Déjà vu is usually a feeling that strikes you unawares, and often in inexplicable moments. The uncanny sense that you’ve been here before, that your brain has just delivered to you vividly but without the corresponding file pulled from the vaults of memory to provide context. Sometimes it can be unsettling; other times it can be comforting. It is not known for sure why it happens, but we consider it a harmless glitch or misfire in the brain as it goes about its many plastic tasks.
As I park my car and walk towards Blackburn Cathedral in the dark, the trees along the path not yet shed for the autumn, I don’t know if there is a supplementary word to attach to déjà vu to describe what I feel now. Perhaps this feeling is what the brain is reaching for when it misfires for that uncanny sensation: a legitimate recognition, a knowingness, a familiarity as I enter and scan my ticket and a graceful usher guides me to my seat.
There is no need to do so. I know the way, though I do not tell her this. Because this is the very same concert I attended almost exactly a year ago, with an identically serene night-lit approach to the very same welcoming church, and the same almost imperceptible drizzling of rain pattering against the Anglican stone. As the usher smiles pleasantly and takes her leave, I imagine I could almost be a ghost or a mind caught within a dream, performing a perpetually renewed cycle and welcomed now back to the fold.
It is as though the never-ending notethat Roger Sayer referred to when I saw him perform here last year has indeed continued to play, carrying on into an annual return. The Q&A session which marks the halfway point of tonight’s concert is shorter and less in-depth than it was for the 10th anniversary of Interstellar last year, but Roger, the organist who played on Hans Zimmer’s original score, still communicates to the crowd some of the interesting features of that music. Not least that it begins and ends on that same, never-ending note – a mark of travelling and space-faring, of thematic harmony, of eternity in an empty space.
It is this remarkable depth to the music of Interstellar which ensures its continued popularity, beyond the exquisite ingenuity of its motifs. As thrilling as it is to hear some of those well-known themes from the film from the pipes of the cathedral’s organ tonight, it is not solely for this reason that Blackburn Cathedral drew a sell-out crowd tonight. We are drawn here because, like that mysterious feeling of déjà vu, the unknowable plasticity of our brain recognises something in the music to be heard tonight. While on a conscious level we can appreciate the majesty, the harmony and the epic quality of this grand music, our subconscious brain pulls towards some deeper correlation. This recognition manifests itself as reverence, the harmony between the unknown that Christianity seeks to explain and the awesome unknown of space into which Interstellar quested. It just seems right that if you hear this music you hear it from the organ of an impressive stone church, a metallic crown of thorns hanging above the altar.
It must be this deep, almost metaphysical reverence which drew me here again tonight, because I knew in advance it would be the same music I heard last year. Indeed, my review here could do no better than repeat last year’s narration of the experience of the music (for brevity’s sake, I’ll suffice with a linkinstead); a repeat performance of Roger Sayer’s carefully curated suite of Interstellar music, which condenses the expansive, three-hour Hans Zimmer score down to forty minutes while still hitting all the major themes.
There are some differences between the two nights I have heard this live from Blackburn Cathedral. Some are small: the seat the usher leads me to is a premium seat near the front – I learned my lesson and booked early this time. From this vantage point the music proves more resounding, the Q&A responses clearer. Another change is that this iteration of the music of Interstellar is “under Gaia”; a vast model of the Earth hangs in the nave, replacing last year’s installation of the Moon. (During the Q&A, someone asks Roger which he prefers, and he diplomatically chooses the current installation. I preferred the Moon.)
Other changes from last year are more notable. Last year the suite of music prior to Interstellar comprised of the Strauss music best known for its use in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planets’, which contains motifs that later inspired John Williams for Star Wars. This time round, Roger Sayer calls a spade a spade and plays the music from science-fiction films directly. John Williams’ various Star Wars themes are prominent, and are joined by the uplifting childlike wonder of his ‘Flying Theme’ from E.T., while the night begins with the Thunderbirds theme by Barry Gray, who was born here in Blackburn and once studied at this cathedral.
The most notable piece in this opening suite is a theme composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, used centuries later as the soundtrack for the science-fiction film Solaris. This is the only piece in the opening suite which was written specifically for the organ. The rest, Roger tells us, are transcriptions; the figuration usually done by violins and now moved by him onto the various stops and keys of the organ. The difference is marked; while all the themes are performed well, the Solaris theme is a clear standout. Like Interstellar later in the night – also composed specifically for the organ – it is quite at home.
Of the music of Interstellar as it is performed tonight, I actually have little to say. Even if I hadn’t already contributed some remarks on the music in my review last year, it would be hard for me to write any further this time. One of the main reasons I write reviews of the concerts I attendis to remember the blow-by-blow of the night: how close the room felt, which songs garnered the loudest cheer, whether it rained outside. But a blow-by-blow account is impossible when the main piece is a single forty-minute movement – Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar. A return visit, one year after the first, is therefore an unprecedented opportunity for my brain to sink the groove of memory it founded last year a little deeper. And this is not a wasted event: who wouldn’t want to relive some of the best concert experiences they have had?
When we recall special days we find our brains have filed them away mostly in moments and feelings rather than in their entirety. When I think back to the astonishing Nick Cave gig I attended last year, for example, it’s not the whole night which comes to mind, nor any one particular song, but the broad swell of raw, unadulterated bliss that he and the Bad Seeds evoked. Memories of other nights are anchored in certain moments: Kassi Valazza picking the guitar notes of ‘From Newman Street’ as the bells of the Old Church at St. Pancras gently tolled outside, or 40,000 hands waving from side to side as Bruce Springsteen sang ‘Bobby Jean’ in Manchester.
My memory of the music of Interstellar at Blackburn Cathedral this time round is cemented by meeting Roger Sayer after the concert; shaking his hand, buying a copy of his music. I spoke to him briefly of my recent visit to Temple Church, where he is based. On a business trip to London, I had been able to duck out of my office on my lunch break and walk a short distance into the calm and gentle temple courtyard. Considering it’s only a stone’s throw away from the hustle and bustle of Fleet Street, the church built by the Knights Templar is remarkably silent and serene.
Another recent memory, still vivid in its every blow, is of hearing Billy Strings at the Royal Albert Hall in London just a couple of weeks ago, a place where Roger Sayer has also performed the music he plays tonight. When I was there, I had looked around at the vast dome and recalled the famous Beatles lyric about “Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire… Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” In rather cosmic symmetry, I now find myself two weeks later in Blackburn, Lancashire, listening to the sound of Interstellar erupt from four thousand holes atop the four thousand pipes of the cathedral’s Walker organ.
It is a magnificent sound, and a humbling one. The pipes are threaded into the walls, the church itself the instrument’s resonance chamber; tonight is the awesome noise of a building itself being played. Not for nothing does Roger relate during the Q&A that the organ is considered the “king of instruments”, a phrase often attributed to Mozart (who knew a thing or two about good music). While Roger deservedly takes the applause after each movement of music and greets members of the audience afterwards, he is aware that he’s not the star of the show. The vast organ itself is the star, as it rises in sound and mass and bursts with aural supernova, delivering the tailor-made music that we’ve gathered in reverence to hear.
And it’s with striking humility that Roger Sayer answers a question during tonight’s Q&A – an answer worthy of recording for posterity and therefore validating my attempt at a review. Having just performed the suite of music including Star Wars, E.T. and Solaris, Roger is asked by a member of the audience whether he does “not get sick of film music?”
The question is asked politely and honestly; Roger’s response is measured, emphasising his love for movie soundtracks, not just Interstellar. He mentions how the film received some criticism for how the music would sometimes overpower the dialogue, and reveals that this was a deliberate artistic decision on the part of Zimmer and Christopher Nolan, the film’s director. The music is there to help tell the story just as much as the dialogue is, he says, and in certain moments “music carries on when the words fail,” the swell of organ music telling the story better than any incidental line filling a gap in the screenplay ever could. Roger concludes by rhapsodising the “wonderful synergy” between music and film epitomised by the triumph of Interstellar. “Together,” he says, “they’re the most powerful thing we’ve got.”
In the cold light of day, we can still recognise the truth of that response. Think of a film without its music and you think of a bird without its wings. But in the court of the king of instruments, on the interregnum between the music, the great organ rests silently as it is said. Its own answer will come in the second set, as Roger takes his seat at the keys with his back to the audience and the king fills its vast lungs with an intake of breath and begins its reign anew.
Setlist:
The Thunderbirds March (from Thunderbirds) (Barry Gray)
Flying Theme (from E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial) (John Williams)
The Imperial March (from Star Wars) (Williams)
Princess Leia’s Theme (from Star Wars) (Williams)
March from Things to Come (from Things to Come) (Arthur Bliss)
Choral Prelude (from Solaris) (Johann Sebastian Bach)
The Throne Room and End Titles (from Star Wars) (Williams)
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, ACT 1, SCENE 1, 23-29
So says the sentinel Marcellus in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as he brings Horatio to the battlements of Elsinore to verify the sighting of the Ghost in armour which is shortly to appear. His fellow guard Barnardo supports him in the face of Horatio’s scepticism, imploring the lord to “sit down awhile, And let us once again assail your ears” with what they have these last two nights seen.
An odd way to begin a review of a live gig in 2025, to be sure, but as I exit my dew-drenched car on an appropriately ghostly and silent night and walk across the courtyard to the top of St. Mary’s Hill, just within the city walls of Chester, I know that I am at risk of merely repeating myself if I were to relate only a stolid narrative of this night of music. It is the fourth time I’ve seen Toria Wooff live in just five months and, having written reviews of those previous concerts in Manchester, Liverpool and Bury, I know exactly what to expect from where I see the church tower manifest in the autumn dark. As I pass under the welcoming porchlight of the church of St. Mary, I know I’ll be once again hearing the remarkable music of Toria Wooff and Polly Virr. What I write, therefore, is less a review than an imploration for others to follow me in doing the same.
In many ways, Toria Wooff under the arches of the church tonight provides the quintessential experience of her music; a distillation of everything that I have found appealing in her sound since first hearing her album in May and then hearing it again live from a basement in Manchester just a couple of weeks later. I knew then what has been confirmed in the live experiences since; that this was a singer-songwriter of real talent, able to back up a singing voice that is alternately haunting, tender and powerful with songwriting of real originality, dexterity and craft.
And tonight the setlist (which Toria autographs for me at the end – a genuine friendliness when meeting fans being another hallmark of her live shows) is the strongest I’ve seen. She plays all but one of the songs from her self-titled debut album, which is an excellent record, but also provides six unreleased songs which – I would imagine – will be there on the second album. When that album comes – Toria says tonight it is currently in the tracking stage – it will be, if tonight’s performances are any confirmation, as successful an artistic expression as the first.
Indeed, the first song Toria plays tonight when she takes the stage is one of those unreleased numbers. ‘The Bargain’ is a subtle song that cleverly recasts the plight of a woman who risks being controlled by a charming man into something akin to a deal made with the Devil – who, of course, always approaches with fair words and appearance that hides his true self.
The church is the finest setting in which to hear the song. While St. Mary’s on the Hill hasn’t been used for worship in more than fifty years, it still retains deep in its stones that grandeur and quiet communal awe that all old churches possess. After I enter, I take a look around the nave before finding an empty seat in the front row. We’re surrounded by black curtains along the arcades and in front of the apse, but I can sit back and look up to see striking carved bosses in the camber beam roof. The building itself is older than the words of the Bard that I quoted at the start of this review, and the three witches supposedly buried in the grounds would perhaps be pleased to find a kinswoman standing confidently in the chancel tonight. Toria Wooff is a self-professed Goth, and tonight she’s dressed in a long black dress, with black boots and black hair and blood-red lips, a Taylor acoustic guitar resting across her body. Polly Virr, who takes a seat beside her and rests her cello against her neck, is also dressed all in black.
In fact, the only performer who doesn’t bedeck themselves in black tonight is opening act Sam Moss, who steps out in troubadour colours of olive and weathered grey. He delivers a fine acoustic set in a soft, soulful voice, the Boston-based musician’s songs sounding like Walden set to chords. After delivering seven songs he departs for another gig he has across town.
He’s succeeded by David Gorman, Toria’s regular opener on this autumn tour, who is dressed all in black in gothic solidarity with his headliner. He provides a slightly longer and even more successful set, including his latest single ‘Darlin’ and two new songs, ‘Hourglass’ and ‘Morning’. (“Although I appreciate all my songs are new to you,” he says to the audience.) Alongside an incongruous but successful cover of Blink-182’s ‘All the Small Things’, there are the apposite songs ‘Curses’, ‘La Mort’ and ‘Another Midnight’ – all of which ensure I’ll be looking into this musician further. That is, if we all make it: both Sam and David sing lyrics tonight that make reference to apocalypse or the end of the world, and I find myself thinking that perhaps they know something we don’t, and that I should take the opportunity to make things right with the Lord before I leave this church.
But if there’s rapture tonight, it’s Toria who’s causing it. After ‘The Bargain’ I already know I made the right decision in coming here. I had been at a crossroads of my own, knowing that in driving to Chester to make the gig I would be missing most of Manchester United’s visit to Anfield – the Red Devils being one form of devil worship that’s socially acceptable. In the event it’s a historic 2-1 win (not that you care, of course), but even though I miss it I don’t regret my decision. It’s Toria’s set which provides the best 90 minutes tonight.
Having played the first song solo, Toria is now joined by Polly Virr for the remainder of the night. Polly is Toria’s not-so-secret weapon; a cello is one of the most exquisite sounds you could ever hope to hear and Polly plays it expertly. She adds a gorgeous texture to Toria’s already-compelling songs, complementing her soaring voice well. She applies deft touches and moments of sweeping power, whether that’s a pensive delicacy on ‘Sweet William’, deep-toned plucking on ‘The Flood’, the drive behind ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’, or the cathartic release of ‘See Things Through’ in tonight’s encore.
On the second song of the set, ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, Polly substitutes the fine steel guitar of the album version with her cello. The song’s one of Toria’s best and most accessible, a showcase for her vocals and her songwriting. Its steel-laden album cut is a good entry point for fans of alternative country and Americana into her music.
But it’s with the third song, ‘Song for A’, that the night in Chester begins to distinguish itself from my previous experiences of Toria Wooff live. Maybe it’s just an effect of the travelling – Toria’s more than halfway through a nine-day nationwide tour, and played two hundred miles away in London the night before – but I detect an air of melancholy in some of the songs tonight, stronger than I’ve felt them before. ‘Song for A’, a tribute to a lost but not forgotten friend, has this quality anyway, but when I hear ‘Good Mother’ later in the night it’s the first time I’ve really been hit by the full scope of the sadness in the song. “I could have been a good mother, if that’s the card I was dealt,” Toria sings.
The melancholy doesn’t affect her playing or her voice – the latter is the purest I’ve yet heard it – and nor does it dampen the warm humour always present in her set. Toria mentions how she recently introduced Polly by saying she played the violin. As Polly looks up smiling from behind what is definitely not a violin, Toria says her cello is either “a massive violin, or she’s really small.” She also later delivers a disarming anecdote about embarrassing herself by miming a walk down a staircase at a previous gig, after David Gorman had gestured to her at the merchandise table during his opening set. “I doubled down and did it again,” she groans. “So now I mention my own merch. It shocked me into compliance.”
‘Good Mother’ is one of six unreleased songs Toria plays for us tonight, including the afore-mentioned ‘The Bargain’ and ‘Black Shuck’, a short “interlude” about a “cool as fuck” medieval story of a red-eyed demon dog which broke into a church. Toria is on home turf tonight; while she was born in Horwich, near Bolton (“if I want to be romantic, I say I’m from just off the West Pennine Moors,” she tells the amused audience), she has made Chester her home. And where better to bring new material to an audience than the same city where you are currently recording it?
With that in mind, Toria plays a new song she says she’s never played before. Marked on the setlist as ‘Noiselessly’ (Toria doesn’t introduce it by name tonight), it’s the latest evidence that this Northern songstress is quietly building a strong body of work that deserves to begin causing a stir. “Light up your mind,” she sings, the music rising as it finds a new chord.
It’s immediately followed by another unreleased original, ‘Aleister’. Even before I saw the name spelt on the setlist after the show, I suspected this song was inspired by the occultist Aleister Crowley, for not only is Toria a proud Goth girl but an avid Led Zeppelin fan. It’s a thrilling folk song, one of those confident melodies where the lyrics land emphatically on the chords like boots on stairs. Toria’s eyes scan the crowd as she confidently sings ‘Aleister’ from the chancel of St. Mary’s Church. It would be far too fanciful to suggest her eyes alight on me in the front row when she sings of “bored housewives summoning Archangel Michael”, but it’s a cool moment regardless.
But by far the most notable unreleased song Toria plays tonight is one she says has “been part of my set for a little while” already. And I can attest to that, having heard it on each of the three previous occasions I’ve heard her live. Despite its familiarity to me now, I still get goosebumps when I hear her high, haunting voice on ‘House on the Hill’, a song she says is inspired by the imagery in Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black: “the descriptions of the marshland and the desolate house… it’s frightening, but beautifully worded.” The song sung by the Woman in Black on stage tonight gets better every time I hear it, as though ‘House on the Hill’ finds more invigorating breath to draw upon here in St. Mary’s on the Hill.
It says a lot for the musical wealth on display that I feel I can relate much of the power and magic of the concert tonight without really mentioning two of Toria’s most popular songs, ‘See Things Through’ and ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’, both of which she plays. But, as I wrote earlier, this is less a review than an imploration, and there is little I can do other than to encourage you to go listen to them yourself, whether on the impressive album recording or live at one of Toria’s gigs.
Because if you are in England, and particularly if you are in the North, there will be plenty of opportunities to see her live. Toria tours frequently and, as mentioned, she is already well on her way with recording a second album – a half-dozen dark jewels of which we’ve been privileged to hear tonight. If it’s a sad fact that talent is so scarcely rewarded in our society – and Toria has plenty of talent – it is at least true that hard work and industry sometimes is.
Bells tolled as I approached the church tonight; they will toll again through the fog as I leave. In between there is remarkable music, and I can only hope that one day bells toll to announce a Gothic revival, the wider recognition of Toria Wooff’s artistic talent. As it stands, despite repeatedly telling my friends not to sleep on this, it is alone that I make my way back to Manchester for the working week, a mist travelling across the black road as I cross the latent River Dee. Sometimes you can’t even bring a horse to water, let alone make it drink.
I write this review a week later in the dead of night, on the night the clocks go back for the coming winter. As I see the time change from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m., the above quote from Hamlet comes to mind. Thinking back on the lighted porch of St. Mary’s Church before doors, I remember reading once about a folk superstition from Tudor times. It was believed that if you kept a watch on the porch of your parish church throughout the night, you would begin to see the spirits of the living people of your parish entering its doors. Those who you did not see come out again would die before midsummer.
But beware this gift of augury, which came with a price: it was also said that if you failed in your vigil and fell asleep, you too would die. For the final song of her encore tonight, Toria Wooff plays ‘Estuaries’ softly, almost like a lullaby. But this is no time for sleep. Like the vigilant guards of Hamlet‘s opening scene, I have already borne witness to the event, and now await the next opportunity. Four times have I seen the Woman in Black live and had her song greet my ears. Others have too, and the number deserves to grow. Do not sleep on this any longer. Take a pew, and watch with us the minutes of this night.
Setlist:
(all songs from the album Toria Wooff and written by Toria Wooff, unless noted)
The day starts and ends with the sound of Billy. At six in the morning my dog wakes me up with barking and a flurry of face licks, thoughtfully determined that I shouldn’t miss my train down to London in… checks clock… three and a half hours. I groan and roll over. Billy huffs and lays down next to me.
I named the now two-year-old cavachon Billy because he came into our home as a puppy shortly after I last saw Billy Strings live, at the Manchester Academy in November 2023. Since that time the two Billys have been ever-present in my affections; one with pats and belly rubs and the other… without any of that, because that would be weird. I will forever associate the Billy Strings song ‘Enough to Leave’ with my Billy, because it was the song I played to soothe the pup to sleep on his first night with us in his new home.
As for the other Billy, he’s grown even more remarkably than the puppy has. When I first saw Billy Strings at the Manchester Academy two years ago, he was already a star, playing intensely liberating music to a crowd of adoring thousands. Largely embraced by both the traditional bluegrass scene and by the more progressive crowd, he plays and records music that can’t help but strike a chord with people. Alongside his own albums, he has collaborated with legends like Willie Nelson and, more recently, Ringo Starr, and it’s not too hard to imagine that his own name will be spoken about as a legend in the years to come. When the taxi driver arrives to take me from my home to the train station in Manchester (don’t worry, my Billy is not left alone), he asks me why I’m heading for London. I say I’m going to see Billy Strings at the Royal Albert Hall, and just as I’m about to explain who he is and what bluegrass is, I find there’s no need. The taxi driver is already a fan.
But for all his talent and all the success he’s enjoyed over the last few years, even Billy Strings must have struggled to ever imagine himself headlining at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve attended some impressive venues over the years, from cavernous arenas to intimate churches to charming, dimly-lit back-rooms, but this is the first time I’ve attended one of the world’s truly special, iconic venues. The Royal Albert Hall is a vast, opulent colosseum, an exquisite piece of imperial architecture that in its every detail and coalescence reflects the power and prestige of the Victorian era in which it was built.
My eyes struggle to take in the vastness of the dome, which is peppered with large purple-lit acoustic discs drooping from the ceiling, and I find myself thinking that the deadheads in the pit tonight would no doubt be amused to learn that the Royal Albert Hall can only achieve its sound with the help of these mushrooms sprouting from the ceiling. I look to the Royal Box where monarchs since Queen Victoria have sat, before my eyes return to the stage where even greater names can be found: Sinatra, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin. Wagner, Verdi and Elgar. A speech by Winston Churchill; a bout by Muhammad Ali. Perhaps most remarkably, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on the same bill in 1963. Behind the stage, the vast organ pipes of the Voice of Jupiter lie dormant, and I turn to look back up at the dome, recalling John Lennon’s lyric from ‘A Day in the Life’. “Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire… Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” The line is even more of a trip when you’re there and you try to imagine filling the room with holes yourself.
The Beatles song ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ plays over the tannoy as I take my seat in the stalls, following on from the end of a Paul McCartney song I couldn’t quite catch. Later on there’s the Tom Petty song ‘Hard on Me’ – he also played at the Royal Albert Hall. I adore Tom Petty, placing him second only to the Beatles, and I reflect on how, in some ways, I see Billy Strings as the man’s successor. While their sound is different, their approach is not. Like Petty, Billy has that knack of making you feel like everything will be alright. Perhaps it’s just the natural overflow of witnessing someone who seems like a genuinely good person create art to a high level on their own terms, and having people respond to it. That’s creative expression at its peak, in integrity, behaviour and ambition, and it soaks into the notes of their music.
And like Petty, Billy Strings came from a difficult background, a hard life that would have sunk most people unseen and unheard, and he rose above it to become truly, generously remarkable. Shortly before the concert, Billy posts a photograph of his childhood home on Instagram, followed by another of tonight’s prestigious venue during soundcheck. “From the meth den to the Royal Albert Hall,” he writes.
Everyone knows how special this night is, then, even before it begins and Billy remarks on it from the stage, looking around the hall and taking it all in. This, of course, is where the Last Night of the Proms is played; they know how to shoot music here and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the hope and glory of Billy’s own set released on film at some point. Everyone here knows this will be a moment, a milestone, in Billy’s growing legend. A night when it will be, in the decades to come, a genuinely awesome flex to be able to say: I was there.
Because to match the specialness of the historic venue, Billy and his band provide a set for the ages. I’ve previously described a Billy Strings set as a moveable feast, but this was the feast of all feasts, a 10 out of 10 show on 10/10/2025. A one-off UK date (this is not part of any national tour) was always likely to result in a spectacular set-list, but Billy and the band really pull out all the stops here. Even Jerry Jeff Walker would want to be in London tonight, not home with the armadillo.
Some concert mainstays get definitive takes; some lesser-played and never-before-played songs are not only aired but billow like sails filled by a trade wind. Those long, frenzied bluegrass jams that catch and release, which are like a moreish drug… well, there’s not just the usual one or two songs for that tonight but three or four at least. The crowd is fantastic too; we’re locked in, deathly silent when Billy sings a cappella in the darkness and roaring like a storm when we know the band is pushing it higher and higher and yet somehow keeping it together. And then there’s the release, the break, like crashing waves. The Royal Albert Hall gets it all. Four thousand holes might fill the Albert Hall, but there’s not a single hole to be found tonight.
You might ask, then, whether there’s even any need for a review or commentary from myself. Billy Strings certainly needs no introduction, not when the mere sight of him walking onto stage tonight generates a roar among the thousands present that most bands could not raise with their finest song. And unlike some of the smaller, special gigs I’ve been to over the years, there’s no high-minded compulsion to blog and diarize this concert for posterity. It’s recorded, as every Billy Strings gig is, on Nugs.netand perhaps also in the film cameras that zero in on the man on stage tonight.
But even a recording of the highest fidelity cannot capture the atmosphere in a room, or properly convey which songs garner the most emotion in a performer and in an audience. Because silence and song has a weight as well as a resonance, and the weight can only be felt in the moment, in person, as it crushes and lifts and ripples through a crowd.
This review, then, is the weighing of the night as I remember experiencing it from the hall, after Billy Strings walks out onto the stage and looks around and laughs in disbelief. His eyes take in those of us in the stalls and loggia before wandering up undaunted to the gallery and the Rausing Circle. “Well, howdy!” he says.
The first song, ‘Red Daisy’, is a fine stage-setter for the night, a fast bluegrass number right out of the blocks that not only introduces us to Billy’s sometimes-underappreciated singing voice and one of his distinctive fast-pickin’ acoustic guitar solos, but also to the four members of his band. Billy harmonises with his namesake Billy Failing on banjo. Jarrod Walker, who wrote the song, provides some fine mandolin, trading solos with the fiddle of Alex Hargreaves. The Hall’s namesake Royal Masat holds it all together with his large upright bass.
The band show they mean business with their second song, an imperial ‘Gild the Lily’ worthy of this storied hall. Introduced by Royal’s bass, which remains prominent throughout, the band feel themselves into the set with this song, a keening if conservative fiddle solo from Alex bringing cheers. Billy allows himself a long, dreamy guitar solo, switching into a psychedelic electric sound via the pedalboard at his feet and drawing the night’s first primal roars from the crowd. “I’d sing along with the birds, if I only knew the words,” Billy sings, his long hair blowing in the artificial wind. It’s the first transcendent moment in a night that will prove to be full of them.
The band move into the next song without stopping, ‘Hellbender’ played as conventional bluegrass with the band passing off the music to one another to play their solos. They trade with one another in a similar way in the follow-up, the fan favourite ‘Dust in a Baggie’, which Billy introduces as being probably his own favourite song of those he’s written. As the band play, Billy dances before turning to play directly to the fans standing in the balconies of the choir behind the stage.
The night is special for other reasons too. The crowd spontaneously sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a bashful Billy Failing after ‘Hellbender’; he’s 36 years old, “the birthday boy tonight,” as Billy Strings says, laughing. There can surely be few better ways to spend your birthday than as part of the headline act at the Royal Albert Hall, and Billy Strings agrees. “You’re the present,” he says to the cheering crowd. “You’re IN the present, man,” he adds, cosmically. After ‘Dust’, Billy Failing leans in to speak with him while he’s tuning his guitar. “It’s your birthday,” Billy replies playfully. “I’m not gonna screw it up.”
Speaking of births, Billy tells us that he’s a dad now, and that the first record he played for his son when he took him home was Doc Watson’s Portrait, an album he “commandeered from my dad’s own collection” and which he loves. “It was so warm… Jerry Douglas’ big ole warm dobro slidin’ on there, it’s just beautiful.” Now he plays ‘Leaving London’ from that album for those of us in London tonight, “not quite as good as that, but the best we can”. The song’s played straight, a nice cut of bluegrass with the band providing some great old-timey harmonies on the line “I’d fly to my own true love again.” For all their musical prowess, the band are also capable of bringing out goosebumps with their harmony vocals.
Those harmonies return on the following song, ‘Show Me the Door’ creating ripples of excitement as soon as Billy sings its opening line, “She ebbs and flows like water.” A long, thoughtful guitar solo from Billy wanders around the storied Hall before falling into one of Jarrod’s mandolin flourishes. Jarrod’s solo takes over; the song by this point having become increasingly gentle, the crowd in the pit bobbing, ebbing and flowing like water in the cool turquoise stagelight.
It’s followed by a sprawling ‘Dawg’s Rag’, starting with a fast mandolin riff immediately and keenly picked up by Alex Hargreaves’ fiddle. The two instruments repeatedly pass off to one another as the song builds, with Billy Failing’s banjo also getting in on the action. For a time it becomes almost a soft and pensive song, more silk than dawg’s rag and the moment when Alex really kicks into top gear for the night, the classically-trained violinist beginning to relish playing in this historic venue. His fiddle draws cheers, the crowd appreciating how the five men on stage each pull the song in their own directions before coming back together again. The song seems to be ending with some slightly foreboding chords, before it picks up again and Alex bursts into a prime, spirited fiddle straight out of the free-breathing hills.
For the next song there’s a change of pace, as Billy hands off his guitar to a roadie and switches to a double-necked Martin Grand guitar. His phrasing sounds uncannily like the spaced-out psychedelia of John Lennon as he sings the opening lines of ‘Stratosphere Blues’. The song glides into ‘I Believe in You’, the vocal phrasing and the construction of the song now reminding me more of Tom Petty. The performance of the two united songs has been delivered primarily by Billy, with the band’s light touches only becoming more prominent as the song progresses.
Billy switches back to his normal guitar, thanking us for being here. “I truly cannot even believe that I’m standing here right now, saying this,” he says, with genuine awe in his voice. “This feels like a special night here with these fellas, on Bilbo’s birthday and with all of you.”
To end their first set, the band effortlessly deliver a crystal ‘In the Clear’, before Billy walks to the front of the stage and plays the opening bars of ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’. It’s an epic, generational rendition of the song, the concert mainstay building and building as the band trade lines – a proper, vintage B.M.F.S. concert jam. The jam spreads around the room as Billy and Alex build each other up higher, the crowd roaring when they recognise the precarious peaks they are daring each other to scale. But they don’t fall apart; the jam sticks, with Billy Failing’s banjo joining in and taking a prominent role. Billy Strings’ own acoustic solo morphs into an electric one by way of the pedal, and he strolls to the front of the stage again while playing, sending the pit wild. The solo becomes thrillingly electric as he stalks about the stage and shreds heavily, before returning to the band and introducing some wah-wah from the pedal. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix sits up, his ears burning, and the Voice of Jupiter nods mute approval. Billy announces they’re taking a short break, and the crowd roars their exit from the stage.
When they return after the intermission, Billy and the band pick up where they left off. ‘The Fire on My Tongue’ is played conventionally, with fine harmonies and the trading of solos across the five men on stage. The song ebbs to catch its breath, before Billy tear into a longer, fast-pickin’ solo. Billy is dancing, the crowd bouncing now too as though they’d never been away. The song builds and builds, Billy letting out a long “Welllll” that draws cheers and crashes straight into ‘Ole Slew Foot’. The ‘Foot’ is fast and fun, with Billy stalking to the front of the stage. He starts singing from a microphone which has been strategically placed there, his ole left foot resting on a speaker.
After the familiar return, Alex’s fiddle now starts off a cover of the Jim Croce song ‘Age’, something Billy says he’s been “fixin’ to do”. It sounds like classic country, a wonderful moment as Billy Failing and Jarrod Walker harmonise with him. It’s the first time they’ve ever played the song live, and it doesn’t deserve to be the last. They follow it with ‘My Alice’, the song from the latest Highway Prayers album drawing cheers of recognition from the crowd from the very first notes. It’s a moment for the band to let us breathe – and we’ve needed to catch our breath, because next up is ‘Away from the Mire’, its distinctive opening riff causing frissons of excitement through the Hall.
People know what’s coming; like ‘Gild the Lily’ and ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’, ‘Away from the Mire’ is one of those songs that Billy and the band can expand and contract at will into memorable, profound jams, a song that even if you’d never heard it before you would know it’s building to something epic. Mandolin and fiddle solos give us a taste of what’s to come, before the song retreats into a dreamy instrumental soundscape, as though summoning the energy it knows it will need. A long solo from Billy becomes a wailing electric with the use of the pedalboard, a sort of gentle frenzy. A possessed Billy moves to the front of the stage, closer to my side, during his epic, almost unbelievable solo. We can’t help but cheer its conclusion. In such a moment you marvel at the journey this band is capable of taking you on within a single song, let alone how they help you glide along that journey so effortlessly. Listening to a ten-minute Billy Strings jam live is as undemanding as a two-minute pop song, and more rewarding by orders of magnitude. It’s one of the night’s best performances.
It’s followed by another, though one in complete contrast to what we’ve just heard. The four members of Billy’s band leave the stage and Billy unslings his guitar. He approaches a microphone that has now been placed for him at the front and centre of the stage. He looks around, taking in the cheers and the applause.
“This is such a beautiful room,” he says. “I want to sing a song here without the guitars barking.” What follows is astonishing: a solo, a cappella delivery of the mournful hymn ‘And Am I Born to Die?’ The crowd are instantly, respectfully silent, and you could hear a pin drop as a single spotlight descends on Billy. Only a few months removed from the death of his mother, one of the heaviest and most profound losses a man can bear, Billy sings of a “trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown. A land of deepest shade, unpierced by human thought.”
I don’t know if this loss is what he holds in his mind as he sings the hymn. But it’s clear he digs deep to sing it. It’s note-perfect and deeply resonant. It’s brave; the young man singing alone and without instrument under the spotlight in the silent, darkened colosseum on a milestone night in his career. None of the classical giants who have graced this hall since its Victorian genesis could have delivered it better, and if Billy’s guitar abilities often overshadow his vocal talent, his singing can never again be knowingly undersold by me or anyone else who hears ‘Born to Die’ in the Royal Albert Hall tonight. This is what I meant when I wrote earlier in my review that silence and song carries a weight, indescribable and only fully understood in the moment. When the song ends and the lights come back up, the silent crowd begins to roar with pent-up release. It’s a moment of music I think will stay with me until I die.
No doubt feeling the need for release himself, Billy straps his acoustic guitar back on and – still playing solo – sings a fun, routine version of ‘Brown’s Ferry Blues’. “Hello there,” he says as he starts to play the song, perhaps recognising that we are all different people meeting again on the other side of ‘Born to Die’.
He replaces his guitar with a banjo, and Billy Failing walks out to join him with his own. The banjo strings of Strings succeed in teasing Failing with an impromptu playing of ‘Happy Birthday’, before the two decide to play ‘Dos Banjos’. The crowd begin to clap and stomp their feet as Dos Billys play, cheering as Billy teases Failing further, stalking in a circle around his friend as they play.
Taking a big swig of his drink, Billy slings his guitar back on and the rest of the band come back out. Billy introduces them all by name, garnering applause, and the five reunited musicians break into ‘Escanaba’. The instrumental’s a good reintroduction to what they’re all capable of, with solos from Jarrod’s mandolin and even from Royal’s upright bass. The bass provides some regal backing to a long fiddle solo from Alex, drawing more worthy cheers from the crowd.
It’s followed by a fine, swaying cover of ‘Nights in White Satin’, the Moody Blues hit fitting Billy and the band like a glove. Billy’s fast guitar then hoists ‘Pretty Daughter’ high, the man stalking to the front of the stage as he plays before returning to the rank of five to harmonise energetically on the chorus. A mandolin solo from Jarrod draws cheers, and Billy dances as he sings. An incredible fiddle solo from Alex sees the crowd roaring as it catches fire, and even Billy can’t resist letting out a yell and dancing with delight. The crowd is delirious, and Billy takes another big swig of his drink.
“I don’t even… I don’t know how to thank y’all for coming out tonight,” he says. “But this has been such a magical evening that I will always remember.”
As a thank you to his English audience, he alters the opening lyrics of his next song, a cover of Leon Payne’s ‘Psycho’, to “Can Mary fry some fish – and chips?” The song is knowingly disturbing – “you think I’m psycho, don’t you, mama?” goes the harmonised refrain – and ends with a foreboding sound that reminds me of the rising orchestra in the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’, the song whose holes could fill this Hall.
But just as that song’s orchestral build broke into Paul McCartney’s upbeat middle-eight (“woke up, got out of bed”), tonight’s ‘Psycho’ reveals ‘Hide and Seek’, the fourth and final of those great majestic jams Billy and the band deliver to us live tonight. Those distinctive notes kick the band into gear and the crowd erupts. “Well, it’s a dark time, I do believe,” the band harmonise.
‘Hide and Seek’ builds and pauses and then builds again, the band in complete control of the music. Their ebbs and flows crash against the crowd like waves, making even the most reluctant body in the Hall move in a St. Vitus dance. The song builds again as Billy steps out to the front and the crowd roars. Even the stagelights get in on the action, composing a frantic lightshow as Billy shifts again into an epic electric solo and the music continues to build. As the solo and the song ends, Billy yells – a cathartic release.
It feels like a finale, and the band stop to take in the extended applause and cheers at the end of the marathon song. And while there’ll be no encore tonight – the band play right up until curfew – it feels like we’re at that moment. The band have peaked and everything that happens from now is a bonus, a de facto encore.
Billy and the band, sans Alex, gather around a single mike that a roadie places at the front of the stage. Billy plays a harmonica note to help get the four of them in tune, before they begin to sing ‘Richard Petty’ a cappella. In contrast to ‘And Am I Born to Die?’ earlier, the crowd cannot contain their delight, roaring and stomping their feet and clapping. It seems to throw the band off – ‘Richard Petty’ is a difficult harmonic feat – and they struggle to stay in key. To their credit, the audience recognises this and tones it down, the stomps fading to a minority. ‘Richard Petty’ is able to “carry on without the strife” and it becomes a perfectly fine rendition, if not the transcendent experience the song has proved capable of being.
Billy and the band put their instruments back on, with Alex and his fiddle now joining them at the single mike. ‘Tennessee’, their final song, is a straight cut of bluegrass, with harmonies on the chorus and Royal Masat thrilling the crowd by coming in deep with “I hear her calling me.” The Royal Albert Hall is treated to a final flurry of solos from guitar and mandolin and fiddle, before the band’s harmonies end the night.
“Thank you, folks!” Billy says, handing off his guitar to a roadie. He stands alone, the man from the childhood meth den now taking in the roaring applause of London’s Royal Albert Hall. His band join him and, arm in arm, they soak it all in and take a theatrical bow before exiting the stage.
Jimi Hendrix’s song ‘Fire’ plays over the tannoy as they leave. We’ve certainly been privileged to stand next to their fire tonight. As the crowd filters out, I stay seated for a little while longer in the stalls of the Royal Albert Hall. I look over at the balconies, up at the dome, back to the now-emptying stage. Someone once sat in this seat in 1963 and watched the Beatles from this same distance. They watched legends being made. And as I look I can almost manifest their four silhouettes on the stage close by, imagining how real they must have once been stood right there.
Tonight I can say without hyperbole that I’ve watched another legend in the making. No one can hit the matchless heights of the Beatles. It is impossible. But having witnessed Billy Strings live with his band, playing brilliant, imaginative bluegrass music to a crowd of thousands, and learning something of the journey that brought him here, I can say that his is also a story that you can scarcely believe is being written, and tonight was an illustrious chapter in it. If I ever have grandchildren, I might well find myself bragging that I was there when Billy Strings played the Royal Albert Hall. And I will be able to draw on this review I have written, a week removed from the event, to recall some of its intangible weight from the mists of time and memory. That silence in ‘Born to Die’ is one of the most exquisite sounds I’ve ever heard.
Stepping out into the night, I walk around the outside of this beautifully composed piece of architecture, taking it in from all sides. Finally satisfied, I walk back to the road and stand on Kensington Gore, looking across to the Gardens at the opulence of the Albert Memorial. At a taxi rank that’s comically small for a venue of this grandeur, I finally manage to hail a passing taxi.
A man behind me is also waiting for a taxi, and I ask him where he’s going. “Euston Station,” he says. That’s also where I’m going – my hotel is close by – so I invite him to join me. In the ride that follows it turns out that, remarkably, he came down to London for the concert today from Kearsley, only a few minutes up the A666 from where I began my own journey this morning in Salford. From my taxi driver this morning, things have come cosmically full-circle. But then perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise. Billy Strings fans are everywhere, and we’re growing in number. The man’s just that good. Dogs find themselves named after him. From Manchester to London, from meth dens to the Royal Albert Hall, everybody loves Billy – and rightfully so.
Setlist:
(no opening act; two full Billy sets with intermission after ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’)
Red Daisy (Jarrod Walker/Christian Ward) (from Renewal)
Gild the Lily (William Apostol/Walker) (from Highway Prayers)
noun – a coiled device attached to the body of an electric guitar, beneath the strings, to cancel out electrical interference and unwanted noise
There’s nothing quite like seeing a great rock band in their prime, live on the stage. The power and synergy of a band of men picking on guitars, booming on drums, singing and harmonising and shredding their way through an amplified set. Men who have spent so much time together, on stage and in practice and on tour buses, that they can almost read one another’s minds, and who show it in the confident, inspired interplay of their music.
49 Winchester are the epitome of this. A band of six men from Virginia who first started practicing on the small-town street which gave them their name. A band who, years later, are on stage tonight at the Manchester Academy as one of the two great Southern rock bands of this generation (the Red Clay Strays being the other). Amidst a flurry of blinding stagelights they burst straight into the funky twang of ‘Long Hard Life’, following it up with a frenetic version of ‘The Wind’ that dazzles even more than the lightshow does. Justin Louthian’s drums boom. Chase Chafin’s bass roams. Noah Patrick’s keening steel guitar slides across the bars and Tim Hall, the ‘Redneck Mozart’, fills in the gaps with his keys. Bus Shelton’s electric guitar trades licks with the one slung around Isaac Gibson’s neck. Gibson himself, the hillbilly hegemon, provides vocal dynamite, moving from the country shitkicking of ‘Long Hard Life’ through the raucous rocking of ‘The Wind’ into the soulful tones of ‘Everlasting Lover’.
It’s a blistering start to the night, the first three songs a testament to what a rock band can do when given their head. One hundred years ago it wouldn’t even have been possible, with the electric guitar being an invention that came out of experiments in electrical amplification in the 1920s and 1930s. To provide aural fidelity, the instrument required some innovations, not least the humble humbucker. Attached to every electric guitar you will find one of these modest coiled pickups, or something similar, which cancel out electrical buzz and “buck the hum”, allowing for the exquisite tones of amplified guitar music. This eventually birthed rock ‘n’ roll and the sound which 49 Winchester now put to great effect on ‘Miles to Go’, their fourth song of the evening.
It’s a shame, however, that all the innovation and ingenuity which made rock music possible could not find a way to tune out the one perennial blight on the live music experience: the obnoxious fan, born with no shame or self-awareness and with a foghorn instead of a mouth, who ruins the experience for everyone around him.
Tonight’s unbalancer of the signal-to-noise ratio is a burly, moon-faced man who plonks himself directly behind me, stage-right – despite this being a spot on the periphery of the Academy hall that I’d chosen largely in the hope of avoiding such people. I’m no miser, no hillbilly bah humbug, and I certainly don’t expect people to just stand silently and clap politely on their night out. I’m all for roars and singalongs and dancing, which can help make a night of music special, especially music like this which encourages a bit of rowdiness, like seasoning added to a soup.
But every reasonable concert-goer knows the type of person I’m now describing. In the annals of concert fucknuggetry, he demands his own page. He starts 49’s set excitedly telling his girlfriend about his new purchase from the merchandise stand – a black hat – and he’s desperate to prove worthy of its polyester peak by demonstrating to everyone around him that he is 49 Winchester’s biggest fan.
He does this by singing along – which is every fan’s right, of course, even if the only thing this particular lost soul can harmonise with is a bleating goat. The problem is that he doesn’t know any of the lyrics for any of the songs, and so after Isaac Gibson sings a line from the stage, our stage-right simpleton loudly repeats it – two bars behind.
Growing bored of this, and with his IQ struggling to match the room temperature, he stumbles upon a brainwave. Instead of singing the lyrics, he decides to substitute them with his own. “I shit my pants. I SHIT MY PANTS!” he brays, over and over again, before turning to his companion. “This will be so funny tomorrow!” he yells.
In this way, the first half of 49 Winchester’s set is disrupted for me and probably two dozen other paying fans who have waited sixteen months for 49 to return to Manchester. It’s not only an insult to us, but an insult to the band, who Isaac Gibson confesses are as “sick as a dog”, just as he is, and yet who power through their illness to make it an amazing night for their fans. Only to have one burdensome oik ruin it for many of those fans anyway.
You may ask at this point why I don’t say something, waiting until now in this review to be a tough guy from behind a keyboard. One reason is that I have in the past argued at concerts with aggressive, ignorant people who go too far, and reflected afterwards that it probably hadn’t been a good idea to do so when the guys were younger than me, intoxicated, and probably could have beat the shit out of me if things had gone south. Call me coward or call me sensible, but I have no desire tonight to risk an altercation with this regeneration of Sloth from The Goonies.
Another reason is that I can still hear enough of the music to make it salvageable. I’ve been able to enjoy ‘Anchor’, delivered slow and soulful by the band under moody blue lights, reflecting later that one of the best things about live music is that it helps you appreciate songs from a band’s catalogue you might previously have overlooked.
That said, some of my favourite 49 Winchester songs are spoiled by Sloth, including ‘Yearnin’ for You’, ‘It’s a Shame’ and ‘Russell County Line’. The latter sees British country singer Jake O’Neill invited onto stage to sing with Isaac on 49’s signature song – but it passes me by. When Isaac announces he is inviting someone onto the stage, Sloth shouts “It’s me!” and then rants indignantly throughout the song when this proves not to be the case. Had the band not recognised the poetic genius of his “shit my pants” lyric?
The final reason I don’t say anything is that, mercifully, this mooing buffalo starts to migrate through the crowd, benevolently spreading his talent to as many people as possible. I should be sympathetic for those now afflicted, but in truth I’m just relieved he’s gone. At the end of the night, as the band tell the crowd we’re all going to take a selfie together, this prime specimen of humanity can be seen climbing a railing, nudging a young woman aside to do so, determined not to deny 49’s photo finish of its main character. But for those of us in his wake, the hum has now been bucked, and from ‘Annabel’ onwards we’re actually able to enjoy the music unmolested.
If half a set seems like insufficient lemonade to make from the sour lemon Sloth has left us, we’ve at least already been recompensed by tonight’s opening act. Wyatt Flores sings from behind an acoustic guitar and a huge grin, backed by Austin Yankunas on another acoustic and a rather eccentric Clem Braden, who wears what looks like a green pith helmet and alternates between mandolin, keys and some rather thrilling blues harp. The trio perform their own 12-strong set of material, combining original songs like ‘Welcome to the Plains’ and the hook-laden ‘Milwaukee’ with crowd-pleasing covers like ‘How to Save a Life’ and the Turnpike favourite ‘Kansas City Southern’. Their penultimate song is a sprawling, expansive ‘Oh Susannah’, worth the admission fee alone and providing a more-than-worthy curtain-raiser for tonight’s main event.
In 49 Winchester’s set, the clear harmonies in ‘Annabel’ are, with Sloth now gone, more blissful than ever. I’m now able to appreciate not only the band but the rest of the crowd who, with the one now-well-documented exception, give 49 the energy they’re looking for. ‘Hillbilly Daydream’ is a solid rocker elevated by the buzz of the crowd and the power of the band. “Not quite boiling, but hot enough to scald,” as Isaac sings, but the night does then reach boiling point with the stop-start thump of ‘Don’t Speak’ and the raucous crowd-pleaser ‘Tulsa’. Isaac salutes someone in the front row, and the night is good.
The freshly humbucked aural clarity on my side of the room is something I’m particularly grateful for as we enter the home stretch. Aside from being a supremely tight rock band able to roam through the various genres of roots music at will, 49 Winchester also have, in frontman Isaac Gibson, an excellent songwriter and soulful singer. This is now proved further in the performances of ‘Damn Darlin” and ‘Hays, Kansas’. The latter in particular brings forth goosebumps; the song – which Isaac tells us was one of the first he ever wrote, when he was 19 – remains his crowning glory. Its mix of soulful desperation, wandering despair and cathartic angst, driven by an increasingly epic rock momentum, is 49 at their absolute best – difficult as that is to distinguish when they set the bar so high at the start of the night.
After an obligatory ‘Last Call’ to end their set, 49 are roared back onto stage for an encore. They deliver an intense, crunching rendition of ‘Hillbilly Happy’, the band’s illness seemingly banished by adrenaline if Isaac’s signature high kick is anything to go by. And they have enough juice left over for Isaac to hold up his hand and say they’re going to do one more. “We’re going to do something we’ve never done before and play something that isn’t one of our own songs.”
“This is for Ozzy,” he says, before leading the band into a tribute to the late, great Ozzy Osbourne with an immaculate, soulful cover of the Black Sabbath ballad ‘Changes’. It’s another moment that causes goosebumps, a soulmate to the earlier ‘Hays, Kansas’ and a shining example of 49 Winchester’s taste, power and dexterity. It’s so exquisite it stirs me to wonder momentarily why the band don’t do more covers. But then the stage fades to black and a single spotlight remains on Isaac Gibson, the hillbilly hegemon, as he stuns a molten crowd with his final soulful verse. With a singer and songwriter this talented, leading such a band, you can only stand back and let them go where they will in their own good time.
Setlist:
(all songs written by Isaac Gibson, unless noted)
Long Hard Life(from III)
The Wind (from The Wind)
Everlasting Lover (from III)
Miles to Go (single)
Anchor (from Leavin’ This Holler)
All Over Again (unreleased)
Yearnin’ for You (Gibson/Matt Koziol) (from Leavin’ This Holler)
It’s a Shame (from III)
Bringing Home the Bacon (unreleased)
Pardon Me (unreleased)
Russell County Line (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
Annabel (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
Hillbilly Daydream (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
Don’t Speak (from The Wind)
Tulsa (Gibson/Stewart Myers) (from Leavin’ This Holler)
Damn Darlin’ (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
Hays, Kansas (from III)
Last Call (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
Encore: Hillbilly Happy (from Leavin’ This Holler)
“It’s not often you get to see one of your favourite artists backed by an orchestra,” opener Carl North says from the stage tonight. “And for free, too.”
With this one utterance Carl makes my own review redundant, because this is the appeal of the night in a nutshell. Toria Wooff has become one of my favourite artists in the half-year since I first came across her music and heard her play in a packed basement in Manchester, delivering an evocative Gothic folk sound with sophisticated songwriting and powerfully clear vocals. And tonight she’s not only backed by four members of the Manchester Camerata as a string quartet, but it’s free entry too – part of the Camerata’s charity-driven celebration of music across the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester.
Tonight is the third time I’ve seen Toria live in the six months since I first discovered her music, with a fourth soon to come as she embarks upon an autumn tour in the next couple of weeks. That fourth will make her joint-top of the list of artists I’ve seen live (with Kassi Valazza). Having written reviews of her Manchesterand Liverpool gigs in so short a span of time, is there anything new I could say a third time around? Would it be best, perhaps, to just leave the night with Carl’s succinct summary?
In one sense, no – I can’t say anything new. Toria is as good as ever – strong in voice, picking out melodies on her acoustic guitar, and after the show devoting her time to those who wish to meet and speak with her. But in another sense, the presence of the Manchester Camerata on this unique night gives me a new perspective, an opportunity to reflect on the talent and achievements of this artist.
Not all songs would stand up to the scrutiny of a classical rearrangement, but Toria’s do, which speaks to the quality of her songwriting. The bones are strong, and in the capable hands of Polly Virr, one of Toria’s regular collaborators, who has reworked their arrangement for the camerata tonight, they remain as impressive as ever. Toria’s self-titled debut album is played in full tonight, and in the same sequential order. The balance, the flow of the music, is excellent, giving us an opportunity to doff our cap to James Wyatt, Toria’s partner who produced that exquisite album at Sloe Flower Studios.
One thing that’s clear is that Toria has chosen her collaborators well, not only Polly and James but Carl North, her friend who opens the night with his own acoustic guitar and deeply soulful voice. His original songs, including ‘Hard Times’, ‘Thorn in Your Side’ and ‘Pearl’, are able to stand tall alongside his covers of Hank Williams, Jerry Reed and, as the last song in his set, the Bob Dylan song ‘Corrina, Corrina’.
And, of course, there are the members of the Camerata itself, one of whom (Katie Foster) played on Toria’s album too. Tonight’s string quartet consists of Sarah Whittingham, Katie Foster, Alex Mitchell and Graham Morris (the latter on cello) and, with Polly Virr watching on from the audience, they bring an orchestral magnificence to Toria’s songs, whether that’s the pensive roaming of ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, the thoughtful rumination in ‘Sweet William’, the dreaminess of ‘Mountains’ or the soaring catharsis of ‘See Things Through’. They bring out the haunting depth of ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’ and conjure a sound like rustling autumn leaves on ‘Estuaries’. Falling glissandos from the cello add an element of danger to ‘The Flood’, the swelling music drawing deep smiles from the quartet. There are few better harmonies of sight and sound than an orchestra swaying as they move across their strings.
The smiles are even warmer on their faces at the end of the show, as Toria leaves the stage and they remain seated, looking in her direction as the audience cheers for an encore.
“I genuinely didn’t have anything prepared,” Toria says after she returns to the stage in her long black dress and lifts the strap of her acoustic guitar back onto her shoulder. She decides to treat us to a new song, telling us she’s finished writing her second album and it’s currently in tracking. The song was written while she was reading the Gothic horror novel The Woman in Black, and “this song is loosely attached to that”.
‘House on the Hill’ is the song in question, and if tonight has been an impressive recreation of her first album, ‘House on the Hill’ shows that Toria’s second is to be eagerly anticipated. You can hear a pin drop as her clear voice fills the hall with one of those memorable folk melodies she has proven to be so good at creating. The song is played solo by Toria on her guitar: an unprepared encore, no arrangement from Polly, the four members of the Camerata now just four more additions to an admiring audience of hundreds at the Derby Hall. It’s not the free entry that appeals. It’s not the orchestra that keeps us fixed in place, remarkable as they are. The draw remains the woman in black, Toria herself.
Setlist:
(all songs from the album Toria Wooff and written by Toria Wooff, unless noted)
“I wasn’t sure you were gonna show up,” Oliver Anthony says from the stage to the thousands of people who have packed into the Manchester Academy concert hall tonight. Overpriced beers in hand, they’ve just sung along to ‘I’ve Got to Get Sober’, the third song of the main set.
It’s a reasonable concern. Not only has tonight’s gig, and this whole European tour, been rescheduled from its initial date in February, but there remains that question mark over the rise of Oliver Anthony – real name Chris Lunsford. As everyone knows, Chris was not a professional musician when he put the video for his ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ song online in August 2023, but it immediately went viral, speaking as it did to a vast community of forgotten men and representing a political zeitgeist that many of the chattering classes either didn’t know existed or had tried to suppress.
That viral sensation for such a political song, and Chris’ remarkable decision to resist the lure of obscene money or compromising for the music industry, resulted in some bitter mainstream and partisan attack pieces – labels like ‘flash in the pan’, ‘one-hit wonder’ and, for the ‘Richmond’ song itself, sneering dismissals of its technical quality or the content of its lyrics. And, such has been the unprecedented strangeness of Oliver Anthony’s rise, the questions and the criticisms weren’t always illegitimate, even if they were sometimes dishonestly made. What to make of an ordinary, if talented and principled, man who, literally overnight, became a man and message discussed by presidents and presidents-elect, and considered the voice of many?
I posed the same question to myself when I went to see Oliver Anthony on his first visit to Manchesterin February 2024, a mere six months after that viral ‘Richmond’ hit. It was answered within moments of him taking the stage, as the crowd spontaneously belted out the entirety of ‘Richmond’ word for word – a special night of musical catharsis, generosity and goodwill. In my review of the night, I labelled Oliver Anthony – with a nod to the title of his viral hit – ‘The Richest Man in the World‘. Chris had been tested and had come forth as gold. Speaking the truth, he had been lauded for it and loved. He was making bank and, when the tour was over, he could retreat back to the sanctity of his woods in Virginia with his wife and kids and his good ole dogs.
What, then, would be the change in the nineteen months since then? One, sadly, is that his sanctuary has been somewhat compromised; the afore-mentioned wife is now that most dreaded of things, an ex-wife, having allegedly demanded (admittedly, according to podcast rumours) 60% of his future earnings. The beloved partner of ‘Always Love You Like a Good Old Dog’ has become a ‘Scornful Woman’, the title of his latest single.
But if Chris has been bruised and battered by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, he doesn’t show it tonight. Both the above songs are played in his set; ‘Scornful Woman’ is not excessively bitter and ‘Good Old Dog’ remains as tender as ever – my favourite Oliver Anthony song. “I’ve still got these three kids with her,” Chris says before ’90 Some Chevy’, his song about taking the not-yet-scornful woman out in his old car when they first met.
Other changes are more routine, but still noteworthy in a review of a night of live music. Having visited Manchester last year as part of an acoustic trio, with Joey Davis on guitar and Caleb Dillard on stand-up bass, Oliver Anthony now leads an amplified five-piece band. Joey remains on guitar, though he occasionally switches to electric throughout tonight’s set. (Oliver Anthony also leaves the stage at one point to allow Joey to take the lead on singing two well-received covers, ‘Valerie’ and the Elvis Presley cut ‘T-R-O-U-B-L-E’.) The rhythm section is now performed by Peter Wellman on bass and keys and Noel Burton on drums, with the music further complemented by Billy Contreras’ fiddle. Opening act Sam Shackleton even returns to the stage on a few numbers to lend his harmonica.
Backed so strongly, and with nineteen months since he last toured England, the night should be set up for an incredible expression of Oliver Anthony’s creative and political message. But, surprisingly, this is where the Oliver Anthony live experience falters somewhat. The one-two punch of ‘Scornful Woman’ and ‘Cowboys and Sunsets’ in the second half of the set are the only two newer songs Oliver Anthony plays. Indeed, they (along with ‘Momma’s Been Hurting’, which doesn’t get an airing tonight) are the only new songs Chris has released since his viral frenzy, not counting the re-recorded Samsongs that made up his Hymnal album.
There is one unreleased original tonight: ‘Hank’, a fine slice of Oliver Anthony’s patented portentous country-folk which goes down well with the Manchester crowd. But if I’m honest I had expected more from an artist who, onstage, promises us there’s much more to come: “I’m gonna take a couple of months off when I get back and we’re just gonna try and get as much stuff recorded as we can.”
This may be down to an excess of caution from a truly independent artist, who would no doubt want his songs fairly protected. At the start of the night, Chris alludes to an ongoing dispute with the streaming companies about getting his money (“they make it so difficult to just do this like a regular person. There’s always some asshole that you gotta go through”) and later introduces ‘Ain’t Gotta Dollar’ by saying this whole viral thing started because he’d written that song and “was wanting to just go play it at a bonfire or a bar and I didn’t want anybody to steal it. I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so the cheapest way to do it was just to put it on the internet. I knew nobody would be able to rip it off.”
But even allowing for this caution, the fact remains there are nine covers in tonight’s set (not counting Joey Davis’ two-song interlude). That would be unusual for any singer-songwriter, but particularly for one who is so consciously opinionated, who has such a rare opportunity to reach large numbers of people while remaining unfiltered and untethered to any industry compromise.
Tonight’s covers are themselves a mixed bag. The set opens strongly with the evergreen ‘Amazing Grace’, before Chris nods to the local crowd – “there’s a city not very far from here called Salford, I believe” – with a cover of ‘Dirty Old Town’ by the local folk legend Ewan MacColl. The song gets a fantastic singalong from the crowd, and I’m sure I’m not the only Salfordian here tonight who finds it a special moment.
Some of the covers suit Oliver Anthony’s sound well: Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’, revived for the first time in the set since Chris last came to Manchester, and the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic ‘Free Bird’, countrified with a bending dobro sound here while still allowing Joey Davis opportunities to shred on guitar. Others are unnecessary or ill-chosen: the dissonant Primus song ‘Jerry Was a Race Car Driver’ passes me by, while the fluent staccato singing required for ‘Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked’ and ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ doesn’t sit well with Oliver Anthony’s more plaintive, resonant voice.
I’m no party-pooper, mind, and I enjoy as much as anyone tonight the lusty crowd-pleasing singalongs enabled by the likes of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ (“they don’t sing it that good in West Virginia, I swear,” Chris remarks). It’s only that I go to a night of live music wishing for an artist to express themselves just as much as they enjoy themselves, and tonight’s covers see that expression diluted. If a particular cover has a particular resonance for an artist, then all the better, but in my opinion such a significant number of easy crowd-pleasers take away from the artist’s own voice and message. And remember, this is an artist who became so rapidly popular precisely because he had something to say.
(That said, Chris does have some limits on how far he’ll go to cover a song tonight. “You guys’ll wanna hear one of those new Beyoncé country songs, or something like that?” he jokes, to pantomime boos from the crowd. “Nah, I’m just kidding. We don’t need two people butchering ‘Jolene’, that’s for sure.”)
Clinging to a raft of covers is particularly strange when Oliver Anthony has plenty of his own to keep him afloat. His original songs are very well-received tonight, generating singalongs to rival any, and when he breaks into the earnestness of ‘I’ve Got to Get Sober’, ‘Rich Man’s Gold’ or ‘I Want to Go Home’, he allows for a communality of experience among his fans. For all the covers on show, Oliver Anthony resonates best when he’s speaking from the heart.
Certainly, there’s no harm in the audience having a working-class hero to call their own, for all the sneers that come from outside. His music gives people a license to release their pent-up frustrations in a healthy way, and it means crowds get behind him like few others. Regardless of whether you agree with his politics, none can, in good faith, deny his authenticity, or his sincerity from behind the mike.
Two years after ‘Richmond’, Oliver Anthony is still clearly trying to figure out a way to cash that golden ticket in the most meaningful and culturally useful way. One thing he is doing which is of merit is creating opportunities for other artists to follow, as with Sam Shackleton, tonight’s opening act. It’s unlikely that Sam’s authentic, lively folk music, complete with banjo, harmonica and lyrics delivered in a thick Scottish dialect, would have made it on its own to as large a crowd as the one that has assembled in the Manchester Academy, were it not for the support of iconoclastic gatebreakers like Oliver Anthony. It’s an opportunity Sam takes fully and with a charming insouciance, singing his opening song a cappella with a can of beer in hand. He provides a mix of old folk standards and western songs alongside his own canny originals, and the crowd is fully invested in the sound, uncommercial as it is. Our cultural gatekeepers have never known what we truly want, but apparently it’s Scots banjo music, and I for one am here for it.
As for Oliver Anthony, he still has plenty of time to figure out how else he wants to grasp his opportunity. It seems his fanbase isn’t going anywhere: Chris remarks how he hid in the woods for six months or so and “I didn’t look at none of my socials or Spotify or none of that crap, and I just figured everybody had moved on. And one day I got on there and looked and it was like the same amount of monthly listeners. And I just realised I gotta keep doing this a good while longer.” Far from being a flash in the pan, his status and sincerity grants him a staying power. He only has to find a way of making the best of it.
Perhaps all he needs is encouragement; to be reminded of something he surely already knows but might understandably forget or allow to lapse in moments of doubt. Namely that a great many ordinary people, voiceless in the grand scheme of things, are willing him on. And Manchester is keen to provide that encouragement.
“Uuu uu ouu uhhh!” comes the shout from the crowd.
“What’s that?” Oliver Anthony replies from the stage.
“Uuu uu ouu uhhh!”
“I wish I could hear what you were saying,” he says. “It sounds like it’s really cool.”
“Uuu uu ouu uhhh!”
“I can’t hear shit up here. All I hear is “something the bay” or something like that.”
“Uuu uu ouu uhhh!”
“I just gotta hear what he’s saying. ‘Go on the boy?”‘
The crowd cheers.
“Alright, now what?” he says. “I don’t know what that even means.”
The crowd laughs.
“GO ON THE BOY!” Chris roars, and the crowd roars back. The shout will be heard spontaneously throughout the rest of the night.
“I don’t know what it means,” Chris says later on in the night, after roaring the phrase again. “I’ll find out tomorrow, I’m sure.”
What it means, aside from being a throwaway piece of slang, is that Oliver Anthony has a crowd of thousands behind him. Everywhere he goes, in England, in Europe, and back home in the United States, there are crowds of thousands. And they are there because he’s doing something against the grain. He came from nowhere, bypassing the gates and the gatekeepers, and expressed a sentiment shared by many that had been too often dismissed. He’s singing honest songs and endeavouring to stay honest himself while he does so. This is why people stay invested in him and his music. He might not be the right-wing prophet some wanted him to be in the immediate aftermath of ‘Richmond’s virality, but he’s an artist with integrity trying to do it the right way. Go on the boy, people say, having recognised what he is. Keep going.
The Oliver Anthony experience, then, is to recognise in him both change and constancy. I can criticise something as banal as the lack of change in the setlist, the small number of new songs and the plethora of covers, but also recognise and admire that in much deeper ways it’s good that this artist has not changed, or at least has not been changed, not been corrupted by what he’s encountered in the last couple of years.
It’s this that people respond to, and it’s this that I’m hoping flourishes in the next couple of years, with Oliver Anthony continuing to hone his craft and focus in on his greater purpose. A figure like this, a beacon of sanity and normality in an increasingly divided world, becomes something even more cherishable considering this Manchester gig takes place just a few days after the senseless murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk in America, and the attempts of a worryingly large number of people (including some musicians I admire) to rationalise and excuse it. Even celebrate it.
“I only spoke to Charlie once,” Chris says, “I didn’t really know him. And the reality is that it could’ve been…” He pauses for a moment, not continuing the thought. The reality is it could have been anyone. It could have been you for your opinions, it could have been me for mine. It could have been Chris. What if someone took a shot at him? It seems absurd that the writer of “fudge rounds” would be met by rounds from a thirty-aught-six, but then again it would have also sounded absurd to me a few days earlier if someone had posed the same scenario for Charlie Kirk. “The Turning Point guy?” I asked, baffled, when I was first told the news. “Why would anyone want to get him?”I find it hard to accept Kirk as the saintly Martin Luther King figure some have tried to present him as since his death. But he was someone who appeared to be, at least by the standards of the clusterfuck that is modern political engagement, moderate and respectful and sincere.
“The point is, we should be out in public talking like this all the time,” Oliver Anthony says. “It shouldn’t take a Charlie Kirk for people to want to stand outside and talk this out. This is a psychological war we’re in and it’s gonna go on for a long time.”
Chris has just played his penultimate song, ‘I Want to Go Home’. “We’re on the brink of the next world war,” he sang, and in my review of Oliver Anthony’s first gig in Manchester nineteen months ago I noted that the song was full of foreboding. I then quoted, a tad indulgently I admit, from my own novel, writing that it feels like something is coming. We don’t know what it might be or what form it will take. But if we don’t know what it is or what we would need to fight it, we can at least decide what we would want to preserve when it comes. What we would want to keep of ourselves.
Whatever was coming might well have arrived in the wake of Kirk. World war, or civil war, or even just a culture war getting out of hand, we’re at a dangerous moment. What was lost to a bullet in Utah was not just a young father who sought to speak across political divides, but what the many who celebrated and excused the murder allowed to be lost in themselves.
Even if Kirk was the evil man some claim – and he wasn’t – he wouldn’t deserve that death. The only divide that matters here is the one between those who think it is acceptable for a man with a microphone to be gunned down in public and those who know it is not. The whole point of civilisation is to allow us all to co-operate and co-exist without resorting to violence, so that our base animal instincts to hurt and bully and tear one another apart do not take control. When we justify violence in our society, even slightly, we pull recklessly at one of the fundamental threads of our existence.
Because Death is the enemy. Death and violence. That is the enemy of civilisation, and it doesn’t tilt left or right but stands unwaveringly as the fundamental enemy of organised humanity itself. When I saw the video of Kirk I was sickened, of course, but it was clear in what it was: Death, the Enemy, making an appearance. What was more disturbing, more disheartening, was the attempt of many to excuse and diminish it, because that is an enemy that’s harder to pin down, one that seeps in like rot rather than stands tall as Death does. For all that I’m familiar with aspects of the culture war, I at least thought we were in a healthier place than this. It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to.
“Think about people you’ve dated in the past,” Oliver Anthony says, shortly after invoking Kirk. “Stupid arguments you’ve had. You can’t even fix those on the phone, so how are we gonna fix our country on a phone, y’know? It’s a rigged game.”
Chris puts a lot of it down to manipulation from above, from the powerful people and the rich men north of Richmond, and certainly it’s true that there’s a push, particularly with social media, to incentivise negativity and division. He calls from the stage that “we’re all a lot more similar than we are dissimilar” and how it’s important to resist this attempt at control.
This is true, but it’s also important for people to take ownership of their own thoughts. Nobody should be so far gone to the manipulation of algorithms and elites that they cheer and mock the murder of Charlie Kirk. Nobody should douse their morality in arterial spray. It doesn’t matter what Kirk was. It only matters what you are. You can never fully know another person, and so you can never judge them proportionately for their errors and opinions. You can only seek to know yourself – and even that is hard to do.
But in knowing yourself you can, in spite of the attempts to control you, choose to be who you are, or at least choose who you will not be. You can choose to be someone who doesn’t rationalise political violence because they agree with the ‘side’ it comes from, and you can choose not to follow sly, vindictive or insidious takes dressed up as morality and virtue in order to excuse or diminish the brutal and undignified public murder of a man in front of his young family. The important video shared online in the wake of Utah was not the one of the deed itself, but the one of Kirk on a studio news set some months earlier, beaming a smile as his infant daughter runs towards him and he lifts her up in a hug. That was what was lost, something more important than any political hot-take that’s here today and gone tomorrow. And that, sadly, is what many fail to realise.
What does this have to do with Oliver Anthony live in Manchester? We’re certainly a long way from critiquing the number of covers on tonight’s setlist. But it’s worth discussing not only because Chris mentions it himself on stage, but because Oliver Anthony as an artist appears to be in a holding pattern. Whether out of caution or doubt, he has not kicked on from his initial viral success. He’s talked of releasing new material on one hand and of quitting music entirely on the other. It would be natural and completely understandable for him to not know what to do with his success and his opportunity; an opportunity which is unlike any that came before it, and which has come during such increasingly contentious times.
But he plays ‘Richmond’ to end the show. And it reaches the people in the crowd just as it has always done, prompting not only a singalong of people who in the grand scheme of things consider themselves voiceless, but a flood of cathartic purpose, a sense that if the world is fucked there’s at least these three minutes of a song under which people can shelter and regroup and perhaps even push back. It doesn’t matter what you think about fudge rounds specifically, or minors on an island somewhere. It only matters that when you hear it you know you’re not crazy, that there are others who see things are fucked too and for a short while they’re singing all around you.
“If you don’t get anything else out of this show tonight,” Oliver Anthony says, “I just want you to remember this…. They already do this, but it’s gonna get worse and worse with all this crap. They’re gonna make you feel like you’re this big. Like there’s nobody else on this planet that thinks the same way you do. They isolate you in this little box… Like you’re just dead. Like nobody cares about you.
“And I swear to you – I’ve been all over the United States and Europe and Australia and I’ve talked to so many people. Thousands of people. Just believe me: there will always be more of us than there ever will be of them.
“I love you all. Just give me a minute and I’ll jump down there. I’d love to meet you all – if you want. Thank you.”
This, then, is what matters. Someone looking to lead by example. It doesn’t mean that person needs to be pure and error-free. It doesn’t mean they always have to be right. It doesn’t even mean they have to be doing everything they could be doing. It just means that it’s valuable that, every once in a while, you can look to someone and see them trying to operate with integrity in a world that makes it increasingly harder to do so.
Some of the crowd filters out into the night, and Chris walks along the front row talking to people and taking selfies and signing autographs, greeting anyone who chooses to stay. I’m already in the front row, where I’ve been all evening. I consider staying to meet him, but instead I stick to my long-standing rule of not bothering artists after a gig, unless it happens naturally.
After all, I can say it here instead.
Setlist:
(all songs written by Chris Lunsford – a.k.a. Oliver Anthony – unless noted)
Amazing Grace (John Newton) (unreleased)
Dirty Old Town (Ewan MacColl) (unreleased)
I’ve Got to Get Sober (from Hymnal of a Troubled Man’s Mind)
Lonely Boy (Dan Auerbach/Patrick Carney/Brian Joseph Burton) (unreleased)
Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked (Matt Shultz/Brad Shultz/Jared Champion/Daniel Tichenor/Lincoln Parish) (unreleased)
Cobwebs and Cocaine (from Hymnal)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver/Bill Danoff/Taffy Nivert) (single)
90 Some Chevy (single)
Rich Man’s Gold (from Hymnal)
Always Love You Like a Good Old Dog (from Hymnal)
Jerry Was a Race Car Driver (Les Claypool/Larry LaLonde/Tim Alexander) (unreleased)
Hank (unreleased)
Free Bird (Allen Collins/Ronnie Van Zant) (unreleased)
The Devil Went Down to Georgia (Charlie Daniels/Tom Crain/Joel DiGregorio/Fred Edwards/Charles Hayward/James Marshall) (unreleased)
Abstract: This post proposes that in witnessing live events that evoke or recreate a sense of a bygone era, those with sufficient imagination can experience something akin to what it must have been like to witness the real thing. In doing so, the witness can, in effect, travel through time, if only for a fleeting moment. The post makes this argument with reference to three eras and three events attended over the course of a single week in September 2025: the 1920s and 1930s swing era recalled in Melissa Carper’s live music performance, the 1940s wartime era evoked by the Battle of Britain Air Show at Duxford aerodrome, and the 1950s rockabilly stylings recreated by the live music “programme” of Jake Vaadeland and the Sturgeon River Boys. In doing so, the author of this post accomplishes a secondary objective of freshening up his approach to writing concert reviews.
If you could truly go back in time, what would you choose to experience? Leave aside the current scientific consensus that time travel, or at least backwards time travel, is impossible. Imagine that one of the common tropes of time travel fiction were true, whether that were some sort of machine, a wormhole or quantum effect, hypnosis, or simply stepping through a doorway. And leave aside all questions of causality and paradoxes. Imagine you could not affect anything, whether that be becoming your own grandfather, killing Hitler or saving Harambe. You could only observe.
What would you choose to observe? Would you go back to the music you love: witness the Woodstock festival or Dylan in Greenwich Village or the Beatles in the Cavern Club or at the rooftop concert? Would you go back to a scene of war or spectacle: the desperate dogfights in the blue skies over England in September 1940, Drake and his captains meeting the Spanish Armada at Gravelines, or the herds of American buffalo so thick it seemed as though the Great Plains themselves moved? Would you witness Alexander rouse his troops, Plato address the Symposium, George Washington refuse the kingship? Would you sightsee Rome at its peak, a Renaissance Venice unblighted by tourists, or a Globe Theatre with Shakespeare himself performing one of the roles on stage? Perhaps you peer in on a mystery: book the seat next to D. B. Cooper, eavesdrop at Gethsemane, or witness the building of the Great Pyramid?
Needless to say, the imagination is fired by such thoughts. But while all those moments are irretrievably lost, we do still have opportunities to experience moments of the past in facsimile. And, with sufficient imagination, it is not too difficult to make them vivid. Last Saturday, I sat in the grandstand at Duxford aerodrome for the Battle of Britain Air Show. I saw a squadron of Hurricanes take off and assemble into formation, and the swarm of black iPhones that were raised to record the moment could not distract from its majestic otherness. As they peeled away and, within mere seconds, became silhouettes in the distant clear blue sky, I thought of how common that same sight would have once been, 85 years ago, when this place was RAF Duxford and it was on the frontlines of the Battle of Britain. I could vividly imagine that squadron of silhouettes, rising regally into the skies, carrying young men into battle to defend their country. I could imagine a member of the ground crew stood where I stood, wondering which of those planes would not return home.
Similarly, at the same air show I saw two Spitfires, their Merlin engines on full song, chase a Messerschmitt 109, wheeling in that same brilliant blue Battle of Britain sky in mock dogfight. I craned my neck to see an Avro Lancaster fly in directly overhead from the north. And while I was indeed safer underneath its bomb bay than the citizens of Hamburg and Dresden had once been, it was disconcerting to see that great black beast turn slowly in the skies ahead, its wingspan wide like a malevolent dragon, and come around again. I saw a silver P-51 Mustang perform a victory roll high in the sky; a B-17 blistering with its flying fortress of guns; a Fairey Swordfish move slowly and unhurriedly as the machine once did when crippling the Bismarck.
Small moments, of course; not the same spectacle as of old, even when a full fifteen Spitfires and eight Hurricanes assembled in the same historic ‘Big Wing’ formation they did in 1940 and roared overhead, those two dozen Merlin Rolls-Royce engines providing a symphony unlike any other. In such moments your imagination too takes flight, and those small experiences serve as a kernel of truth you can build upon. You remember that such things did once happen, and were not merely pages in a history book, or recreations at an air show or movie set.
One can carry this idea further when one introduces a night of live music. On either side of the Duxford air show I attended gigs that delivered a heavy and intended dose of nostalgia. Melissa Carper’s throwback singing voice rested easily in her cosy cavalcade of Twenties and Thirties swing. Only one of her songs – ‘That’s My Desire’ – was a bona fide ‘oldie’, with the rest being Carper originals. You would never have been able to tell, so arresting was the jazzy nostalgia of her sound as she stroked her stand-up bass, backed by the guitars of Bonnie Montgomery and Greg Harkins.
Jake Vaadeland’s night is more consciously nostalgic – “I’m a retro man,” he sings during his encore – and almost imitative of Fifties rockabilly in look, sound and general vibe. With Jake’s slicked-back hair and charming, rehearsed stage patter – “friends and neighbours” is a common refrain – you would almost be inclined to dismiss it as twee if not for the talent on show. Between Jaxon Lalonde’s banjo, Joel Rohs’ electric guitar and Jake Smithies’ stand-up bass, the Sturgeon River Boys can shift seamlessly between fast bluegrass numbers, bopping throwback rockabilly and, in the likes of ‘Don’t Go to the Valley’, a more rootsier blues sound, playing a set that mixes old covers with the prolific Jake’s own Buddy Holly-esque self-penned tunes.
There are many points of difference between the two nights, and I regret that it is beyond the means of this post to delve into them more deeply and give each the space their marvels deserve. The bold frontman character Jake Vaadeland plays contrasts with the almost shy energy of Melissa Carper, who started her career as a side-player before her voice and talent deservedly moved her centre-stage. The old church which hosts Melissa contrasts starkly with the incongruously-named ‘Attic’ dancefloor – just a few years old – which Jake and his Boys burn up, just as Melissa’s more relaxed country garb contrasts with Jake’s studiously trim retro stylings. When Jake and his band playfully sing an advertising jingle for ‘Better Off Duds’, a vintage clothing shop in their homeland of Canada, their appearance on stage tonight has been the best advert for it.
Difference too in how our two groups of artists approach the night: Jake sticks rigorously to what he quaintly calls his “programme”, joking early on that they only take requests if you write the song title on a Canadian $100 bill and deliver it to the stage. Melissa’s fluid setlist, in contrast, shows a variety of changes and crossed-out song titles, and when one woman strides up the church aisle to the front of the stage before the encore and asks her to play ‘Pray the Gay Away’, Melissa seems taken aback. “Oh gosh, I’ve not played that one with this band,” Melissa says apologetically, and plays ‘I’m a Country Gal’ instead.
Differences, then, but also similarities; the control factors in our live theory of time travel to go alongside the variables. The grace with which both Melissa and Jake share the spotlight: Bonnie Montgomery taking the lead to sing a powerful ‘I’d Rather Have Love’ during Melissa’s set (Greg also leads on ‘Bee in a Can’), while Jake praises the electric guitar of Joel Rohs, which “souped up” his song ‘Until the Day I See You Dear’, and duels with Jake Smithies’ bass on ‘Jake vs. Jake’. The prominence of the stand-up bass is also a similarity between both nights, as are the strong opening acts: Bonnie had her own buoyant set before backing Melissa, and the local band Vox Americana opened the night with the swaying ‘St. Michael’. Rob Heron opened for Jake with a charming stage presence of his own and a series of fun songs sorely needed in our heavy and fractured times, his impressively long yodelling note on ‘Lonely Boy in the Dole Queue’ drawing cheers.
Indeed, fun itself was the name of the game on both nights of music, and what’s more, it was that shame-free, innocent fun that seems to have become lost in recent decades, and which makes nostalgia an increasingly potent force. Whether it was Melissa and her band buzzing during ‘Bee in a Can’ or bleating like goats during ‘Would You Like to Get Some Goats?’, or Jake jumping atop ‘Cousin Smithers’ stand-up bass during ‘Until the Day I See You Dear’ and grinning with Joel as the two of them harmonise with Jaxon around a single mike, you could lose yourself in an older, more innocent world, a world before edginess, deconstructionism and the lowering of standards. A time when going to see a night of live music was precisely this: a bop, a swing, a time to relax and forget your troubles.
So wonderful was this innocence and so earnestly it was delivered on the two nights, the feeling was increasingly not so much throwback nostalgia, but a sense of the uncanny, of closing your eyes and recognising there would have been many such nights exactly like this one (sans smartphone) seventy to a hundred years ago. A time when people knew how to act, knew how to dress, knew how to treat one another. We look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, of course, filtering out all that was unsavoury from those times, but there’s no harm in doing so for a night of live entertainment. The world isn’t less honest for us choosing the best moments to recreate and leaving behind the worst.
This, then, is the live theory of time travel, cherishing the moments when talented artists can pull a moment of joy from the past and polish it and make it fit into our own. “Makin’ memories I’d like to remember,” as Melissa Carper sings from the stage. When people jived in dancehalls in the Thirties and Forties and Fifties, to songs uncannily similar to those I have heard on these two nights, they didn’t do so in ignorance of the more serious faults and injustices of their times. They did so because the world belongs to music and fun and laughter as much as it does to war and prejudice and poverty, and the light has no apology to make to the dark for deciding to pour through.
Time travel, the reliving of past memories, can be accomplished in small moments like this. No mechanical contraption or gateway or quantum sauciness is needed. Only a humble ticket to enter a place of like-minded people who are seeking to nod gently to, if not better times, then at least the idea of better times.
It’s a thought that occurs to me at the Duxford aerodrome. Not long after I arrive in the morning, walking from my hotel in the nearby village, I wander past the glittering array of parked Hurricanes and Spitfires and other assorted warbirds of yesteryear towards the Classic Wings stall. Here I purchase a ticket to fly a circuit on a De Havilland DH-89A Dragon Rapide, a twin-engined biplane passenger aircraft from 1946 that seats eight, including myself, behind the single-seat cockpit. The humble plane is strikingly beautiful, the name ‘Nettie‘ written in blue cursive beside her silver nose, but it’s beautiful in an almost unassuming way, built and designed as it was during a time when beauty and aesthetics were recognised as essential for the flavour of life rather than an unnecessary cost or extravagance.
I’m seated next to the wing. The propeller just outside my window begins to turn and sputter into life, bringing with it those evocative sounds that only propeller engines from the 1940s can provide. As we taxi across the bumpy grass and out onto the runway, Nettie shuddering all the while, my brain ill-advisedly brings a thought to mind: This must be how Buddy Holly felt. But I’m not afraid and the thought isn’t an unwelcome one. Instead, I’m happy to be chasing a sensory fragment of the past, making a memory I’d like to recall. The plane buzzes down the runway, picking up speed, and we take flight. The lift is gentle, almost imperceptible. We’re up in the clear blue sky, ageless England below. For the second of three times in a week, a group of skilled individuals have transported me back in time.
Setlist (Melissa Carper 03.09.25):
(all songs written by Melissa Carper, unless noted)
Your Furniture’s Too Nice (from Borned in Ya)
Lucky Five (from Borned in Ya)
Ramblin’ Soul (from Ramblin’ Soul)
That’s My Only Regret (from Ramblin’ Soul)
I Do What I Wanna (Melissa Carper/Gina Gallina) (from Ramblin’ Soul)
I’d Rather Have Love (Bonnie Montgomery) (unreleased) [Bonnie singing]
Would You Like to Get Some Goats? (from Daddy’s Country Gold)
Bee in a Can (unknown) (unreleased) [Greg singing]
Zen Buddha (from Ramblin’ Soul)
Makin’ Memories (from Daddy’s Country Gold)
Texas, Texas, Texas (from Ramblin’ Soul)
That’s My Desire (Helmy Kresa/Carroll Loveday) (from Borned in Ya)
Boxers on Backwards (from Ramblin’ Soul)
Made with Love (unreleased)
Evil Eva (Carper/Joe Sundell) (from Borned in Ya)
Christian Girlfriend (from Arkansas Bound)
Encore: I’m a Country Gal (unreleased)
Flying List (Duxford 06.09.25):
Pre-Show Classic Wings Flight: De Havilland DH-89A Dragon Rapide TX310 G-AIDL
Douglas A-26C Intruder
Hawker Hurricane x 10
Battle of Britain Dogfight: Supermarine Spitfire vs Messerschmitt Bf109 (Hispano HA-1112 Buchon)
Miles Magister; De Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk
Regardless of all the wonderful things that are happening in the world, it stands to reason that, if it were possible to weigh such things in the balance, there would be one thing happening in any given moment which is above all the others. Of all the things happening simultaneously across this sphere of ours, there would be one place and one experience that is the best thing currently happening. And while that experience may change – in one moment it could be a couple welcoming their first child, the witness of a meteor shower or other great natural event, the triumph over a great task or an act of consummated love, or even just a moment alone or in fine company – there would always be one such moment. And, hyperbole aside but still feeling the heady after-effects of this music, it is hard for me to imagine that there is any better place on Earth to be on the night of Wednesday 20th August 2025 than among the crowd of a few hundred in the Jazz Café in Camden, listening to LA LOM.
This trio of American musicians leave you speechless. Certainly, they are hard to summarise in a piece of writing. There’s no need for anyone to sing – the band are exclusively instrumental – so it’s perhaps little wonder that my own words seem insufficient. Guitarist Zac Sokolow, dressed in the laid-back style of one of the capable men from Hemingway’s Cuban stories, strides across the stage. A few feet from where I stand in the front row, stage right, he picks up the white lead which has lain like a coiled python on the stage and plugs it into his striking black and copper 1960 Kay Style Leader guitar. On the other side of the stage, bassist Jake Faulkner is dressed all in black, an electric Fender Vintera slung across his body. A large upright bass looms behind him. Between these two guitar players, drummer Nick Baker – as handsome as a model in his waistcoat and slicked-back hair – is seated behind a remarkable array of percussion (on which more later).
I start with the look, not the sound, because, like many, that was what first drew me to the band. As an aficionado of the resurgence in alternative country and roots music in recent years, which has formed the bulk of my live music experiences, I came across LA LOM by chance in the Instagram feed of Sierra Ferrell, one of alternative country’s leading lights and a generational talent herself. A fan of the band, Sierra had reposted one of those vivid Technicolor videos the band has released of their songs. My phone was on mute, but the evocative retro images were enough to hold my attention. And when I unmuted and heard those sounds for the first time, that attention turned to afición.
The LA LOM sound is hard to describe, but instantly recognisable as Zac plugs in his guitar and the band begins ‘Figueroa’. Theirs is Latin instrumental music, but that doesn’t begin to cover the vast array of influences which the trio have managed to distil into their own sound. My own reference points were the rock instrumental music I knew – Duane Eddy, Santo and Johnny, perhaps Booker T and the MGs – but those more knowledgeable than I could rattle off more accurate descriptors: cumbia, Afro-Cuban, arabe, Mexican bolero, Peruvian chicha, all backed with classic Americana and the slight hints of country and rockabilly that provide the one link to the alt-country music of Sierra Ferrell that led me here.
It is an incredibly cultured and nuanced musical brew – and also an intoxicating one. Zac’s distinctive guitar tone – particularly from his red 1960s National Val-Pro guitar, which replaces the black-and-copper Kay after the first song in tonight’s set – speaks and sings as clearly as any frontman.
Nick’s drum setup is a masterpiece of innovation and improvisation, combining the traditional Ludwig drum kit – hi-hat, bass drum, etc. – with congas and a cowbell. Nick uses conventional drumsticks, his bare hands, and even maracas as drumsticks, the sum effect allowing one man to perform the beat of cumbia, which usually involves multiple percussionists. It also looks impossibly cool.
Meanwhile, Jake slaps and twirls his upright bass with flair and howls primal Latin aullidos at the most cathartic moments of the songs. He stalks about the stage with the Vintera slung around his neck and provides the band’s swagger as he gestures and cheerleads the crowd. This band has élan. It has cojones. It has the right stuff. They follow up ‘Figueroa’ with the self-titled ‘Danza de LA LOM’, fully announcing themselves to a crowd that is already whipped up by the sound. The bartenders at this jazz bar couldn’t make a more potent mix tonight even if they served their cocktails in quart jugs.
The band begin to roam, showing their dexterity by adapting the Turkish song ‘Dane Dane Benleri Var’ into signature riffs and then moving back into the more familiar territory of the Calixto Ochoa song ‘Los Sabanales’. Zac’s guitar sings, while Jake’s rhythmic swaying and Nick’s short drum solo draw cheers. The crowd is already in a party mood.
LA LOM roam through some more fine cumbia songs that I can’t place, but whatever they are, they’re good eatin’. I swear I hear ‘Moonlight Over Montebello’ at some point in there, but when it comes there’s no mistaking the distinctive twinkling riff of ‘Santee Alley’, which draws cheers from the crowd.
The band have been stacking powder kegs so far tonight, but now they light the match. ‘Alacrán’ is where the night becomes impossibly fierce, so dirty and so bright; in its wake the dancing becomes uncontained. The Arab-tinged guitar riffs of ‘Alacrán’ are, in the live setting of the Jazz Café, made heavier by Zac, reminiscent of Jimmy Page’s Led Zeppelin riffs. Nick matches him with some booming Bonham-style drums. Jake, not to be outdone, unslings his Fender bass midway through the song and, to spontaneous whoops and roars from the crowd, takes and then theatrically spins his upright bass. LA LOM certainly know how to put on a show.
A drum roll triggers the frenetic ‘Arriba Pichátaro’, one of the most glittering moments of music in a night full of them. Jake and Nick pause to track the bars of Zac’s ascending guitar notes, nodding with approval, before each taking a flourish of their own. As Nick performs a drum solo, Jake takes a black cloth from his pocket and waves it like a matador before Nick’s drum set. The drummer takes the bait and turns the intensity up a notch. Jake takes the rag and twirls it around his head, jumping maniacally and whipping the crowd into a frenzy, before throwing it over his shoulder and performing a slapping bass solo of his own.
From this moment on, the night is a Pandora’s box of exploded musicality: an expansive ‘Espejismo’ followed by the spectral riffs of ‘Ghosts of Gardena’; a grooving cover of ‘Tonta’ by Grupo Mojado; a brand new song, ‘Belvedere’, with a throwback Seventies soul-funk vibe. The band can slow it down with ‘Lorena’ and another brand new “love song”, the slow, hazy romance of ‘Sixth Street’. They can speed it up with the conga-driven ‘Me Robaron Mi Runa Mula’, or roam between the two extremes with a free-range cumbia medley, which also contains the only vocals of the night – Zac singing a verse in Spanish in ‘Cumbia Sampuesana’. And throughout it all there is the signature LA LOM sound; the propelling drums and grooving bass that give a platform for Zac’s riffs on ‘Cumbia Arabe’ and the complete soundscape of ‘Angels Point’, perhaps their quintessential song. One stunning young woman in the front row holds up a sign with a marriage proposal. This might be the coolest band in the world right now.
After ‘Angels Point’, the band invite Rihab Azar back to the stage. She had been tonight’s support act, delivering a rich, textured half-hour set of Middle Eastern folk music on the oud. Now she brings the lute-like instrument to complement LA LOM on ‘Al Wafa’. Sitting on a stool before the band, her oud dovetails well with Zac’s guitar and, taking a solo on the instrument, she smiles up at an admiring Zac. Her oud solo draws a roar from the crowd as loud as any tonight.
After Rihab leaves the stage to applause, blowing kisses to the band, LA LOM break into the final song of their set, a cover of ‘El Sonido de Los Mirlos’ by the titular Los Mirlos – “one of our favourite groups,” Zac says from the mike. Nick’s rapid conga solo is quickly followed by a dirty, crunching Latin guitar solo by a grinning Zac, which draws another howling aullido from Jake. There’s a massive smile on Nick’s face as another high-tempo drum solo reaches its peak and Zac’s guitar picks up the release. Amongst all the showmanship and colour and fun of the band, there is a powerful synergy of goodwill and musicianship.
After the band leave the stage, there is naturally a huge roar for an encore, a collective passionate wail around the jazz bar that almost drags the band back up on stage by itself. When they do return, Zac has taken off his shirt and is down to his vest in the August heat of the bar, while Jake twirls his black rag again to ensure the crowd remain at fever pitch. ‘El Cascabel’, their encore song, is one final blitz of that addictive LA LOM sound, after which, in one final display of flamboyance, Jake takes his upright bass and holds it high above his head. Are you not entertained? the gesture seems to ask the thronging, roaring crowd.
How bright the sound has been tonight. So much of what is great in music, and in live music particularly, has been manifest in the performance of LA LOM. There has truly been no better place to be in the world for the last couple of hours than in the front row of the Jazz Café in Camden Town, as Zac Sokolow’s singing red guitar emits its perfect tone as naturally as breathing, Jake Faulkner spins his upright bass, and Nick Baker plays a conga with one hand and beats a drum with a maraca in the other.
In look and sound and energy, LA LOM represent something that we understandably thought lost to the world; that undiluted colour and vibrancy and guiltless, irrepressible fun that characterised the music of better times. It’s not something retro or reclaimed, but something reborn, made by a band that refuse to let a soul leave unmoved. It is irresistible, and it was in London tonight. If it is in your city it is essential that you go. It is not up for debate. I can say no more.
Setlist:
(all songs from the album The Los Angeles League of Musicians and written by Zac Sokolow, Jake Faulkner and Nick Baker, unless noted)
I’ve been blessed to experience many fine concerts, from stadia hosting legends such as Paul McCartney and Nick Cave to the likes of Kassi Valazza singing a Neil Young song in a bakery in York or her own remarkable songbook in churches of her own. But no concert has been so unique as this warm, bright Saturday evening in Liverpool, hearing Toria Wooff’s voice soar in the Nordic Church.
The Gustav Adolfs Kyrka is an impressive sight as you approach. It is a Swedish stave church, a rarity outside Scandinavia, though built out of familiar British redbrick. While its tall greyed spire is dwarfed by the more recent tower-block developments that encroach upon it along Liverpool’s waterfront, the church dominates the sky and steals the heart in a way those more soulless buildings never could.
By English standards the church is young; built in 1884 for itinerant Norse sailors and emigrants on their way to America, you enter under the black-and-gold sign that names this ‘Skandinaviska sjömanskyrkan’ (Scandinavian Seaman’s Church) and walk up two flights of narrow stairs to enter the nave. Unlike the conventional rectangular shape found in a typical English church, the nave of the Nordic Church is an eye-catching octagonal lantern shape. Bride-white walls host Gothic lancet windows through which the sun pours as I take my seat on an empty pew in the front row. I gaze up at the roof high above. More learned eyes than mine would be able to draw out the nuances of the kyrka‘s architecture, but I know enough to recognise the Gothic Revival elements both inside and outside the church.
This, perhaps, is why Toria Wooff has chosen the venue to host her night of music. Wearing a long black dress and black boots to match her jet-black hair, this self-professed Goth is undergoing a Gothic Revival of her own. In March she released her self-titled debut album, a powerful, nuanced collection of self-penned folk songs with tasteful touches of country and Americana. In May I saw her live in a packed basement in Manchester as part of her successful album tour and, after tonight, I will surely see her again in the autumn, for she reveals to the audience in the Nordic Church that she will be touring again in October. In the meantime, she is busy recording and tracking her next album with James Wyatt, her partner and producer, and we’re treated to five unreleased songs in the setlist tonight.
There’s no opening act; instead, Toria performs two sets with an intermission, during which she mingles with the audience. She does not perform alone: as on her earlier album tour, Toria’s voice and acoustic guitar are supported by Polly Virr, who seats the endpin of her cello into a strap extending from the leg of her chair. Unlike in Manchester, where my view of Polly was obscured, tonight I’m able to not only hear but see her cello’s vibrato and tasteful glissandos complement Toria’s songs. The luxurious sound of the cello has never felt so essential.
Appropriately enough, the opening song in this singular church is ‘The Bargain’, an unreleased song that seems to be about a deal made with the devil (“he appeared in trusted clothes, cuffed and collared around his throat”) that also doubles brilliantly as a song about an independent woman who risks being ensnared by a controlling man (“the only thing I ask you to be: a doting mother, a wife to me”). It’s a fine introduction to Toria’s sound: a powerfully-sung, intelligent song with a timeless folk melody.
‘The Bargain’ is one that Toria has picked alone on her guitar, but Polly now joins for a flurry of songs from the album; ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, ‘Song for A’ and ‘Sweet William’, her cello sounding particularly fine on the latter song. Toria then goes solo again for ‘Mountains’. This was one of the first songs of hers that really grabbed my attention, and while, like ‘Lefty’ before it, the subtle country touches of the recorded version are missing from the live duo of guitar and cello, it still resonates from the eight walls of the Nordic chamber.
Many artists are diminished by having their songs stripped back. Toria Wooff’s songs, by contrast, feel like they could bloom in arid desert. There’s a strength to her songwriting that allows for flexibility, and the songs work just as well on stage with Polly’s cello as they do with the more textured soundscape James Wyatt helps provide on vinyl. Quite by chance, and without fanfare, I have in the North of England stumbled across one of the more impressive young songwriters I’ve had the privilege to hear live. Toria proves it further with a series of unreleased songs to end her first set: ‘House on the Hill’, inspired by Susan Hill’s Gothic novel The Woman in Black, is a future fan-favourite, while ‘Good Mother’ showcases her gift for melody. The closer, ‘Battering Ram’, is one Toria says she has never played live before. Picked softly and sung gently as a folk song, it fits my above thesis about the songs’ flexibility to a tee: I could easily imagine it being recorded as heavy metal.
‘Battering Ram’ is met with applause – as, deservedly, has every song before it. In contrast to the gig I witnessed in the basement in Manchester a couple of months ago, where Toria told jokes and anecdotes to a heaving crowd, each round of applause tonight has been met with an almost shy thank-you from the lady at the mike.
It’s almost certainly due to the nature of the venue: a sacrosanct church with an audience lined in pews implicitly demands a more consciously demure approach than the rowdy crowd who backed into that dark Manchester basement. Certainly, during the intermission Toria is as bright and outgoing as ever.
She greets me with a hug and is pleased I came; she had placed me on the guest list tonight as a token of gratitude for purchasing one of her canvases recently. (She’s a talented painter as well as a singer-songwriter. As for me, it feels good to be an art patron, like I’m a 16th-century Italian count.) Toria signs a concert poster for me, as does James. (“Some people care about the producer,” he teases her.) She glides around the room and smiles and chats, offering her attention to anyone who wishes for it. As I return to the front row, a corgi pokes its nose out from under the pew, roaming around in search of pats and rubs. It’s a good night.
I know you just want to see the doggo.
As Toria and Polly return to the stage for their second set, the stagelights brighten due to the slowly failing light outside. Perhaps inspired by the intermission’s canine concierge, Toria opens with ‘Black Shuck’, which she says is about “the demon dog of East Anglia… and what the dog did in a church in the 1500s”. I check under my pew to make sure the corgi hasn’t also been doing things in a church. Jokes aside, ‘Black Shuck’ is a fine song, as yet unreleased, with another bona fide English folk melody from Toria.
Now comes ‘The Flood’, a highlight of the night as it looks like both Toria and Polly particularly enjoy playing this one. The picking required on Toria’s guitar seems to energise her, as do the opportunities the song gives her voice to wail and soar. Polly is given her head too, weaving some cool vibrato flourishes into the performance. After the song ends, Toria is full of praise for Polly Virr from the mike. “She’s so good that in the set before, I actually played a song in the wrong key and didn’t know, and she just ran with it. So that’s why I keep her around.”
To reciprocate, Polly is moved to provide some of the most gorgeous cello sounds of the night, joining Toria’s voice in flight as the two soar on ‘Author Song’ and giving a cinematic through-line to ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’. The latter is a real testament to Toria’s verisimilitude; she loves ghost stories, she says, and there’s not enough of them in Lancashire, so she decided to make her own. In her poet’s hands, this non-descript street of shopfronts in her hometown of Horwich (there’s an Aldi at one end of Winter Hey Lane, a nail parlour at the other) becomes a potent and foreboding place plagued by jealousy and the returning dead.
After another song, the sweet and simple palate-cleanser ‘That’s What Falling in Love Will Do’, Toria thanks the venue promoters, Mike Phoenix and Jon Edwards, for making the night happen (“they have such a good ethos with musicians”). At the end of the show, they will hold a raffle and hand out chocolates and wine to the winners, but in truth we’re all winners tonight. The venue, the seating, the audience and, of course, the music, have all been top drawer. My own ethos is never to seek out an artist before or after the show unless it happens naturally, and tonight it happens naturally. At the end of the night, I get another hug from Toria after she signs my setlist – another welcome surprise, for usually these sheets are swiped by fans before the artists’ footsteps have even finished echoing from the stage. But I stand around at the front to see if anyone else wants to take it before I do. No one does, and a beaming Toria is only too happy to sign it for me.
But before that time comes, Toria and Polly are still on stage, and they are yet to provide their finest moment. ‘See Things Through’ starts with Toria alone on her guitar. About a minute in, Polly comes in with that rich and resonant cello sound we’ve been so blessed with tonight. It’s an excellent song, one of those that indisputably deserves a wider audience. It’s sung with both vulnerability and remarkable power by an almost transcendent Toria Wooff; that chiaroscuro effect this lady in black in a white church is able to capture so impressively.
The song builds to its epic finale, Toria’s voice and Polly’s strings soaring in unison and falling in release. The applause which has greeted every song’s end tonight bursts spontaneously into roars for an encore. The duo oblige, with a gentle and calming rendition of ‘Estuaries’ to end the night. They are presented with garlands of flowers by Mike and Jon, and I grin as a sheepish James Wyatt is also called to the stage to take a deserved round of applause for his role in this music.
“You leave without saying goodbye,” Toria sang in that final song, and as an invited guest I determine not to slip out quietly into the night as I normally do at concerts. Toria signs the setlist for me, as I mentioned, but I’m also moved to thank her for the invitation and promising that I’ll certainly be coming to many more nights like this to witness her talent. I’m able to thank Polly too, and we talk about the night in Manchester. James is in a back-room somewhere, so as Toria walks past I touch her gently on the arm and ask her to say goodbye to him for me. It feels silly as I do so, and yet also natural; the warm welcome they have extended to me makes this moment feel like one of those gatherings of friends where you part and know you will come again. I descend the stairs to the exit, where Mike and Jon shake the hands of those who leave. I walk down the road on a summer evening that, despite the efforts of tonight’s Gothic revival, refuses to truly darken.
Setlist:
(no opening act; two full sets with intermission after ‘Battering Ram’)
(all songs from the album Toria Wooff and written by Toria Wooff, unless noted)
It’s been just under three years since Nick Shoulders last brought his unique brand of catchy country-folk whistling, warbling and yodelling to the UK. Back then, after an excellent set in a packed-out pub in Bolton, supported only by his bass player Grant D’Aubin, I remarked thatI hoped the next time he came to these shores he’d have become big enough to justify bringing the whole band. If the crowd isn’t twice as large next time round, I wrote, then there’s no justice in the world.
Fast-forward a few years and the crowd is indeed bigger, if not by an order of magnitude. I attend both the Leeds and Manchester gigs on Nick’s new ‘Pond Hopper’ tour – in my mind, a Barbenheimer-type event I dub ‘Two Shoulders’ – and both sell out. Both teem with Shoulderheads like myself, fans who sing along to ‘Rather Low’, yodel to ‘Too Old to Dream’ and ‘Snakes and Waterfalls’, and shout back during ‘After Hours’.
The band, however, has broken up. Nick announced the dissolution of the Okay Crawdad earlier this year, and it means that when he takes the stage in the North of England it’s not with his distinctive rhythm section of Grant D’Aubin and drummer Cheech Moosekian, but alone. In Leeds he comes out to cheers and immediately retreats back into the green room. “It’s not because I was scared,” he explains later, three songs into his set. “At least, not only because I was scared,” he laughs. “It’s because I have some tea here and I don’t have a cup. So I’m using this candle-holder.”
The show must go on: cup or no cup, band or no band. And remarkably, Nick Shoulders solo sounds bigger than ever. In November 2022, when I heard him in that pub in Bolton, I noted how he could get a goodly sound out of his acoustic guitar, his powerful strumming almost a signature sound. This singing, whistling, yodelling man was and is a singular force of nature. And now, in July 2025, the de facto one-man-band has become a de jure one. When he takes the stage he sits on a stool in a white vest and Crocs, behind two kick-drums. He switches between a Harmony Atomic electric guitar and a banjo, depending on the song. Along with his charming stage patter – “I am an obnoxious yapper,” he tells Leeds – he yodels and whistles and sings. When he opens with ‘Booger County Blues’ on both nights, moving straight into ‘Blue Endless Highway’, it’s a rocking full-band sound, an impressive display of musicianship from the solo Arkansan.
But while there are a great many similarities between the two nights, there are also a number of differences. The Leeds gig is pretty much perfect, with The Attic one of the best small venues I have attended. It’s endearingly rudimentary, converted from a disused commercial garage – its entrance, a wicket door cut into the side of a large roller shutter and marked by a ‘Mind Your Step’ warning sign, betrays these origins. With the stage along one bare brick wall, a bar in one corner and merch in the other, it gives the aura of a rustic barn-dance in the bright evening’s July heat. The only thing needed to complete the effect would be if hay were strewn across the bare concrete floor where tonight’s Shoulderheads will congregate.
The contrast to Manchester’s Night and Day Café is, unfortunately, night and day. If the Leeds venue had a warning sign at its entrance, Manchester almost deserved one. The venue itself is mostly fine; long and thin like a shotgun house, you enter to the bar and make your way to the far end where the stage is set. It’s my first visit to the venue and I’m unprepared for how narrow the all-standing area is. The only Shoulders seen by many tonight – including myself – will be those of the people stood in front of them, and I imagine only the first couple of rows of people have a good view. Due to his one-man-band kick-drum setup, Nick is seated for the entirety of his set on this tour, which exacerbates the issue, but it only seems a problem in the narrow confines of Manchester, not in Leeds.
The other main difference is, regrettably, the crowd. The Leeds gig draws pretty much a perfect audience: engaged, attentive, and locked in from the very start; quiet and respectful when needed and hollering loudly when Nick’s songs take you there. There’s one drunk who, even early on in the night, is already three sheets to the wind and putting on extra sail, but while he briefly accosts me and a few others, he’s an anomaly that’s easy to shrug off. The Manchester crowd, in contrast, has a sizeable minority of people who are stood around talking loudly into one another’s faces, barely engaging with Nick’s music throughout. Bafflingly, some disengage entirely and retreat to the bar, where they generate a loud and obnoxious pub laughter and chatter that drowns out much of the rare and special music we’ve paid to hear.
I’ve written before about the shame and contempt I feel when I’m in a crowd that contains rude and selfish people like this, particularly in my hometown, and I’ll never be able to fathom how some people decide to show up at a gig just to shout their own conversations loudly over the music, let alone how they feel no apparent shame at ruining it for others. It would frustrate me even more if I hadn’t been to the fantastic Leeds gig first, if this jibber-jabber in Manchester was my only experience of Nick Shoulders live after almost three years of waiting. No doubt there’s many in the Night & Day Café who are there to enjoy themselves and enjoy the music, who find it spoiled by a minority of others. Who knows how long they’ll have to wait before they get another opportunity?
This disparity between the two crowds can be seen in microcosm by how the opening set by Gravedancer is received. The artist known on his passport and to his creditors as Baker McKinney knows how to work a crowd; he works his magic on both nights, but only the denizens of Leeds really engage with his humour and stagecraft. They listen to his anecdotes – including a doozey about accidentally playing a woman’s wake in Sheffield under the band name of, uh, Gravedancer – and laugh quickly and readily. Manchester, in contrast, laughs belatedly and only at the most obvious points of humour; that is, when Baker’s speech isn’t being drowned out completely by the chatter. When he gets serious, singing in ‘The Strongest Stuff’ about needing drink to sleep since coming back from the war, the Manchester crowd is yammering away about God knows what and the Devil cares less.
Despite this, both crowds respond well to the fun of ‘Edolph Twittler’ and ‘Pyramid of Titties’, although the Leeds crowd notch a bonus point on the scoreboard by virtue of the one woman who enthusiastically shouts a request to play the latter – and cheers its bouncing arrival. While Manchester gets three extra songs from Gravedancer, and an interesting anecdote about Nick Shoulders, who “I’d never seen mad”, beating up a man who punched his girlfriend (an anecdote Nick cheerily confirms later), Leeds gets the prize of a warmer and smoother-flowing set.
And speaking of scoreboards, my Two Shoulders adventure means I’m in a position to compare Gravedancer’s playful tally on ‘Tall Tails’. “Shoulders taught me how to pick like this,” Baker says as he pulls the song together on his acoustic guitar. “And after two years, I’ve almost got it.” He makes a game of counting his mistakes when playing it, asserting that if it’s less than ten, he’s doing alright. He reaches five mistakes in Leeds, wobbling almost into a sixth, but has got it down to two by the time he plays it in Manchester. I won’t be able to attend their London gig the following night, but presumably the capital finds itself hosting a hillbilly Hendrix.
“Shoulders makes it look really easy,” Baker says after surviving through the song’s picking style. And he sure does: after the one-man-band tears through ‘Booger County Blues’ and ‘Blue Endless Highway’, he’s tripped up not by playing multiple instruments at once, but by something more mundane. In Leeds, Nick has to stop ‘Hank’s Checkout Line’, the third song, just as he approaches his first whistling solo of the night. “I was given a lozenge earlier and just now realised I can’t whistle with it there,” he laughs.
Three songs into each set and Nick Shoulders is already in full flow, bringing his unique “honkabilly rock-and-roll” sound to a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘Black Star’ and his original ‘All Bad’. That vivid rockabilly sound brought forth by Nick’s electric guitar is further demonstrated on the crowd-pleasing ‘Ding Dong Daddy’, surpassed only by his more idiosyncratic sounds. Playing the song’s solo with his mouth, our Arkansas yodelissimo begins to mewl like a cat. What genre a miaow solo fits into will hopefully be something musicologists debate long into the night. The crowds love it.
“It’s like Arkansas weather here,” Nick says from the sweltering stage, telling Leeds he’d been expecting drizzle. In Manchester, he turns into a weather nerd, talking about how the cold air-conditioned breeze at his back and the hot breath of the audience is creating an odd – and, it must be said, gross – weather system around him. Despite this convection current of the proletariat, Nick determinedly remains a man of the people. As mentioned earlier, my review from a few years ago noted that there’s no justice in the world if Nick’s crowds aren’t twice as big the next time round. But Nick himself is concerned with much bigger injustices.
He introduces a new song written about the Peasant Revolt of 1381 – his “nerdy song about British history,” he tells Leeds – by talking about his interest in radical takes on history. He notes that we’re all related to ancestors who did “terrible, fucked-up things” to people in the past, a point of view that I’ve personally always slightly bristled at. In no small part because, among other things, it condemns us all by guilt of association for no real benefit.
But, commendably, Nick goes on to say that while we’re related to those people, he’s increasingly trying to embrace the fact that we’re also related to the people who were revolutionary, to those who “fought kings, fought dictators, fought people who imposed oppression on others”. This is a wonderful antidote to political cynicism; to remember that we can look to the best examples of our past and not just feel shamed or intimidated by our worst.
I’ve written recently about my perspective on artists who ‘go political’, something I’m wary of regardless of whether I agree with the politics in question. But Nick Shoulders is an example of it done well, and honestly. There’s no doubting his sincerity or his erudition, and he clearly reads up on what he chooses to speak about, rather than blindly reciting self-satisfying agitprop. And he remains, underneath it all, fun. His new untitled Peasant Revolt song, that he’s only been playing so far on this Pond Hopper Tour, is one he tells Leeds is inspired by ‘England Swings’ by Roger Miller. It’s a charming bop about having “a lot of fun in 1381”.
At this point, the setlists of the two nights diverge for a spell. Appropriately enough, it’s a river where the Two Shoulders fork: Manchester receives a rendition of ‘Miss’ippi’ while Leeds is treated to an exciting glimpse of a new song that Nick calls ‘Tatum Spring’. He says the special guest he’s going to invite on stage later – Jude Brothers, his label-mate at Gar Hole Records – “says I don’t write enough love songs. And I agree. But this is one.” It’s a strong and surprisingly affecting song that references a falling star, and how the wandering singer is going to “put a root down where you are”. Nick says it’s going to be released on a new album on Hallowe’en, and I find myself retroactively agreeing with Gravedancer’s set, where from his Pyramid of Titties he proclaimed that Hallowe’en was a bigger deal than Christmas.
From there, the two nights converge again, with Nick dedicating an exuberant ‘Too Old to Dream’ to the grandma who taught him to sing. He slows it down towards the end to show his vocal prowess – and also bark like a dog. There follows a fine and upbeat rendition of ‘Appreciate’cha’.
Then, another fork: serendipity has meant the afore-mentioned Jude Brothers is in Leeds for a wedding – “among other things,” she qualifies, cryptically – and she joins Nick on stage at The Attic for a duet of the classic folk standard ‘Goodnight Irene’. Her clarion voice harmonises well with Nick’s, and when she takes a verse alone, lustily singing “jump in the river and drown”, it draws roars from the crowd and some emphatic punctuation from Nick’s kick-drum.
“I can only hope my songs last as long,” Nick says after finishing the Leadbelly classic in Leeds. Emphasising the staying power of the old songs, Gravedancer is invited back on stage to harmonise with Nick and Jude on the Ola Belle Reed song ‘I’ve Endured’, while Nick strums his banjo. In Manchester, Nick plays alone.
The next fork in the river is one signposted by the man on stage. Granting the Leeds audience a choice, Nick says “you can choose either a song not meant to be played on banjo, played on banjo, or –” – there are mass cheers – “hang on, I believe in democracy. Or – I could play an old-timey song”. In the roaring plebiscite that follows, we have an answer.
“Fuck me running, you chose the old-timey option,” Nick laughs. Before heading into his version of ‘Hand Me Down My Walking Cane’, he tunes his banjo and says we in the audience must follow the ‘library rule’ when listening to the sensitive instrument. “Thank you for being so calm and studious and, well, English,” he tells Leeds. Judging by the continued chatter, many in Manchester haven’t heard of the library rule, and regardless a decision there has already been made. “Someone on Facebook asked that I play this,” Nick says to Manchester, before entering a charming banjo-pluckin’ version of ‘Rise When the Rooster Crows’.
It’s the final fork in the road. From here on out, the setlists in the two cities re-align. Nick remarks how he still gets a kick out of how many people respond to, and sing back to him, the political lyrics of ‘Bound and Determined’, his next song. He prefaces the song with a political introduction: Manchester, the ‘Cottonopolis’ of the Industrial Revolution, is reminded of its historical interdependence with the Southern trades of the American empire, while Leeds is told that until 1828 only white property-owners in America were allowed to vote, and so all their laws and precedents stem from that time. When he says he hopes there is movement politically to unpick historic injustices, it is this already-established cartel of laws and precedents which he wishes to go.
Startlingly, Nick then tells Leeds that he hopes to “live in a world after America”. Perhaps influenced by recent events in American politics, it is nevertheless a disappointing claim. Nick praises England and the countries he has visited in Europe on tour for being so well put together, but it’s worth noting that while he has said 1828 was the year the vote was extended to males without property in America, in Britain the year was 1918 – the end of the First World War – when the same right was extended, with residual restrictions removed by 1928. One hundred years after America. Some of the songs Nick has sung tonight are older than universal suffrage in England. And while he may be tired of a land of “fucking F-150s” – “that’s a truck,” he clarifies – it shows there are some ways in which America has genuinely led, or at least shone a light, and for all its faults we should be reluctant to let it pass from this world.
I much preferred Bruce Springsteen’s stance on America and its ideals when he played Manchester a couple of months ago, and while this is not meant as a criticism of Nick’s own perspective, it is an observation on how an artist can rightly respond to political disillusionment with greater art. Nick Shoulders is an admirable artist, and it would be a shame to see this friendly and hopeful soul on a path to political nihilism, however benign. Punk rebellion is all well and good, but it often falls into the trap of seeing rebellion, or a rejection of societal norms, as good in and of itself, or even as the end goal. But to paraphrase what another remarkable songwriter, Leonard Cohen, once wrote, those who provide the bonfire should also provide the piss. A serious rebel must provide a real alternative. And a punk worldview that rejects the centuries-long American experiment because of its latest political anomalies might provide catharsis but also encourages complacency. People who can’t pay attention to one of Nick’s songs for more than thirty seconds before blurting drunken talk into the face of the person next to them are unlikely to change the world, let alone for the better, while concertgoers who can’t keep their own vapid conversations low in a room of live music are unlikely to be truly altruistic socialists at heart. A stance and worldview that welcomes such people so long as they whoop and holler when Trump is invited to go fuck himself is not likely to be one that ends up providing remedy to any of the world’s problems. Songs like these, as Nick Shoulders has shown in both Leeds and Manchester, can well catch fire and resonate with people. But this is why the note of caution needs to be struck. An artist needs to continually reflect on their worldview to ensure they are on the right path, that the resonance they provide remains a valuable one.
As though in rebuttal of the criticisms I now pen, the Manchester audience manages to sort itself out for the final stretch of songs, shouting back as lustily as Leeds does for the rowdy crowd-participation song ‘After Hours’, and yodelling through ‘Snakes and Waterfalls’. Leeds still holds the crown, singing a whole verse of ‘Snakes and Waterfalls’ by itself. “That is sick,” Nick remarks, and he breaks out his array of bird whistles, from whippoorwill to cardinal.
The whippoorwill’s call is often said to signal impending death, and while nothing so extreme happens tonight, it does announce we are approaching the end of the set. Before we end, there’s a version of ‘Rather Low’ that on both nights shows Nick Shoulders at his best: catchy, energetic and fun, filled with whistle soloes and imitations of trumpets and matched by fine music, clever lyrics and a dancing crowd.
As Nick Shoulders stands for the first time tonight and gets up to leave, Leeds immediately roars for an encore. It fixes him in place and he stays on stage. “Thank you for not making me do the adult peekaboo,” he says.
An applauding Manchester roars for the same, and both crowds are treated to Nick’s a cappella single ‘Apocalypse Never’. To Manchester’s credit, it is as silently respectful as Leeds when Nick weaves his solitary spell. You can hear a pin drop in both cities, but Leeds inadvertently breaks its studiously adhered-to ‘library rule’ when a shutter near the bar comes crashing down, drawing a wry smile from Nick.
“Like the waters we will rise,” both crowds sing, but it sounds more special in Leeds because of what the crowd has given the artist in return. While there’s been plenty of avid Shoulderheads in Manchester, there’s also been a few bad apples who’ve tarnished our night. Leeds, the old Yorkshire enemy, has shown us how it’s to be done, how a fine and engaging crowd can make or break a night. In The Attic, ‘Apocalypse Never’ resounds as something truly great and hopeful and inspiring. You can believe the world will change. As he leaves the stage, Nick Shoulders grins and raises his candle-holder of tea, crowning a perfect set.
Setlist (Leeds):
(all songs written by Nick Shoulders, unless noted)
Booger County Blues (from Home on the Rage)
Blue Endless Highway (J.R. Cheatham) (from All Bad)
Hank’s Checkout Line (from Okay, Crawdad)
Black Star (Sid Wayne/Sherman Edwards) (from Lonely Like Me)
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