Tuesday 27th August 2024

Gullivers, Manchester, England

I still recall the moment during the Covid pandemic when I first stumbled across the music that I label, with a very broad brush, an American ‘roots’ scene, though you could call it country, roots, alternative, indie or Americana. I had never in my life taken to the contemporary music that gets pushed, pre-packaged and auto-tuned, into our culture, always preferring what are called, with other unsatisfactory labels, ‘classic’ or ‘oldies’. And with the death of Tom Petty a couple of years earlier, I had firmly believed that I would never be able to come across new music I loved again.

But during the lockdown, I discovered the music of a young Canadian country singer called Colter Wall, a friend and sometime-tourmate of tonight’s headliner Vincent Neil Emerson. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to hear him live, but the quality of the music was a revelation, and stirred me to explore what proved to be a whole new world of incredible art; first Tyler Childers, with whom Colter duetted on ‘Fraulein’, then Vincent Neil Emerson and Charley Crockett and Sierra Ferrell, and then Billy Strings and Nick Shoulders and Luke Bell and Kassi Valazza. The list continues to grow and grow.

The point I am trying to make, in this indulgent and no-doubt-uninteresting opening spiel, is that just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable that I even attend gigs at all, instead staying within my homebody orbit of Beatles and Petty and Dylan and Cash music, let alone find myself in the position I am tonight, in a darkly-lit room above Gullivers pub in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. Because tonight I’m not just excited about one new artist and the great music they have created, but two. In the months since this gig was announced, I’ve marvelled at how lucky I am to hear, on the same bill, in a small, intimate venue, for just twenty of our English pounds, both Kassi Valazza and Vincent Neil Emerson. In a week when the Oasis reunion has just been announced and tickets to that circus will no doubt resell for thousands of pounds, I can’t help but smile at how I find myself where the truly valuable music is.

‘Jessica’ plays over the soundsystem as I wait for such a fortuitous night to unfold; I recognise it not only as the Top Gear theme song but because the Allman Brothers Band were one of those ‘oldies’ I once used to fill the hole where new, vibrant contemporary music should have been. It’s for the same reason that I recognise Levon Helm of The Band singing ‘Ophelia’ as Kassi Valazza moves her way through the crowd of perhaps one hundred people and takes the stage, alongside her bandmates Lewi Longmire and Tobias Berblinger. Kassi recognises the song too, and as she takes a seat before her microphone she makes a play of singing along with ‘Ophelia’, smiling to Tobias behind his keyboard.

The trio now set up, the night of wealth can begin. As Tobias begins to construct the first of his swirling cosmic soundscapes, Lewi makes delicate chirruping noises on his slide guitar and Kassi, on her acoustic guitar, plucks out the mantra-like melody of ‘Birds Fly High’. It’s the perfect introductory song for Kassi – she’s opened with it on all three times I’ve seen her live – as it grabs the attention of the crowd, but not with a gimmick; instead, it overwhelms with a paradoxically intense restfulness. The expansive, almost psychedelic folk-rock sound Kassi generates eschews the drug references of some of her Sixties influences in favour of an ageless, lyrical poetry. Her music and her delicate, pure voice fix the listener in place while allowing their mind to roam. This is music you can float unburdened in.

It is because of this effect that Kassi’s setlist tonight still feels fresh to me, even though I heard her play in the city of York just a couple of nights earlier. The setlist and the sequence is much the same (sans ‘Early Morning Rising’ and her profound cover of the Neil Young song ‘One of These Days’), but there’s a craft and resonance to her music that ensures it never wanes. If Kassi were here again tomorrow night, I would be too.

One benefit of attending tonight is that I have, unlike my two previous Kassi gigs, a clear view of Lewi Longmire. I’ve been able to hear him, of course, but tonight I’m able to see the delicate touches he puts together on his electric guitar to punctuate certain moments tonight, all judged expertly. I’m able to appreciate more the harmonies he provides on ‘Room in the City’ and the classic, lonesome harmonica sound on the same. I’m able to see him use a pedal to bend his notes in ‘Rapture’, the third song tonight, adding tasteful touches to an acoustic song that could have easily been broken by them, had they been misjudged. They’re not, and ‘Rapture’ is as good as I’ve ever heard it.

Amusingly, another feature of a Kassi Valazza gig I’ve noticed is that, committed to her sound, she will inevitably ask the sound booth to make an adjustment, directing technical requests from the microphone. Tonight is no exception. “Could I get less reverb on my voice?” she asks after ‘Room in the City’, almost shyly. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been asking that,” she says to the audience. I can attest: in York two days before, she had asked for more reverb.

While the adjustment is made, Kassi talks to the crowd about the elephant in the room, or rather in the city of Manchester. She doesn’t know which Gallagher brother is which, but “Oasis are getting back together. You guys are really excited about that,” she teases. “Earlier today, I heard two strangers just start talking about it.” Kassi’s not known for being a talker on stage, and as the opening act tonight she doesn’t have much time to introduce each song, but she’s a relaxed presence. It’s a theme of the night; Vincent Neil Emerson will later prove to have the audience in the palm of his hand, and even now Lewi Longmire is languid alongside Kassi as he plays his guitar. It’s a night of easy goodwill.

Except, perhaps, for the poor sound engineer. “I’m gonna be extra difficult now,” Kassi laughs after ‘Rapture’. “Could I get a bit more reverb?” The cosmic circle spins. She’ll build you up, she’ll build you down.

Next up is ‘Johnny Dear’, one of her signature songs “written for my grandmother”, followed by ‘Watching Planes Go By’, one of my favourites. Every time I hear this song, whether live or on record, I’m always struck by how it sounds like a lost classic, particularly that exhilarating moment as she sings “in the gentle morning”.  But it’s a Kassi original – the opening folk-rock ambience, that stirring moment as we “watch the sky break open, see her run”, the roaming of Lewi’s guitar.

Such compositions were taken for granted once, a few generations ago, and perhaps they will be again. They certainly can be as far as Kassi’s own songbook is concerned, which is full of such astonishing moments. She proves it now, with the cosmically mellow ‘Canyon Lines’ and ‘Song for a Season’, followed by the unreleased ‘Roll On’. Each finds Kassi’s expansive music hollowing out a great space in your mind. The ‘Welcome Song’ which follows is surely seven songs too late to welcome any listeners as die-hard converts to her sound.

The next one is a “new song,” Kassi says, “on an album that’s still being mixed”. ‘Weight of the Wheel’, as with the unreleased ‘Birds Fly High’ and ‘Roll On’ before it, fits seamlessly into Kassi’s sound, with that uncanny ability she has of making you feel, in the best possible way, like you’ve heard them before. Perhaps those hooks moved past us all in that cosmic stream but only Kassi had the eye to see them and reach out to claim them, and now as she returns them to us we recall them as they passed us by.

The new song is followed by an old one, a cover of Michael Hurley’s ‘Wildageeses’ which featured on her last album. One of Kassi Valazza’s finest traits is carrying the flame of this no-longer-unsung musician and I’m sure I’m not the only person tonight who has been turned on to his music by her heartfelt advocacy. Harmonising with Lewi Longmire, another of Hurley’s friends, her version of ‘Wildageeses’ tonight is as gentle as I’ve ever heard it.

Kassi ends her set with ‘Chino’, another of those songs that sounds astonishingly clear in your mind as you hear it. It allows all three musicians to shine, from Kassi’s crystal voice, pure and free of any affectation, to the harnessed cosmic freakout Lewi and Tobias bring towards its end, like a Pandora’s box opened just a fraction at the corner of the lid to allow some chaos out.

The trio have allowed our minds to roam one final time and at its end, Kassi unfixes us from her Siren song and people begin to roam physically about the room. We’ve already been provided with enough quality music to make the night a success but, remarkably, we’re only halfway through. As Kassi makes her way back through the milling crowd, we await Vincent Neil Emerson to take the stage.

I do admit that I had some misgivings about the gig tonight. Unlike with Kassi, I had not seen Vincent live before and I wondered how it would all pan out. I knew he would be performing solo with an acoustic guitar. I knew his work and I knew (from bitter experience) that lyrical, thoughtful songs strummed on an acoustic guitar don’t always retain the attention of a large crowd. Would hard-hitting songs like ‘Little Wolf’s Invincible Yellow Medicine Paint’ still work without an amplified band? I also found it unusual that the solo acoustic act would follow the electric, amplified one that Kassi and her companions had just done so well to provide.

All of which would prove completely unfounded. “Alright, cut the house music,” Vincent Neil Emerson says as he takes the stage and places himself behind his acoustic guitar. He’s a large man, dressed all in denim and with a bold-white ten-gallon cowboy hat and long hair. From first moment to last, Vincent will be a powerful presence on stage tonight; confident, at ease, a storyteller and a comedian. A genial man and a no-nonsense one; a personality and, goddammit, a musician. He’ll have the audience in the palm of his hand, myself included.

What’s more, he’s going to do things his own way. “I’m gonna start with a Rolling Stones song,” he says, “but I know it better from Townes Van Zandt.” And with that, he punches out a fine version of the country staple ‘Dead Flowers’. Vincent’s setlist tonight will be testament to his boldness, and not just because he opens with a cover song. Of the 17 songs he plays, only five will be from any of his albums, and four of those are front-loaded to follow straight after the opening Stones song. There’s a long sequence where, knitted together by his stories, Vincent sings only unreleased material – a mix of covers and originals. There’ll be none of the fan-favourites from his first album, Fried Chicken and Evil Women – a shouted request for ‘Letters on the Marquee’ much later on tonight has Vincent respond that he “can’t play it in this tuning, but we’ll see what we can do later”. It sounds as non-committal as when a parent tells their child “we’ll see” when they ask for candy.

‘Marquee’, of course, remains unplayed. The crowd-pleasing ‘Little Wolf’ song as the second-to-last song is the only fillip to live setlist orthodoxy. It might sound arrogant to some, but it feels anything but on the night. Vincent exudes a confidence that the crowd will be there for whatever he chooses to play. And, because he proves to be so good at it, we will.

“This is my first time playing in England,” he says, though he looks right at home, as though he were singing songs to friends around a campfire. He talks about how he became friends with Charley Crockett. “He covered one of my songs, ‘7 Come 11’, and it meant a lot to me.” Vincent says he got a chance to repay him on his latest record. ‘Time of the Cottonwood Trees’, the Crockett song he covers both on the album and now tonight, is enhanced by Vincent’s fingerpicking guitar style.

“The next song is based on a murder ballad,” Vincent says, before singing the first lines of the traditional folk song ‘Tom Dooley’. Vincent is open about how he “took that melody and made it into a love song”. He’s certainly not the first artist to take an old arrangement and make it his own, and you can’t argue with the results: ‘Clover on the Hillside’ is a beautiful song and one that’s very much his.

“It’s strange walking around with a cowboy hat in England,” he grins. Certainly, he had turned heads when he walked into the pub downstairs before the show, big and broad in that white ten-gallon hat. But then again, he and Lewi Longmire had also been bearing pizzas. “Someone yelled ‘Cotton-Eye Joe,” he chuckles. “I don’t know if Cotton-Eye Joe even wore a cowboy hat,” he admits, his knowledge of hallowed folk traditions failing him for once.

Next up is a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie. Vincent’s cover of ‘Co’dine’ is dark and bluesy, a powerful delivery. It does, however, require him to retune his guitar on stage.

“I learned this from Neil Young,” he says while tuning. He turns guitar teacher. “You hold this chord like this and this one like this and then… you have to tune your guitar again on stage.” The crowd laughs and claps at his mock-disdain.

“I don’t know what’s up with this guitar,” he says, still tuning. “Maybe it thinks it’s still a tree.”

Finally, he gets it right. “That was good,” he says, putting together a melody as the crowd laughs again. “Because I’m just about out of jokes.”

“This next song’s from an album I named after, well, myself,” he says, before spinning a story of how he got a chance to do the song with Rodney Crowell during Covid times. As Vincent tells it, they were at Rodney’s house with their masks on, and as the wine came out the masks came off. Tonight’s performance of ‘High on Gettin’ By’ justifies the tuning it has taken to get there, as well as any potential Covid breaches it may have occasioned.

“Whew, it’s hot in here,” Vincent says, taking his hat off briefly. I guess these lightweight Texans can’t handle the heat of northern England. He jokes about maybe getting the lights turned off and running around in the dark, before introducing the next song as “a love song about hating flying”, written about a month ago. Marked on the setlist as ‘Jet Plane’, it’s a tender song which uses the iconography of air travel to bring home lines about returning to the one you love. “Blinded by the sunlight on the wings,” Vincent sings, “it’s a reminder that you shine on everything.”

“Are there any Texans in the crowd?” Vincent says, surely a shot in the dark in a room of a hundred people in the North of England. Surprisingly, the shot hits home. A lady who’s made her way to the front hollers; she’s from Fort Worth. A man further back shouts that he’s Texan too. “Too late, man,” Vincent says. “Your Texas privileges have been revoked.”

Vincent’s easy, confident stage presence tonight has been a surprise tonight, but a welcome one. Knowing him only from his recorded material, I had expected a more pensive, insular, perhaps even depressive, musician. But he’s worked the crowd well, joking and speaking and making the moments between songs as natural as the songs themselves. On stage he proves a great storyteller.

The next song, he says, was written by a woman named Elizabeth Cotten. He tells the story of how in the Fifties she was working as a nanny for the folk singer Pete Seeger, and the family came back home early one time to find her singing a song she’d written years before. Cotton got a record deal when she was in her sixties as a result of this, and Vincent plays a rolling version of ‘Freight Train’. Knowing its origin makes the song even more resonant, and shows that Vincent’s folksy storytelling stage is more than just a means to move things along.

“I quit drinkin’ about six months ago,” Vincent says.

Silence.

“Yeah,” he says with a grin. “I knew no one would clap for that here.”

After the audience stops laughing, he treats us to a song he wrote that remains unreleased. ‘Chippin’ at the Stone’ is a sad, confessional song that fits more into the preconceptions of the artist that I had before the night, and it fits him like a glove. It’s interesting to see him switch gears seamlessly; a solo acoustic set doesn’t allow for much variation, at least not to an unsophisticated ear like mine, but Vincent has a knack of finding the right tone for each song and moving deftly from one to the next.

“It means a lot to play for you guys,” he says, to applause from the crowd, telling us how his two previous tours to Europe had been cancelled. “One of the things I can do is bring back some of those folk songs that left on the boat!” He begins to strum. “I thought this one was an English folk song,” he says. “Turns out it’s a Scottish one.” A man roars in the audience – presumably a Scotsman, or a really self-loathing Englishman, or a man who’s stubbed his toe. Vincent’s version of the classic ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ – “All around the purple heather / Will you go? Lassie, go?” – manages to convey its timelessness. Whether they’re from Scotland, England or Fort Worth, Texas, everyone in the audience feels its peace.

Next up is another unreleased song penned by Vincent, ‘Rodeo Clown’, before he’s back in storytelling mode. “I had a full English breakfast this morning. Actually, let me ask you guys: what’s the difference – sorry, it sounds like I’m setting up a joke here – what’s the difference between a ‘full English breakfast’ and a ‘full Irish breakfast’?”

Someone immediately shouts out the answer; it’s white and black pudding. “Ah, ok,” Vincent responds, idly strumming his guitar. “We don’t see colour over in America,” he quips, to knowing laughter from the crowd. “Actually,” he says after a pause, “we’re probably racist as shit.” He tells the crowd about his Native American heritage and the story of one of his family members being invited to a KKK meeting by a schoolfriend who didn’t realise she wasn’t white.

“Anyway, on a less heavier note,” – though I can’t say whether he’s referring to the KKK or to the full English breakfast – Vincent moves into ‘Louisiana Wind’ and ‘Angeline’. Both are unreleased songs he’s written and, as with ‘Rodeo Clown’ before them, their bones are strong and I find myself interested to see what their final form will be in the studio. ‘Angeline’ in particular sounds like it could be a future country classic, and as it’s a new song – “you’re probably the first to hear it,” Vincent says – I feel particularly privileged to be here tonight.

Speaking of classic country songs, Vincent invites Kassi Valazza back up on stage “for a Townes song”. Kassi moves through the crowd, no longer wearing the brown leather jacket she wore for her own set. As Vincent strums his guitar, the two harmonise on the Townes Van Zandt song ‘Loretta’. As well as her own powerful studio work, Kassi has a gift for lending her voice to others’ songs (‘I Stole the Right to Live’ with Taylor Kingman and ‘A Strange Goodbye’ with Jesper Lindell both come to mind). There’s probably no voice I enjoy hearing more at the moment than Kassi’s, and tonight she helps provide another special moment. She leaves the stage to more deserved applause, and I hope it’s not too long before I see her grace one again.

“I used to drink a lot on stage,” Vincent says, and an eagle-eyed observer might note the can of Heineken beside his stool, as conspicuous as a coffee cup in Winterfell. It gives the lie to his earlier story about quitting drinking, unless of course it’s 0.0. And if it’s not, well, a tall tale or two is fine also – for a folk singer.

“Those couple of inches matter,” he says. “It’s the difference between sounding like this,” – he begins strumming his guitar, his left hand high on the neck – “and sounding like this,” – he imitates playing the guitar drunk, his left hand low and sloppy. As the crowd laughs, he says “there’s a lot of open mic nights like that in Texas.” Proving he’s as sober as a judge, he launches into a quietly fiery song called ‘Rich Man’ – something he wrote about “how the rich kids were the ones who bullied people at school, and how as I got older it seems like it’s the same thing happening.”

“There’s a bar in Texas,” he says, introducing the next song. He nods to the lady from Fort Worth. “Maybe you know it – it’s called the Red Goose. Anyway, I went there with Colter Wall while we were on tour together, and we were surprised we got to hear Ramblin’ Jack Elliott play.” After a bit of folk history on Ramblin’ Jack, Vincent sings a strong and wistful version of ‘If I Were a Carpenter’, a song Jack helped popularise.

We’re into the home stretch, and while no one’s gonna tell Vincent Neil Emerson what to put on a setlist (aside from the fan who, after the next song, will yell futilely for ‘Letters on the Marquee’), there’s one song that the night wouldn’t feel complete without. ‘Little Wolf’s Invincible Yellow Medicine Paint’ is not just a great title but has, since its release on his latest album, quickly become a fan favourite. It’s a powerful crowd-pleaser, as well as being a lyrical testament to Vincent’s love for his Choctaw-Apache tribe.

I had wondered how this would come across in an acoustic set – the album version has power chords and a fine electric guitar solo – but the song is strong enough on its own. Even though Vincent has to pause halfway through to tune his guitar – “it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t such a sad song,” he quips – there’s big medicine in it that can’t be denied.

It’s time for the final song, and Vincent leads into it with a playful commentary on whether the phrase “catfish fishing” is grammatically correct. It’s certainly an unwieldy phrase, but the same can’t be said of his song ‘Fishing Hole’. Punctuated by a few stomps from Vincent’s boots, it’s a fun and down-key end to the night. “Yip yip,” Vincent says as he strums the final chords, the words breaking the spell that had been woven by tonight’s four musicians from Kassi Valazza’s very first note.

As ever, my own notes, provided here days later, are but a poor facsimile of the music that we have heard on the night, failing completely to capture its magic, its resonance and the joy one feels at the opportunity to hear it. To be here tonight is to listen, in a small crowd, to music that should be heard by millions, if only our culture had the health and strength and integrity to champion it. To be privileged to hear this music so intimately is akin to that feeling of being up before dawn and watching the sun rise, or to see the ocean swell before it forms a wave. It is to be ahead of things, and to feel alive.

Fortunately, there’s so much of it, so many opportunities to hear great artists within this country and folk and roots music scene, even here in England far removed from the sands of Texas and Arizona. Indeed, an Englishman can become so gluttonous as to enjoy both Kassi Valazza and Vincent Neil Emerson on the same bill, in a crowd of scarcely a hundred. To find this music and to realise there is so much of it, from so many great artists, where you had expected to find so little, is like discovering El Dorado where you expected only dirt.

And just as the stories say the natives of El Dorado did not understand the awe with which the conquistadors beheld their plentiful yellow rocks, many people pass this music by, and leave the wealth for the fortunate one hundred who stepped into the close heat of Gullivers in Manchester, and who now, at the end of the show, filter back out into the normal world. I too step out into the ordinary night, where the streets are paved with macadam, not gold.

Setlist #1 (Kassi Valazza):

(all songs from the album Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing and written by Kassi Valazza, unless noted)

  1. Birds Fly High (unreleased)
  2. Room in the City
  3. Rapture
  4. Johnny Dear (from Dear Dead Days)
  5. Watching Planes Go By
  6. Canyon Lines
  7. Song for a Season
  8. Roll On (unreleased)
  9. Welcome Song
  10. Weight of the Wheel (unreleased)
  11. Wildageeses (Michael Hurley)
  12. Chino (from Dear Dead Days)

Setlist #2 (Vincent Neil Emerson):

(all songs written by Vincent Neil Emerson, unless noted)

  1. Dead Flowers (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards) (unreleased)
  2. Time of the Cottonwood Trees (Charley Crockett) (from The Golden Crystal Kingdom)
  3. Clover on the Hillside (from The Golden Crystal Kingdom)
  4. Co’dine (Buffy Sainte-Marie) (from The Golden Crystal Kingdom)
  5. High on Gettin’ By (from Vincent Neil Emerson)
  6. Jet Plane (unreleased)
  7. Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten) (unreleased)
  8. Chippin’ at the Stone (unreleased)
  9. Wild Mountain Thyme (Traditional) (unreleased)
  10. Rodeo Clown (unreleased)
  11. Louisiana Wind (unreleased)
  12. Angeline (unreleased)
  13. Loretta (with Kassi Valazza) (Townes Van Zandt) (unreleased)
  14. Rich Man (unreleased)
  15. If I Were a Carpenter (Tim Hardin) (unreleased)
  16. Little Wolf’s Invincible Yellow Medicine Paint (from The Golden Crystal Kingdom)
  17. Fishin’ Hole (unreleased)

Author’s Note: If Vincent Neil Emerson would convince Colter Wall to tour the UK, I’d be much obliged.