, Tony promoted, and then played on, Tony Hatch’s ‘Sounds Orchestral’.

Les (drums), Tony (bass) and Paul (guitar)

In the centre of the stage, and often, my friend observed, making sure that the whole thing held together, was drummer Les Morgan (who’s performed with leading UK blues artists Alexis Korner and Jo-Anne Kelly, and with singer Chris Farlow). Les isn’t musically ostentatious like Paul, but, as good drummers often do, provides backbone (and flair) when some of the showmen occasionally threatened to take proceedings off on too conflicting a set of tangents. Alan King told me that the band also normally features Mike Paice (a Jools Holland sparring partner) on sax and harmonica, who, to King’s surprise given the unusual combination of instruments, gels successfully with violinist Valentino.

Among the most interesting musical adventures of the night was a number influenced by Miles Davis’ darker funk-fusion phase that also informed its title, ‘It’s About That Movie Time’; and a latin jazz excursion based on a number by jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell. In something of a preview of his own forthcoming set at The Electric Palace on 21 September, King took the band on a further musical diversion: ragas. He found suitable accompaniment from Valentino, before Reeves and Baverstock somehow worked out their place in the evolving mix. The Prisonaires' ‘raga rock’ is wholly its own thing, and has been a decade-long musical preoccupation for King. No easy nod here to George Harrison, The Byrds or even L. Shankar. The September gig by Dr King, possibly accompanied by some other members of The Prisonaires, will be well worth seeing.

Getting in tune? Les, Alan & Paul

The closing number was introduced by Alan as a fusion of two pivotal Jimmy Webb songs: - “the greatest anti-war song ever written”, ‘Galveston’, and the “greatest love song ever written”, ‘By The Time I Get to Phoenix’ – but without the words! This was an extraordinary musical idea successfully realised: you could hear the trace elements of both Webb classics in the heady mix.  

On a sweaty night out in Hastings some thirty odd people had experienced a real treat, and they rightly gave the band a rapturous response. Cries for an encore were understandably resisted though as the band, tired and thirsty, had done what they set out to do – whether Can were in the house or not.   

Searching for Kelvin Message

My "Searching for the Old Folk Rebels" project has its own blog page, kicking off with a profile of Kelvin Message, musician, guitar engineer and tutor.

http://oldfolkrebels.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/kelvin-message-life-in-music.html

Folk and blues at The Six Bells Chiddingly

I hadn’t been to the Six Bells pub in Chiddingly for more than 20 years. That occasion was a meal when we met my brother’s wife to be (and my brother). The last time I heard live music there was 30 years ago. Jazz on a Sunday lunchtime with Mad Andy, as he was affectionately known. Andy, whose surname I don’t think I ever knew, was a Glaswegian tenor sax player, renowned drinker and tractor driver, none of which appeared to be an impediment to his ability to do the others (although he didn’t, to my knowledge, drive his tractor into the pub). In fact we were so dedicated to hearing the man that we would also check him out at the Wednesday night jazz slot held in the, less appealing, basement of a Tunbridge Wells wine bar.

To return to “The Bells”, as we aficionados used to refer to it, after all this time and to attend a folk and blues open mic night (held on alternate Tuesday evenings) was as unexpected as it was a treat. Our main reason for being there was to witness the first public gig by our 14 year old nephew Neil Grove. In fact I never gave a moment’s thought to the idea that anything else would be of interest, but a high standard was pretty much maintained throughout the evening. As we arrived Ella Moonbridge was playing solo penny whistle, which was nice. Her next number was a paean to her father. “South London Irish” would probably move you if the word “father” doesn’t remotely make you uneasy and if you like your sentiment served up in overly generous portions.

Clive Woodman gave us a romanticisation of the Green Belt, and, a more poignant, ‘Burning in My Heart’.  Next up in what we learnt had been planned as an evening of original numbers was another singer/acoustic guitarist, Chris Mansell. He introduced himself by saying that he found it quite nerve-racking to be in front of us playing his own songs, rather than other people’s. He needn’t have worried. His first, the cleverly titled ‘Too Hot for Horses’, reminded me of Lou Reed/the Velvets as he thrashed out the rhythm and, lyrically speaking, took us to a fairly dark place. Well, darker than I expected at an open mic folk and blues night. ‘Platinum Blonde’ was sadly not in the same league, more serviceable than substantial.

To the delight of the regular audience, and especially of their populous and mobile fan base, two young performers then took to the stage. Pete and Roxy (so 1970s) performed a couple of Pete’s murder ballads. “I didn’t do it,” Pete mysteriously twice exclaimed. Roxy has a good voice, although more dramatic effect would have been maintained if she had sung the words from memory.  

We were then back to the oldies in the form of Martin and Mike. Martin is an undoubted wit. His opener, with Mike in guitar accompaniment mode, was a tongue in cheek appreciation of the devices with which you can offset the tiresome onset of physical decrepitude. ‘So Much to Look Forward To’ indeed. His second song was a comic take on the bourgeois blues, but less Leadbelly than a very anglo Randy Newman (minus piano). Sung as a twelve bar, ‘I’ve Got The No Reason to Sing the Blues, Blues’ bemoaned the comfortable cash and asset-rich life than many a middle-aged, middle class white blues man has to endure. Mike then quit to leave Martin to display his compositional talents. The first, a ‘Song for a Friend’ (if I have that right) was strong but left me baffled. The person in question, a man whose opinions, he sung, provoked you and who, we were told afterwards, made a pot of money, was, I think, supposed to be known to us all (among the string of recent entertainer deaths). However I am still none the wiser (it’s probably my age). The second was a more general song about friendship. We all need it. It’s true.

Chris Liddiard is a self-styled irascible old rock ‘n roll cove. Roughly calculating from his between song recollection of first playing live in 1955, he must be well over 70. If anything that gave his comically jaundiced ‘The Price of Fame’ even more of an edge. ‘Long in the Tooth’ followed – the clue’s in the title. Excellent.

Simon Watt, another singer and acoustic guitarist, followed. I think he found playing a couple of his own numbers a relief from having to take photos all night (for the 6 Bells Folk and Blues Club website). His first, ‘This House Will Surely Last’ has, he said in introducing it, something wrong with it, and he invited us to work out what it might be. I didn’t have the heart to say that the answer might be that it sounds like Neil Young’s ‘Sugar Mountain’. But hey, that’s no bad thing. His second was, he said, put together from lyrics of his wife’s that he had thrown in the bin almost as soon as she had proffered them. ‘Lifetime Blues’ (the clue is in the title?) turned out to be a romantic number (apparently). Either way, it was very good.

At last, after what must surely have seemed to him like an eternity of waiting, Neil Grove was next up, accompanied by the slightly older John Oddy (see pics below). The legend goes that they had been jamming the weekend before when the idea of doing this gig suddenly came up. 

Neil insisted afterwards that he wasn’t nervous about not only doing his first gig, but having to both play lead guitar and sing at the same time. Singing is though something he rarely does, even in front of his (renowned folk singing) Mum. He and John covered Elmore James’ ‘My Baby’s Gone’ and Muddy Waters’ ‘Long Distance Call’. Neil made playing guitar seem effortless, which, as he’s barely been playing it for more than a year, is quite something. If there were times when his singing seemed like a fill in between his slide guitar solos, that is something that more live experience will take care of. As, no doubt, will time resolve the disconnect between his youth and the worldly-wise sentiments he was expressing. John wasn’t bad either.

Folk went country in the form of Terry and Mel Martin (see pic below). They kicked off with the famous (infamous?) ‘Duelling Banjos’ (as in the film ‘Deliverance’), but played it on acoustic guitars. No mean feat. They followed this up with Norman Blake’s ‘Bill Gray’. While not original, this song was not known to me, even if the writer was. Mel’s convincingly country vocals and Terry’s accomplished playing made me want to check out some more Norman, and some more of them.

Blues standards were proving infectious. Next up was what I took to be the traditional closing, all-star, line up. Penny Payne is a bit of a blues shouter in the Etta James vein. She brought many of the older musical hands of the evening up there with her to help out on Ma Rainey’s ‘CC Rider’ and on the song popularised by Muddy Waters, ‘I Got My Mojo Working’ (whose sexually charged inferences are normally, and undeservedly, a male preserve).

As this point we made our excuses, rude perhaps as Ian was doing a decent cover of ‘Walking in Memphis’. As a consequence we missed entirely the singer, Rachel, accompanied by, once again, John Oddie. The evening was apparently closed by Corin and his band Cobretti. 

A great night out at The Bells. Well worth checking out again.

The Stag in Hastings hosts a Jack in The Green jam

This was the scene in The Stag Inn, a beguiling ale house in Old Town, Hastings on the first night of the Jack in the Green Festival. We arrived early and supped pints before the musicians arrived. A serial monologist was regaling the barman with tales of his indispensable part in folk and rock history.

We were seated at the musicians' table, so made our excuses when a female mandolin player dressed as an orange dragonfly arrived. On the next table a bodhran player and singer from Eastbourne was modest about his own abilities, but full of tales of the skill and wonder of other musicians. He also told us of the legendary Jewish storyteller Shonaleigh who still treads the boards, the last of a long line of Drut’sylas. I felt like part imposter, part musical groupie; though in conversation I could nod in the right place and had conducted my first pilgrimage to Sidmouth Folk Festival when I was 17.

 

Within half an hour the pub was rammed. Mandolin, banjo and penny whistles were soon outnumbered by female fiddlers and male melodeon players. The fiddlers in particular kept up a furious pace, periodically accompanied by unaccompanied singers whose songs drifted in like waves from a distant shore, but actually just the other corner of the packed pub.

"Thatcher's Heritage" flowed. As the aptly named cider slipped down all too easily, I got a flashback to Sidmouth in the early 1980s. It being an election, memories of the politics of that time passed through my increasingly addled brain as one singer told tales of workers by hand or by brain getting the shaft from the man. I thought I saw Michael Foot enter the pub disguised as a banjo player, quickly followed by the ghost of Pete Seeger. I wondered who would hold the audience for longer.

We were seated next to the musicians. Storytellers gathered there too, although the boozy musical revelry wasn't quite suitable for a performance by them tonight. The bodhran man gave us all a story in song though, unsteady at first but he soon rose to the occasion.

 

Regardless of the Festival, The Stag Inn often has music on. No frills, no hierarchy, just people playing their heart out. 

Live in Lau Land

I sat down not knowing quite what to expect from a gig at the Union Chapel in Highbury & Islington by Lau, a band I had only heard the name of before. I fiddled impatiently with the free lapel badge they’d kindly left me and other members of the assembled throng. The gig began with support act, State of the Union: a couple of great acoustic guitar players who could not lift this enormous and formerly sacred space. Pleasant, but essentially dull. So it was with some relief, my part at least, when Lau hit the stage.

Lau are a three piece, largely Scottish, ensemble who play acoustic instruments. Accordion player Martin Green was aided by a box of computer tricks that made it hard for me to differentiate between a manipulated delay effect and the possibility that he was sometimes using pre-recorded tapes. The fiddle player Aidan O’Rourke deployed an array of effects pedals, but these at least told me he was manipulating his own sound. The possible use of taped sounds isn’t necessarily a sin of course, even for a band that regularly wins or gets nominated for Folk Music awards, but the quantity of artificially generated musical effects is surely an issue, not least for a band whose website emphasises their shared love of “hardcore traditional music”.

Having not heard a note by them before, it was perhaps inevitable that it would take a while for me to get their particular blend of what I can only call folk electronica (I may of course be blissfully unaware that this is the name of an established musical genre).

However there were points in the first half or more of their performance that I got tired of the incessant endless climaxes of instrumentation generated by Martin, Aidan, and Kris Drever, who was genuinely, I think, playing an acoustic guitar.  In the latter part of the gig I began though to be converted to what some apparently call the republic of Lau-land (sic). This was helped by the fact that we heard more of Kris Drever’s splendid vocals as part of a perceptible shift in emphasis toward a more recognisably song based performance. 

In particular I noted “Torsa”, a tribute to a Scottish isle of that name from where I think Aidan hails. This deployed Lau’s intense and layered "folk electronica" to great effect, but, as it was held together with Kris’ vocals, it didn’t lapse too much into the orgiastic noodling that had prefigured so far. A triumph, in fact, of substance over form. I do wish they’d stand up though. How, I wondered, can you perform such uplifting and upbeat music from a sitting position? Perhaps this is all some kind of non "band" schtick.

A cover of “Ghosts”, this one apparently by Niall Waterson (I assume from the singing folk family), came straight afterwards. It also proved a major highlight. 

The hearty demand for an encore led to Lau deploying an inspired back to basics approach as they brought on other musicians - State of the Union and a couple of women from the apparently excellent band that performed in the bar in the interval - for a more traditional sing song in the form of a cover of “Goodnight Irene”. For partly personal reasons this brought tears to my eyes, but also because Mr Drever and the band gave a wonderful song such a splendid treatment. Less is sometimes very much more.

I am now wearing the badge.

The Random Canyon Growlers Live at the Birkbeck, Leyton

Last night a five piece bluegrass and “old time” music band played at what has become one of the premier London folk and country venues, The Birkbeck Tavern in Leyton. The Random Canyon Growlers, featuring guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo and fiddle, are mostly from the east coast of the USA, but first came together playing in the Northern Rockies. Performing two sets and two encores, the Growlers’ fast paced, in the tradition, playing proved a perfect accompaniment to the pub’s impressive real ale selection.

Lead singer Jamie Drysdale told me that they write around a quarter of the numbers they perform; others are by such bluegrass legends as Flatt and Scruggs and country star Bill Monroe. This band will go down well in the north and south of Ireland, where they also have gigs scheduled this month; the common heritage is obvious, and is one that Matt Donovan’s fiddle playing gives particular expression to. They are also due to play in Brighton, Bristol and Chagwell. Their second encore was “Salty Dog Blues”, a deliciously titled and supremely fast-paced climax to another thoroughly good music night at the Birkbeck.

The band’s UK and Ireland booking agent was full of praise for Stephen Ferguson, the pub landlord and man responsible for the What’s Cookin’ gigs. Stephen himself puts on a brave face about the bottom line issue: will the pub survive the proposal before the council to turn the whole building into a block of flats. The “community use” defence in favour of a pub with very popular music nights may, sadly, not, be enough to stave off the march of “development”. Sign this online petition to register your objections so that hopefully more music of this quality can be enjoyed live at the Birkbeck.

10th October 2012