Wednesday 8th October 2025

Manchester Academy, Manchester, England

humbucker – ˈhəmˌbəkər

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)

  1. Long Hard Life (from III)
  2. The Wind (from The Wind)
  3. Everlasting Lover (from III)
  4. Miles to Go (single)
  5. Anchor (from Leavin’ This Holler)
  6. All Over Again (unreleased)
  7. Yearnin’ for You (Gibson/Matt Koziol) (from Leavin’ This Holler)
  8. It’s a Shame (from III)
  9. Bringing Home the Bacon (unreleased)
  10. Pardon Me (unreleased)
  11. Russell County Line (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
  12. Annabel (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
  13. Hillbilly Daydream (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
  14. Don’t Speak (from The Wind)
  15. Tulsa (Gibson/Stewart Myers) (from Leavin’ This Holler)
  16. Damn Darlin’ (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
  17. Hays, Kansas (from III)
  18. Last Call (from Fortune Favors the Bold)
  19. Encore: Hillbilly Happy (from Leavin’ This Holler)
  20. Encore: Changes (Geezer Butler/Tony Iommi/Ozzy Osbourne/Bill Ward) (unreleased)

My other concert reviews can be found here.