Light Of Day Scotland. Charity Gig. The Admiral Bar, Glasgow. Saturday 26th November

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Featuring Eddie Manion, Jeffrey Gaines, Joe D’Urso, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, Doghouse Roses & The Rising

Light Of Day is a worldwide charity raising awareness of and money for research into neurological diseases. It takes its name from a film starring Michael J. Fox (who has Parkinson’s disease) along with a Bruce Springsteen song. Since its inception in 2000 Light of Day has been heavily associated with Asbury Park, New Jersey holding a winterfest there. There are also annual musical tours of the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia.

So there’s a heavy Boss vibe to the night the caravan rolls into Glasgow. Manion and Lopez have done time with Springsteen, the latter a founding member of The E street Band and subsequently an inductee into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame. Lopez is first up singing and drumming on four songs including a trucking number and some old time r’n’b supported by Rob Dye on guitar. After that there was a stage invasion with all of the musicians lining up on the stage (bar The Rising who played their set afterwards) for what was kind of like a cross between a jam session and a songwriter circle.

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It was great fun. D’Urso offered up some fist pumping rockers while Gaines proved to be a powerful performer. Manion sang on Dylan’s Forever Young and played an endearingly kitsch version of Town Without Pity. For this reviewer it was great to hear Doghouse Roses (Paul Tasker and Iona MacDonald) with a full driving band behind them. Thunder Of The Dawn hurtled along with Manion’s sax exploding towards the end. Weather The Storm was another of their songs that benefitted exceptionally well from the set up while MacDonald showed that she  can throw out a powerful blues vocal on Mean Mean Woman.

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As the set bowled on Manion led a sing-along of We Shall Overcome before D’Urso had the audience ecstatic with a thunderous performance of Springsteen’s Light Of Day. To end this part of the show The Rising were invited onstage as all cast members rang out on Because The Night.  Had the show ended there no one would have been disappointed as we had around 90 minutes of rock and roll thrown at us but after a short break The Rising Came on for a full set of their own take on the Boss. There was dancing and drinking.

Stevie Agnew. Wreckin’ Yard.

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Dunfermline, a Scots town in Fife has a small claim to fame in rock circles with Nazareth and Big Country springing from its loins while Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was born there. Stevie Agnew, son of Pete Agnew, bassist for Nazareth, now stakes his own claim to fame with this excellent collection of blue collar tinged tales that , like another son of Dunfermline, Andrew Carnegie, looks to the new world for inspiration. Agnew might have grown up with a bona fide seventies rock star dad but there’s no pretension or nepotism on show here as he eschews the hard rock path and instead explores the highways and byways of American songwriters with particular nods to Springsteen and Dylan while the likes of Steve Earle, John Mellencamp, Tom Russell and Johnny Dowds all seep in.
Although Wreckin’ Yard is his debut album Agnew has knocked around a bit playing for several years on the local circuit. The catalyst for the album was his meeting with producer, drummer and co-writer of the album, Chris Smith. Together they’ve forged as good an Americana album to come out of Scotland in the past few years that burns with a respect for the working man, be it a squaddie or muck encrusted labourer and marries this with some memorable and at times very commercial sounds.
Wrecking Yard opens (and closes in an extended version) the album, a very smooth and polished medium paced rocker with sweet guitar tones that recall Mark Knopfler it’s tailor made for radio as the tale of a cuckolded labourer whose wife has left him for his boss dreams of vengeance. It’s an impressive song but more impressive is Agnew and Smith’s decision not to clone this airbrushed radio rock with the remainder of the album more dependent on acoustic instruments allowing Agnew’s very fine husk of a voice space to tell their tales. Pretend That You Love Me Tonight is Dylanesque (circa Blood on The Tracks) as Agnew seeks solace from a hooker while All That I Can See pairs Agnew with singer Kirsten Adamson (daughter of the late Stuart) on a country jaunt with Adamson sounding for all the world like a young Dolly Parton while Agnew sounds much older than his years. With banjo, Dobro, pedal steel and harmonica creating a fine backdrop it’s hard to imagine that this song originated in the Kingdom of Fife. Winter Rain is a wordy and spare backed narrative that recalls Steve Earle with Adamson again adding some sweet vocal harmonies on a grim and cold tale of a widower consoling himself with booze as he recalls his wife’s dying days, taking her to hospital and then taking her home with “her hair falling out into her hands and poison in her bones” and waiting for her to die. It’s a spectacular song that captures the protagonist’s pain without falling into sentimentality and its delivery is just as spectacular with the chorus reaching out to the listener. Agnew has another duet on Paid My Dues (Loving You) later on with Beth Malcolm replacing Adamson and again it’s a wonderful tale as two young lovers recall what went wrong.
The Pugilist is another narrative, this time about a battered and bruised fighter reduced to vagrancy. Again it’s delivered well and is reminiscent with its Celtic tinge of Ron Kavana. The one caveat here is that the melody is very reminiscent of John Lennon’s Working Class Hero. Sub Prime however struts out on its own two feet with sleek Dobro and slide guitar driving this finger pointing song against the bankers along and Agnew continues to deliver the goods for the remainder of the album in much the same vein although he does deliver a mean and dirty blues stomp on the vicious Sixteen Years which you can imagine his dad’s band might have had some fun with. Mention should be made of the stark Heavy Duty. Dedicated to a soldier friend killed in Afghanistan it avoids finger pointing but does point out that “the old wage wars for the young to die in” and is a reminder of the situation where many young men might see a career in the forces as the way out of unemployment with little thought of the possible outcome.

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Dave Provost. My Favorite Ghost/Stephen David Austin. A Bakersfield Dozen.

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What’s a jobbing musician to do these days without label backing or deep pockets of their own? While we get major label releases here at Blabber’n’Smoke for review the majority are self released so its no surprise to see that Kickstarter is increasingly used as a fundraising source. Indeed Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian recently raised a sizeable amount to Kickstart a movie project that otherwise might never have seen the light of day.
Anyway, Nantucket based Dave Provost used Kickstarter to fund this, his second album and for that we can be grateful. Provost sits comfortably in that section of your collection that contains the likes of Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen and John Hiatt (as long as you don’t have your albums in alphabetical order). Kicking off with the self assured strut of Hall of Bones the guitars ring out while an organ slightly swells before a chiming guitar solo, add Tom Petty to the above mentioned mentors and you have an idea of what this sounds like. Unplugging for the next song, Little Red Guitar, we get a slow country waltz sweetened by some fine pedal steel but the following Hula Girl digs into a bluesier and swampy groove. Mark Cutler’s slide oozes menace while Provost sounds somewhat like Jace Everett’s impassioned vocals on Bad Things. While Provost delivers more driving anthemic tales on Corners of the Sky and Up in the Air the majority of the remaining songs are pitched in a lower key. Please Stop Talking is a delicate acoustic tapestry with twinkling mandolin, rippling guitar and accordion while Partner in Crime features some fine Dobro playing (from Chris Boyd) on what might be the best song here. Almost the best song here we should say. While Provost covers Steve Earle’s I Ain’t Ever Satisfied the other cover, Rowland Salley’s Killing the Blues is indeed a veritable killer and knocks spots off of other versions by John Prine and Robert Plant.

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Partner In crime

On first listen this sounds just like yet another album of well played honky tonking country songs very much in the Bakersfield tradition with the likes of Merle Haggard and Dwight Yoakam beaming at you through the beers and tears. A fine cast of players, described in the liner notes as “the tortured artists” do provide a thrilling sound with Marty Rifkin on pedal and lap steel guitar standing out with his magnificent fills and solo slots. With fiddle, Dobro and banjo all appearing on occasion Austin covers all the bases to the extent that the album could be well recommended to anyone who digs, well, that “Bakersfield” sound.
However Austin has a trick up his sleeve. Wading through the many fine licks here one eventually finds his lyrics which are certainly a notch above what one expected. While he’s able to craft an almost perfect tale of a jailbird heading home after a 40 year stretch (The Cage) and deliver an affectionate homage to the late Buck Owens (The Day Buck Owens Died) several of his songs have a wry, sardonic edge to them. Heroes and Heroin namechecks Captain Trips aka Jerry Garcia on a cautionary anti drug song while Kansas Ain’t in Kansas Anymore is a powerful diatribe against the encroaching gang warfare that used to be emblematic of the likes of LA but which now infests middle America. On The Fat Kid he deals with bullying at school coming across like a Telecaster wielding Randy Newman as he sings “ he’s a fat kid, a loser and a freak, a pachyderm pariah, a mesomorphic geek.” He gets bang up to date on MySpace where he damns the dilemma of having to use the net to promote his music and being pulled into the whole social networking whirlpool. Overall Austin’s debut is mighty impressive indeed.

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The Cage

The Lost Pines, Downtown Mystic, Sean Giddings.

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The Lost Pines. Sweet Honey.

Just what we need in the depth of winter is some sweet country music that will warm the cockles of the heart and remind us of summer days and sunny skies. Fortunately The Lost Pines provide just that, perhaps it’s the hot climes of their native Austin, Texas that infuse the grooves of this album (well, if it had grooves) with an infectious warm humour.
A relatively young band they’ve gone from busking to recording in just two years with this second album being produced by the legendary Lloyd Maines. Acoustically driven they have their roots in bluegrass and folk with all 14 songs here written by themselves. While some of the songs do have a rustic feel the overall sense is that of the country pickers who over the years have bothered the popular charts, acts like Hank Williams and Bob Wills. All of the songs have memorable toe tapping melodies while the instrumentalists variously decorate or blaze away with the stand out showcase being Out of the Rain. Over the very assured and at times thrilling playing the vocals by Talia Bryce and Christian Ward drive home the sheer quality on show here. Hot picking, hot singing and hot songs. Sweet.

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Out Of the Rain

Downtown Mystic. Standing Still.

If sweet down-home acoustic picking and playing doesn’t rock your boat then why not fire up the old adrenaline with a shot of good old fashioned full blooded American rock’n’roll. The opening song on Downtown Mystic’s Standing Still certainly fits the bill here. Backdoor is a great rocker with gnarled guitars done in the best Stones’ style while Downtown Mystic mainman Robert Allen hammers home a ribald rock and roll story. Even better is Hard Enough where he’s backed up by Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg from the E Street Band. This song is a killer with Allen doing a great take on Springsteen. Of the 14 songs here there are several other belters, Modern Ways pummels away with a Chuck Berry riff while History reclaims the art of great rock’n’roll piano. Elsewhere Allen recalls the retro sound of the later incarnation of the Flamin’ Groovies on Better Day which has a superb guitar sound. The downside here is that the album is somewhat uneven. A full set of songs such as mentioned above could have produced an album that would sit quite comfortably with the likes of Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile albums. Unfortunately there are a few of Allen ‘s slower songs that leave one a little bit underwhelmed.

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Hard Enough

Sean Giddings. The Morning Greys.

In contrast to the in your face rockers above, the debut disc from adopted Californian Sean Giddings The Morning Greys is a muted affair. The inner sleeve pictures Giddings on a path in autumn and autumnal is a good description of his sound. With only six songs it’s a short season but at the end one is left with the impression that given time Giddings could come up with material to rival Bon Iver, a comparison that begs to be made after listening to this. He plays all instruments apart from the drums and has a light, ethereal voice and admits to being influenced by the likes of Mumford and Sons. The result is a collection of songs that have a resigned, at times despairing air to them. From his publicity it appears that Giddings was due to marry however it fell apart and he threw himself into his music. Perhaps it’s a bit too pop psychology to say so but this information again made us think of Bon Iver and his lost Emma, real or not.
Despite the downbeat message the songs are lush with rippling guitars and washes of keyboards over which Giddings sings beautifully. While they are all fully formed and well worth listening the stand out listen is All It Takes. A wonderful gem of a song, weightless, sparkling and dare I say it, captivating One to watch out for.

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All It Takes