Tuesday 4th April 2023

Retro Bar, Manchester, England

There is but one goal tonight, it seems: to kill the drummer through exhaustion, or die trying. When Mike and the Moonpies take the stage in the small, claustrophobic cellar of Manchester’s Retro Bar, they quickly reach 100 mph from a standing start, and don’t let up for the rest of the night. ‘Paycheck to Paycheck’ is the first song, and when the band’s set ends twenty-two songs later, drummer Taylor Englert has certainly earned his. A relatively new addition to the Moonpies, replacing Kyle Ponder in 2022, Englert has been the fierce catalyst of tonight’s white-hot band performance, which has brought good-time Texas honky-tonk to the north of England.

I’ve attended a number of country music gigs in the last year – independent and non-mainstream artists like Sierra Ferrell, Charley Crockett, Nick Shoulders and Tyler Childers – and at each one I’ve been surprised by how enthusiastically they are received by the English crowds. An ocean away from the Texan dirt, the waters of the Ozarks and the hills of Kentucky and West Virginia, people turn up to listen to country music and sing along to their favourite songs, uttering roars of recognition at the opening bars. The numbers may still be small – I’d say between 40 and 50 people mingle beneath the dark blue lights of the Retro Bar tonight – but the fact that they – we – are even here at all seems pretty remarkable in itself.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be. Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold will be the best-represented album in the Moonpies’ setlist tonight, and the fact it was recorded in England – at the famous Abbey Road Studios – suggests that perhaps this music isn’t as far from home as frontman Mike Harmeier’s Texas twang might suggest. It’s a sentiment confirmed by tonight’s opening act Mike West, a singer-songwriter from the Wirral. With his first songs, ‘Work On’ – a meaty slice of Mersey Delta blues – and ‘Ballad of the White Collar Arsonist’, he taps into the vein of working-man’s-plight that country has always given honest voice to, regardless of which side of the Atlantic it is sung from. West, the first Mike in front of the mike tonight, caught my attention when he opened for Nick Shoulders back in November. A long-haired, bearded Scouser with a heavy-metal voice and a biker jacket might sound unpromising at first for a country fan, but he quickly won me over that night with his intelligent and catchy original songs, delivered in a powerful and dexterous voice.

This time around, West has teamed up with Rob Wakefield on fiddle, further emphasising the authentic love for country music vested deep in his songwriting. ‘Mothman’, his next song, is a great signature for this artist: evocative singing, a catchy melody and intelligent lyrics on an original and idiosyncratic subject. It’s particularly exciting that West’s best songs tonight are ones yet to be released: he follows ‘Goin’ to Hell’, from The Next Life album, with the ingenious ‘How to Build a Guillotine’, a humorous answer to the political problems of our time.

Both ‘Guillotine’ and the next song, ‘Patron Saint of the Lost and Found’, will be on West’s upcoming album, and he cites Ernest Tubb and George Jones as inspirations for them respectively. He says the last time he played the Retro Bar there were five people present (Rob Wakefield, the fiddle player, is able to trump him with a mighty seven), but when he leaves the stage tonight it’s to deserved applause from many times that number. Now that he’s got a fiddle with him, there should be no stopping him.

But tonight’s the night of a different Mike, and just before the Moonpies take the stage the grey metal shutter on the bar is raised, almost theatrically, like a mafia hit in The Godfather. In what was the darkest and most unpromising part of the room, we’re now ambushed by a dazzling array of alcoholic possibilities on the shelves. The young man and woman behind the bar begin serving drinks, and pretty soon the Moonpies take the stage to cheers.

The 100mph marathon drag-race begins, ‘Paycheck to Paycheck’ being followed by ‘Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em’. Omar Oyoque, the larger-than-life bassist who is never shorn of the smile on his face, begins cheerleading the crowd. Wearing a Kiss t-shirt and possessing of a mass of curly 80s-hair-metal locks, Omar should stick out like a sore thumb in a country outfit. But you get the sense he’s the heart and soul of the band, and not just because of the steadiness he provides when stroking his white bass guitar through tonight’s songs. He never stops grinning or mouthing the words of the songs to himself; he’s the biggest Moonpies fan in a room full of them.

After two songs the band are already smoking, giving the lie to the next song, ‘Country Music’s Dead’. Taylor Englert, youthful-looking with his pencil-thin moustache, is already sweating, and Mike Harmeier praises the drummer before showing him no mercy with the next song, the appropriately-named ‘Fast as Lightning’.

Drinking from a bottle of Corona, Mike leads the band through ‘Bottom of the Pile’, a lost song of Gary Stewart, before breaking into ‘Rainy Day’ from their most recent album, One to Grow On. The song’s a revelation to me: I’d heard it on the album but it hadn’t really left its mark until tonight. I’m beginning to understand why those in the know say Mike and the Moonpies are a band you have to see live if you get the chance. The best versions of many of the songs on the setlist tonight aren’t the album cuts but the furious and exuberant renditions I’m hearing live from the cellar of Manchester’s Retro Bar. As though to prove my point, the band follow up ‘Rainy Day’ with ‘Miss Fortune’; a song that looks clichéd in the cold light of day but which from the stage of a blue-lit night-time bar sounds like the best song you’ve ever heard. There’s something about a live Moonpie that you just don’t get baked into a vinyl record.

They’ve not been the first band to take advantage of this energy tonight; after Mike West departed to applause, Stacy Antonel took the stage with a full band of her own. With a green dress and a shock of vibrant red hair, her striking look is completed by a thick pair of glasses which give her the look of a female Buddy Holly. Counting her band into the soulful number that opens her set, the Californian delivers an smooth and addictive blend of country, jazz and soul. ‘Always the Outsider’ and ‘Planetary Heartache’ are the highlights among her songs, but there will always be a special place in the heart of any receptive audience for ‘Douchebag Benny’. The propulsive jazzy catharsis of this song, about breaking up with a guy who turned out to be a “closet douche”, is a natural crowd-pleaser.

A flyer pasted to the wall of the Retro Bar misspells her name as ‘Atonel’, but there’s been nothing atonal about Stacy Antonel’s singing tonight. It’s been powerful and expressive, her band’s been tight, and her songs – douchebag ex-boyfriends aside – have been tender, intelligent and, in her words, ‘metaphysical’. After the show tonight, she will be found outside the entrance, sitting on a bench in the still Manchester night, quietly discussing the meaning of life with a fan.

But that nocturnal stillness is in our future, after the show; inside, Mike and the Moonpies are here from 10 till close. Zachary Moulton’s mournful pedal steel punctuates the opening lines that Mike sings – “Barely out of seventh grade/Mom and Dad went their separate ways” – before Omar puts his hand to his ear to encourage the audience to sing along to the chorus of ‘Steak Night at the Prairie Rose’. Mike Harmeier grins under the lights.

Though they’ve been going at 100 mph all night, the Moonpies now somehow find another gear. The crowd favourite ‘Beaches of Biloxi’ proves to be the best song tonight among some tough competition; the percussive claps from the few-dozen lightly-inebriated Mancunians put those from the album version to shame. It’s scarcely believable how well the song works tonight; everything’s in synergy, and I can’t begin to describe the effect in words. You can’t write how music feels; this is what they mean when they say you need to hear it live.

The band follows up this magical moment with another high-tempo number. If ‘Things Ain’t Like They Used to Be’, it’s not through want of trying: Mike Harmeier summons up ghosts of the Fifties on this frenetic song with an impressive rock wail, and the band’s now in a deep and timeless groove. ‘The Way’ and ‘Danger’ follow in quick succession; the latter particularly notable for some subtle guitar licks from Catlin Rutherford.

My view of Catlin’s been obscured tonight from my position near the bar, but he deserves as much credit as any other Moonpie for turning tonight’s solid setlist into molten country gold. He proves it in the next song, the rollicking bar-room song ‘Bottled Beer’; appropriately, Mike Harmeier downs a bottle of beer during Catlin’s guitar solo.

Omar puts his hand to his ear again, and again the crowd sing along to a chorus. This time it’s ‘You Look Good in Neon’, and Omar grins. “And if you wanna slow-dance,” Mike sings, and Omar begins slow-dancing behind his bass. He’s long since tied his mass of black hair into a ponytail in the heat of the Retro cellar, but his enthusiasm can’t be tamed, and he’s been jumping up and down to the songs all night.

We’re into the home stretch, and Mike and the Moonpies aren’t going gentle into that good night. There’s a full-blooded sing-along rendition of ‘Hour on the Hour’, a quintessential Moonpies song, followed by ‘Road Crew’. The latter witnesses some pedal steel virtuosity from Zachary Moulton and solos from both Omar and Mike. Propelling it all is some fast and furious drumming from Taylor Englert, somehow still going.

“Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hidin’,” Mike sings, before completing the entire first verse of ‘Midnight Rider’ a cappella. However, the Moonpies aren’t about to cover the famous Allman Brothers Band song; instead, they use Mike’s prompt to break into ‘The Hard Way’, clearly not shy of highlighting its Southern rock inspiration. It seems country’s more rock-‘n’-roll than rock itself nowadays; while rock music’s up its own arse and mainstream country plumbs new depths of cringe, there’s a wealth of independent and alternative country artists tending the roots with a wild care. Mike and the Moonpies play good-time music in hard times, and it’s impossible not to watch them enjoying themselves on stage and be moved by it.

‘Dance with Barbara’, another lost song of Gary Stewart, is next, and its simple but infectious honky-tonkin’ is perfect for this stage of the night. The music is infectious and the room is bouncing; even the two young bartenders are dancing, jitterbugging together behind the taps. I find myself wondering if the female bartender is named Barbara; perhaps that would be too perfect to be true. But everything else is going the Moonpies’ way, so why not?

It’s time to think about how to stop this hurtling train. Mike leads the band into ‘London Homesick Blues’, a nod of appreciation to his English audience, even though right now London feels further away from this great city of the North than the sweaty honky-tonks of Austin, Texas where the Moonpies were birthed. The band then commit to a fine rendition of ‘Cheap Silver’, recreating quite well the lush arrangement of the Abbey Road original and showing they’re not just the best live honky-tonk band on the planet.

But just in case we forget, they follow up ‘Cheap Silver’ with some solid country gold in the fast-paced ‘We’re Gone’. It’s Mike Harmeier’s final song, but he heads to the side of the stage to let his band close out the night. Omar Oyoque takes centre-stage and leads the Moonpies through a white-hot instrumental, at one point performing a neat trick: his back to the audience, he arches his back and slowly kneels, until he’s contorted in a position that even an Olympic gymnast might feel something pop. Still playing his bass guitar, he then slowly uncontorts himself and effortlessly stands back up. The band doesn’t miss a beat throughout. They haven’t all night. I don’t know the name of the instrumental (it might be a version of ‘The Real Country’), or whether it’s just a jam from a tight band playing themselves out, but a peek at the printed setlist crib-sheet for the night informs me that this final number is just labelled as ‘COUNTRY‘. Damn straight.

Setlist:

(all songs written by Mike Harmeier, unless noted)

  1. Paycheck to Paycheck (Harmeier/Adam Odor/Omar Oyoque) (from One to Grow On)
  2. Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em (from Mockingbird)
  3. Country Music’s Dead (Harmeier/Odor/John Baumann) (single)
  4. Fast as Lightning (Harmeier/Odor/Zachary Moulton/Rance May/Catlin Rutherford) (from Cheap Silver and Solid Country Gold)
  5. Bottom of the Pile (Gary Stewart/Bill Eldridge) (from Touch of You)
  6. Rainy Day (Harmeier/Odor) (from One to Grow On)
  7. Miss Fortune (Harmeier/Odor/May) (from Cheap Silver)
  8. Steak Night at the Prairie Rose (from Steak Night at the Prairie Rose)
  9. Beaches of Biloxi (Harmeier/May) (from Steak Night)
  10. Things Ain’t Like They Used to Be (from Steak Night)
  11. The Way (Tony Scalzo) (single)
  12. Danger (Harmeier/Odor) (from Cheap Silver)
  13. Bottled Beer (from The Real Country)
  14. You Look Good in Neon (Harmeier/Odor/Rutherford) (from Cheap Silver)
  15. Hour on the Hour (Harmeier/Odor) (from One to Grow On)
  16. Road Crew (from Steak Night)
  17. The Hard Way (from The Hard Way)
  18. Dance with Barbara (Stewart/Steve Hunter) (from Touch of You)
  19. London Homesick Blues (Nunn) (from Cheap Silver)
  20. Cheap Silver (Harmeier/Odor/Rutherford) (from Cheap Silver)
  21. We’re Gone (from Steak Night)
  22. Moonpies Instrumental (Country)