Live review: My Darling Clementine @ The Fallen Angels Club. Glad Café, Glasgow. Friday 24th November 2023.

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Glasgow’s no stranger to witnessing the odd bout of bickering between married couples and so it was that an almost sold out crowd crammed into the Southside’s Glad Café to welcome back our favourite marital sparring partners, My Darling Clementine, in anticipation of what we used to call, “a good clean fight.”

Lou Dalgleish and Michael Weston King, the two warring elements of My Darling Clementine, have long proved to be one of the UK’s favourite acts, taking the long held premise that country music can’t abide a happy pairing and transforming that into a hugely entertaining show. It helps of course that the pair have released a series of albums in which they sing superbly of the twists and turns and the ups and downs of being in a relationship, cleverly updating old Nashville tropes.

They used to take to the stage as a recording of George Jones and Tammy Wynettes’ wedding vows was played but tonight it was the stabbing keyboards of Timmy Thomas’ Why Can’t We Live Together which announced their appearance, Dalgleish resplendent in her thrift store glory and Weston King a testament to polyester, his sta-prest trousers featuring the sharpest crease in town. Launching, of course, into a divorce song, the weeping strains of faded love and regret parlayed by each on Unhappily Ever After set the scene for much of the evening’s entertainment, the pinnacle of the disharmony being a glorious rendition of There’s No Heart In This Heartache along with the somewhat redemptive I Know Longer Take Pride which has Dalgleish singing from the beyond to support her grieving husband. Performing as a duo tonight there was no sense that they needed a band behind them especially when they delivered the exotic rhythms of King Of The Carnival and there was even choreography as the pair danced to and from the microphones in step.

With no support act, the pair set out all their wares on stage tonight which meant the inclusion of several songs taken from their latest project where they delved into the country darkness they have exhumed from the songs of Elvis Costello. First off was a Costello song written with Loretta Lynn, I Felt The Chill Before The Winter Came, sung brilliantly in harmony, very much in keeping with the heartache which had come before and a reminder of how well My Darling Clementine have burrowed into Costello’s songbook. I Lost You and Either Side Of The Same Town just cemented this thought.

According to Dalgleish, Weston King has had the temerity to record an album of his own and this led to some inspired duelling dialogue before he was “allowed” to play two songs from The Struggle – The Hardest Thing Of All, a powerful description of solitude, along with his thoughts on a policeman duped by Trump on Weight Of The World. Dalgleish, bless her soul, weighed in on keyboards instead of leaving in a huff.

Of course, the pair revel in the comedy of the bickering – George and Tammy writ large on the stage. But when Dalgleish gets serious, responding to Wynette’s Stand By Your Man with her wife beating tale No matter What Tammy Said (I Won’t Stand By Him) with words such as “She’s seeing black and blue and purple because he’s seeing red,” in a rare onstage moment, she leans on Weston King affectionately. The pair are united when it comes to this.

Signing off with a great rendition of The Embers And The Flame, the duo announced they’d stay on stage for the encore, none of this false exit nonsense, and so, as the crowd bayed their applause they sang a grand version of Joe Henry’s You Can’t Fail Me Now. They would have ended there but an eruption from the crowd demanded more and so, an actual encore proceeded. Weston King dug into his past to bring up Endless Wandering Stars, a song inspired by a James Joyce line in Ulysses (“on page three” he said, he’d never got beyond that page). It was a delightful end to a hugely entertaining night.

Michael Weston King. The Struggle. Cherry Red Records

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Most folk reading this will be familiar with Michael Weston King as one half of the excellent My Darling Clementine, the on stage bickering husband and wife team who have released a series of excellent albums which explore and update the dynamics (and the wonder) of country duets. Most recently, they added their chemistry to a selection of Elvis Costello’s “country darkness” songs on an acclaimed trilogy of EPs which also featured Steve Nieve, Costello’s long-standing keyboard foil. Now, taking time out from My Darling Clementine duties, Weston KIng has released his first solo album in a decade, The Struggle.

Recorded in a remote Welsh studio, The Struggle features Weston King accompanied by Clovis Phillips, a multi instrumentalist (and the studio’s owner) with additional parts added by a fine ensemble of musicians remotely. A world away from the Tammy & George like marital world of My Darling Clementine, Weston King here has looked back to that classic late 60s, early 70s singer songwriter period, seeking inspiration from the likes of Jesse Winchester, Dan Penn, John Prine and even Van Morrison in his high kicking Caledonia soul days.

 It’s a wonderfully accomplished album, suffused with elements of growing older, of remembering past times and, on occasion, bitingly contemporary. The title, Weston King says, is not a reference to the hardships of Covid but to the more elemental and ongoing concerns which we all face in our day-to-day existence and which will remain long after Covid is but a sniffle. It’s also a reference to a stout hill climb in Cumbria which has stuck in his mind for some time.

The album opens with the most contemporary song, Weight Of The World. It was written after Weston King watched, appalled, Donald Trump marching to St. John’s Church in Washington to brandish a bible, having had his troops brutally remove Black Life Matters protestors who were in his way. Weston sings it as a policeman who, having voted for Trump, sees the reality of this most heinous of characters finally unveiled. It’s a grand protest song which doesn’t point fingers but tries to understand why some folk can be fooled and fooled again and there’s a remixed version at the end of the album which really roots around in a Dan Penn/Spooner Oldham fashion. It’s followed by Sugar, a song co-written with Peter Case and the most “Americana” like song on the disc with its mandolin trills and sly slide guitar.

The heft of the album is in a brace of songs, some personal, some less so, which have a vein of nostalgia and loss running through them. The Hardest Thing Of All is a fine soulful account of solitude while Another Dying Day drips with weariness and, yes, struggle. The nostalgia is lit large in the wonderful waltz time The Old Soft Shoe which is a very affectionate and quite moving snapshot of the surviving partner of a dancing couple retracing their dance steps, “I live here alone and nobody knows, that I dance each evening, all on my own.” A mournful trombone and Barney Kessel like guitar licks set the scene and Weston King sings it quite beautifully. Valerie’s Coming Home is Weston King’s memoriam to Lou Dalgleish’s mother who passed away shortly before these viral times and he paints a fine portrait of her with a wonderful sense of delicacy. Finally, Me & Frank tells of a childhood friend who, it seems, was a bit of a lark, with Weston KIng transposing red dirt country tales to the badlands of a seemingly endless Southport beach.

The Final Reel finds Weston King paying tribute to his late friend, Jackie Leven. It’s appropriately windswept and full of Celtic romance with a roaring chorus. A fine send off but Leven appears again on Theory Of Truthmakers, a song written by Leven but never recorded. Given the lyrics by a mutual friend, Weston King dresses them in a glorious arrangement, assisted by Mike Cosgrove (a long time associate of Leven’s) on strings and with Lou Dalgleish (and daughter Mabel) on vocals. There’s a sense of the quiet majesty of Jimmy Webb here, the soft ebb and flow of the strings, the nylon guitar, the sweep of the chorus. It’s quite magnificent and it’s the topping on what is a mature, thoughtful and very engaging album.

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The Wanderer – A Tribute to Jackie Leven, Cooking Vinyl

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Something of a labour of love, The Wanderer is a two disc tribute to the late Jackie Leven, curated by Michael Weston King on the tenth anniversary of his friend’s passing. Calling on a wide range of Leven admirers, Weston King has compiled 22 songs, all Leven covers bar his own self-penned tribute to the man along with songs by Levi Henriksen & Babylon Badlands and Liam Carson with Knut Buen.

As with most tribute albums there’s a wide variety of takes on Leven’s styles on show and some are more successful than others while we reckon it’s fair to say that what the album is really missing is Leven himself, given that he was such a unique and powerful character. Weston King is perhaps (and somewhat ironically) the one who gets closest to Leven on The Final Reel which captures some of his Celtic vagabond ways. Meanwhile it’s Scots crime writer Ian Rankin (who collaborated with Leven on several projects), accompanied by Dean Owens, who sounds most like Leven on the spoken word Edinburgh Winter Blues, one of our favourite moments on the album.

The two discs are subtitled Gentle Man and Hard Man, reflecting the conflicting dual personality which most folk attribute to Leven, but aside from a couple of more raucous numbers on disc 2, there’s little to distinguish them from each other. What they do portray is what a fine songwriter Leven was. Leven’s partner, Deborah Greenwood, offers a beautiful version of Universal Blue, and is quite touching on this extremely tender and aching song. Almost as touching is Boo Hewerdine’s plaintive delivery of A Little Voice In Space and Kathryn Williams proffers an ethereal and dreamlike version of The Crazy Song. Two sublime songwriters offer up sublime readings of Leven in quick succession as Arksong (Marc Pilley) and then James Yorkston delicately pick their way through Honeymoon Hill and Empty Square In Soho respectively. Meanwhile the other half of My Darling Clementine, Lou Dalgleish is quite majestic on her solo piano delivery of One Long Cold Morning.

The Hard Man disc opens with Andy White’s rocked up Standing In Another Man’s Rain which wrestles with fuzzed guitar and bagpipe like squirls, emerging sounding like The Go-Betweens on amphetamine. That said it does recall Leven’s version of “the big music” trumpeted by The Waterboys, that widescreen Celtic sound. Tom Robinson tries something similar but with less success on his version of Classic Northern Diversions but for a truly left field take on Leven it’s hard to beat Johnny Dowd’s unhinged robotic Farfisa fuelled romp through Farm Boy – it’s classic Dowd and one reckons that this might have been Leven’s favourite number here were he to have heard it. The Membranes hark back to Doll By Doll days on their splenetic delivery of More Than Human but Henry Priestman calms the waters with his boho delivery of Paris Blues which sounds like a beatified busker on a Paris Boulevard. There’s a theatrical heft to Eliza Carthy’s Brechtian take on The Garden but several of the artists simply take a song and deliver it in their own style. Jeb Loy Nichols’ laid back Caribbean vibes on The Working Man’s Love Song is a joy to hear while fellow Fifer, Rab Noakes, drills into Leven’s roots on the docudrama which is Poortoun with Noakes handing in a gloriously handmade performance, fleshed out with acres of acoustic guitar and double tracked vocals. Another Scottish act, Dogtown Roses are in excellent form on the banjo driven Elegy For Johnny Cash which seems to have been hewn from Appalachian rock with flashes of dark Americana Gothic.

Weston King has certainly honoured the memory of Jackie Leven well with this tribute which serves in its own right as a highly enjoyable listen. If it inspires folk to explore Leven’s own albums then all the better, and with a “best of” collection, Straight Outta Caledonia, recently released along with a forthcoming reissue of his first solo album, The Mystery Of Love Is Greater Than The Mystery Of Death, due in November from Cooking Vinyl there’s no better time to do so. In addition, proceeds from this album will benefit the Westminster Drug Project (WDP) a charity that continues the work of Jackie’s own charity, The CORE Trust.

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My Darling Clementine with Steve Nieve. Country Darkness Vol. 3. Fretsore Records

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And so, after some Covid induced delay, here’s the third and final instalment of My Darling Clementine’s foray into the country and soul roots of Elvis Costello. Another four track EP, the disc finds the band again playing with Steve Nieve and the nucleus of Richard Hawley’s band. As before, Nieve’s contributions were relayed electronically but the band members had to wait until the national lockdown was relaxed before they eventually got into the studio.

When investigating Costello’s catalogue to find songs which displayed his Americana bent, the duo sought songs which would suit their own specific style, that classic male/female harmony and counterpoint in the manner of the great partnerships that have sailed across the country charts. To this end, they have a perfect example in the closing song here when they offer a superb reading of Why Can’t A Man Stand Alone ?, a song Costello wrote for Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave) who, in the end, didn’t record it. The song appeared on Costello’s All This Useless Beauty album and according to Michael Weston King, in an interview with Say it With Garage Flowers, “There is a male verse which starts: “Why can’t a man stand alone?”, and the second verse is a female one: “Why can’t a woman be just what she seems? So that immediately felt right for a duet.” The original has its fair share of drama but My Darling Clementine add to that as they enter the song softly with their sweet dueting over a simple electric piano before slowly building to a crescendo, sounding for all the world as if they were starring in a Broadway musical.

Having delved deep into Costello’s backwaters, it’s a nice surprise to find that there are two songs here taken from one of the man’s most celebrated albums, King Of America. I’ll Wear It Proudly is perfect My Darling Clementine fodder, allowing the pair’s voices to entwine wonderfully while Nieve’s arrangement is quite colossal. Indoor Fireworks is a song which Lou Dalgleish has featured live for many years and the duo have recorded it pretty much as they deliver it live. Just the two of them and it’s the only song on the collection which does not feature Nieve and, as such, it depends on their vocal chemistry  which is, as the song says, as safe as houses. Again, it’s quite masterful as to how Weston King and Dalgleish transform Costello’s solo voice into a piece for two singers. Finally, there’s the rather raucous delivery of The Crooked Line, originally on Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. On the previous EP there was a Tex Mex influence on Different Finger with some Augie Meyer styled keyboard but on The Crooked Line, they wig out as if they were exhuming The Sir Douglas Quintet. With swirling Vox organ and oodles of twangy guitar replacing the originals bluegrass styled outing, it’s a grand listen and the band bring it to a storming close.

All in all, My Darling Clementine’s adoption of these songs has been an interesting and at times, exhilarating ride with Nieve’s participation a particularly welcome addition to their musical palette.

Country Darkness Vol. 3 is available on limited edition vinyl and download and the vinyl selection comes with a bespoke slip case to fit all three volumes. In addition, all 12 songs gathered on the EPs will be released on a single CD in November with a brand new My Darling Clementine song added. All purchase options are here.

My Darling Clementine with Steve Nieve. Country Darkness Vol. 2. Fretstore Records

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country-darkness-vol-2-1-350x350-1On this second instalment of their three piece interpretation of songs by Elvis Costello, My Darling Clementine continue to seek out elements of country darkness from the man’s catalogue. From the start of their career, My Darling Clementine (Lou Dalgleish and Michael Weston King) have been in love with classic male/female country duetting and their application of this to the songs of Costello continues to impress. Furthermore, they have delved deep into Costello’s songbook (it would be a pretty obsessive Costello fan who could immediately pinpoint these songs) avoiding most of his more familiar numbers.

Joined again by Costello’s most steadfast musical companion, Steve Nieve, on keyboards along with the core of Richard Hawley’s Band (Colin Elliott, Shez Sheridan and Dean Beresford on guitar, bass and drums), My Darling Clementine don’t detour from the approach they took on the first EP. The songs chosen are given an MDC makeover, sometimes subtle, sometimes more radical as on the Tex Mex take on Different Finger (originally on Trust).

They kick off with Either Side Of The Same Town (from The Delivery Man) with Costello’s southern soul delivery given a full Muscle Shoals’ treatment. With requisite piano and organ prominent, the duo sing magnificently as they tear at the emotions while a wonderfully lyrical guitar solo seals the deal. I Lost You, a co-write with Jim Lauderdale, comes from an album Costello recorded in Nashville (National Ransom) and its bouncy acoustic thrash is here transformed into a slick country rock number with a slight sixties sheen as Nieve’s piano drives the song along while twangy guitars manage the shift changes. The vocal exchanges here are quite brilliant as they variously riposte and parry and then join together in harmony.

It’s back to Costello’s earlier years as they tackle Different Finger, a song which in its original incarnation had a honky tonk feel. Here, My Darling Clementine take it south of the border with Pierro Tucci adding his accordion to the mix. Throw in some fine Augie Meyer like vox parpings from Nieve and there’s a perfect Tex Mex blend here. The kaleidoscopic jollity of the music here might disguise the darkness but it’s there aplenty as these two lovers have their secrets with the song coming across like a musical Tijuana Bible (albeit without the titillation). The darkness does descend however on the funereal Still Too Soon To Know, plucked from Brutal Youth. Here, the embers of a relationship are poked at to see if there’s still a spark as our singers search their souls over a sombre backing.

As with the first volume, this EP is available on 12” vinyl or download. According to Michael Weston King, the promised third EP is on hold due to this pesky virus, but given the quality of the first two releases, that’s another light at the end of the tunnel we should all be looking forward to.

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My Darling Clementine with Steve Nieve. Country Darkness Vol. 1. Fretstore Records

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mdc_country-darkness_cover_m-350x350The UK’s foremost country duo, My Darling Clementine, have been delivering their singular take on the popular male/female country duet since 2011. Over the years and with four albums under their belt, the duo, married couple Lou Dalgleish and Michael Weston King, have moved far beyond the affectionate tributes of their first release, How Do You Plead. Their last release, Still Testifying, while maintaining their hard-core love of classic country, had shades of soul and sixties pop in its grooves with the pair’s song writing  having more gravitas, more light and shade to it than when they started out.

Their latest project, as hinted at by the title, might be delving into darker corners of the country psyche but, more surprisingly, it also delves into the psyche of Elvis Costello as My Darling Clementine have taken to leafing through the great man’s songbook in order to record their choice picks. It’s an ongoing project and this four song EP is only the first fruit, but for anyone who, hearing of this, expected to hear a simulation of Costello’s most overtly country album, Almost Blue, prepare to be surprised. This is deep cut territory.

Joining My Darling Clementine on this voyage of Elvis discovery is none other than Steve Nieve, perhaps Costello’s longest serving accomplice. An Attraction and an Imposter, Nieve deservedly gets his name on the sleeve, his playing here a neat link to the originals aside from it being impeccable.

The EP opens with Heart Shaped Bruise, originally on Costello’s The Delivery Man with Emmylou Harris adding her vocals. My Darling Clementine and Nieve strip the original of its bar room country blush to expose its nerves. Nieve’s magnificent piano leads into strings, muted drum rolls and  dramatic vocals which take the song in the direction of mid sixties pop melodrama, The Walker Brothers, Roy Orbison and Dusty Springfield coming to mind. Next up is Stranger In The House, a vintage Costello song dating back to his first album sessions but best known as a duet on a George Jones album. It’s classic Costello country and also classic My Darling Clementine fodder with the added bonus of some delicious keyboard swirlings from Nieve which recall those early Attractions days.

Digging deeper into Costello’s catalogue, My Darling Clementine come up with a Paul McCartney co-write, That Day Is Done. Here they cleave more to Costello’s idea of the song (which he performed with The Fairfield Four) as they delve into gospel soul on a horn-laden powerhouse version. The final song is another co-write, this time with Loretta Lynn, a song which was snuck away on a little known Costello album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. I Felt The Chill Before The Winter Came finds Dalgleish given a more prominent role than Lynn on the original while the song is a perfect vehicle for the duo’s trademark duetting.

The frustration here is that the disc has only four songs but it’s a tantalising tease for the remainder of the project. In the meantime, it’s available on vinyl and we should mention here the artwork and design of the sleeve which perfectly captures the mood. In addition, My Darling Clementine have been in the habit of copying the old EMI habit of classifying albums in a “file under” direction on the back sleeve. Here the copy reads, “File Under: Country (Costello Country). A nice touch.

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My Darling Clementine. Still Testifying. Continental Song City

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a0840776620_16Still mining the rich vein of country duetting, My Darling Clementine have grown in stature since the release of their first album, How Do You Plead, back in 2011. Essentially a homage to the classic duets of George Jones and Tammy Wynette in the late sixties the album led to them being named Americana Music Artist of the year at the British Country Music Awards in 2012. A second album and a successful collaboration with crime writer Mark Billingham on The Other Half (an album and stage show) have established the duo (Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish) as the current King and Queen of UK Country music and with Still Testifying they further advance the charms and depth of their project.

Keen to avoid making the same type of album over and over King and Dalgleish have followed a path which was hinted at on Our Race Is Run (from second album, The Reconciliation) which was suffused with a Southern Soul sound, brass and organ offering a sanctified Solomon Burke like solemnity. As such, Still Testifying shifts from a Nashville based sound mirroring the shift in the late sixties that saw Music Row challenged by Memphis, Texas and even Hollywood showbiz and hippies. With artists such as Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Bobbie Gentry (and Lulu) getting down and dirty in Memphis, The Flying Burrito Brothers channelling a similar sound in LA (remember, they covered Dark End Of The Street on their first album) and even Bacharach and David getting in on the act with their score for Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, country was edging into pop, rock and soul and it’s this creative period that My Darling Clementine inhabit here.

They open the album with the barnstorming The Embers And The Flame which barrels in with a similar swirl as that of The Burritos’ Christine’s Tune before the horns add some Hollywood colour. It’s the horns again which lift Dalgleish’s sorrowful tale of a couple trapped in love on Just A Woman (which incidentally reverses Wynette’s oft repeated apology for her man) with the pair crooning almost amidst a dreamy background which one would like to imagine was on the soundtrack for a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie had they looked at real life instead of cotton candy pillow fluff. Tear Stained Smile meanwhile employs some fat sounding sax on a cheerful murder song which rolls along like Elvis in Vegas while There’s Nothing You Can Tell Me (That I Don’t Already Know) has a cracking guitar riff over a sinewy rock beat that has Elvis In Memphis all over it along with some Tex Mex organ stylings. Here Dalgleish and King keenly observe the human condition and the mating technique with some finesse with lines such as “The groove on your third finger tells me you once had a wife.” As it’s a My Darling Clementine album there are several other songs which feature couples in or out of love or trying to make some sense of just what happened to them. Friday Night, Tulip Hotel is a wonderful waltz describing a sorrowful clandestine tryst that seems doomed to repeat itself until one day the man doesn’t turn up. Elsewhere Dalgleish picks up the ongoing tale of Dolly Parton’s Jolene on Jolene’s Story offering the other side of the story.

Not all of the songs are stained with romance however as Dalgleish offers up the delicate Eugene, inspired by an occasion when the band were on tour in Oregon while King summons up the plight of isolated and stricken communities on Two Lane Texaco. The closing Shallow abandons the band and finds the pair harmonising on a delightful song that, despite the earlier tales of loss and abandonment, tells of an undying love.

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My Darling Clementine – Rewriting The Good Book (Of Love)

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4-mdc-waist-up-_-lou-cigarThe course of true love has never run smoothly and never more so than in Country music. Back in the 1920’s The Carter Family were singing of a married woman rocking a cradle and crying in Single Girl, Married Girl before Hank Williams wailed that his son called another man daddy while Jim Reeves was inventing phone sex back in the sixties with He’ll Have To Go. The pinnacle of this war of the sexes was reached with the classic male /female country duos who flourished in the sixties and seventies. Some of them were married, others just business partners but the likes of George and Tammy, Dolly and Porter, Johnny and June (and Bobby Bare with a succession of partners including one album, 1966’s The Game Of Triangles, where he shared two women) fell in and out of love, kissed and made up, divorced and drank all to the delight of the listening public. This public sparring sparked some classic country songs and it was those sounds that My Darling Clementine sought to celebrate when they recorded their first album, How Do You Plead ? in 2011. Married couple Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish, both successful musicians, adopted the persona of a troubled, loving and warring couple on the album and subsequent live shows, Dalgleish led to the stage like a bride, a heart shaped teardrop painted on her cheek.

Their second album, The Reconciliation, was in a similar vein, the pair reinvigorating the genre with wit and a genuine regard although that didn’t stop them from remarking on the subservient role for women that was oft expected back in those days. A successful collaboration with crime writer Mark Billingham found the pair soundtracking his stories about a waitress in a rundown bar on The Other Half which led to a long run of multimedia shows based on the album before they embarked on their third album, Still Testifying, which comes out this week.

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On Still Testifying King and Dalgleish are still the quintessential country duo but they’ve moved on from the pedal steel and string swept weepies of Nashville to add some soul to their country with  horns and Hammond organ moving them closer to Memphis this time. Recalling the reinvigoration of artists such as Elvis and Dusty Springfield who made some of their best music with the Memphis Cats along with the southern soul sounds of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham with even a little bit of Bacharach and David thrown in the album is a fine progression.

On the eve of a major tour supporting the album release we spoke to King and Dalgleish about the album and started off by asking them about this step into the world of country soul.

MWK. Well we didn’t really want to carry on making the same record. When we did the first one we knew what we wanted to do and we really weren’t thinking that in a few years time we’d be up to album number three so it’s evolved somewhat. We’ve kind of stepped away from the classic country duet type of thing and in a way it seemed like a natural progression. It’s kind of strange really that recently a lot of artists are starting to work in this country soul vein, folk like Danny and the Champions Of the World, Emily Barker and Cale Tyson, all their recent records have been kind of country soul releases. It’s a long overlooked style but I’ve been listening to Dan Penn for over 20 years along with Donnie Fritts and Spooner Oldham, the originators, and I thought it was about time we let some of his influence seep into the music. You’ve got to try and keep things fresh, try to do something a little different and creatively it seemed right for us to head off in this direction. 

Although there’s a shift in the music from those classic country duets the themes are pretty much the same, people falling in and out of love and the fall out. The pair of you are still duetting and that’s the essence of the drama in the album I think.

LD. Well I’m particularly partial to the drama. When I’m writing the story tends to be more dramatic but if we stay together (laughs) and continue to write for each other then there’s an inevitability that we’ll write songs about couples. We’ll write about things we know and we’ll never run out of stories whether they grow out of things we’ve experienced or that we might imagine could happen to us or indeed any other couples in love. 

I read that Friday Night At The Tulip Hotel came about when you saw a couple acting somewhat furtively in a car park when you were on tour.

MWK. Yes. That grew from me seeing a couple in a car park and just imagining what was going on with them. Whether any of it is real or not we don’t know of course but we just wrote what we thought was happening with that couple. 

On a couple of the songs you’re referencing or, in the case of Jolene’s Story, answering an earlier song.

MWK. That goes back a bit to No Matter What Tammy Said (I Won’t Stand By Him) (on The Reconciliation) where there was a very poignant, almost protest message. 

LD. I just thought I should write a reply song to Dolly’s kind of in the same way as I wrote that one about Tammy. I just thought that Jolene probably had a story that needed to be told. There are two sides to every story and so I told Jolene’s. There’s no blame or fault here, I think maybe it’s just love and destiny and the way things turn out. 

Talking about both sides of the story on I’m Just a Woman you’re again looking at it from the viewpoint of the “wronged” woman.

LD. Here I wanted to reflect that line in Tammy’s song where she sings, “after all he’s just a man”, to put in a subtle reference against that song. Sometimes I can’t help myself when I’m writing a country song; the feminist in me just can’t keep quiet about that sort of thing. 

Two Lane Texaco isn’t a relationship song but more about faded communities and the loss of the ties that bound them, industries closing down and such. You sing here of the power of radio back then and as such it reminded me thematically of Dave Alvin’s Border Radio.

MWK. It’s a similar tale. The Shreveport tower I mention was one of the first to have that high wattage allowing it to broadcast across the southern states, shows like The Louisiana Hayride and The Grand Ole Opry. But the place I mention in the song, Megawatt Valley,  is actually an area in the north east of England with power stations and such and I just liked the name and it seemed to fit in with the song. It really all harks back to a time when radio was key with everybody listening to it and OK, it’s an American theme but at the same time a lot of small towns across Britain have lost their industries and community. When I was young I listened to the radio a lot more, it’s really a nostalgic song looking back to what maybe was a better time. 

I particularly enjoyed the lyrics on Since I Fell For You which have a lot of lines taken from other songs with a whole middle eight dedicated to songs that have the word walking in them.

MWK. I had written the first two lines and then realised they were actual song titles so I thought it would be kind of quirky and an interesting exercise to make all of the lines in the middle eight be song titles. There were plenty I could have used that feature walking – walking the floor over you, don’t walk away Renee, walk on by … the list goes on- but I settled on the ones you hear so thanks to Jimmy Bland, Ray Price, Helen Shapiro and The Searchers for the loan. On stage I refer to this section of the song, and how we “ran out of words so just used 60’s song titles” After we have played it we sometimes ask the audience how many they recognised? One thing we learned from our recent tour in the USA is that …. Helen Shapiro never had a hit over there!

Two of the songs, Friday Night At the Tulip Hotel and The Embers And The Flames, were on The Other Half album. Why did you rerecord them?

LD. On that album Mark Billingham picked songs from our first two albums that he thought would fit in with his story but we needed some more and so we wrote those two specifically for The Other half with Mark co-writing The Embers and The Flame. And then when we started on Still Testifying we thought that they needed more exposure as they were so new.

Was that because the originals were acoustic and you had the opportunity to add the band arrangements?

MWK. Well all the songs start that way. They’re written on acoustic guitar or piano. Tulip and Embers as you say were acoustic and we thought they could benefit from a fuller arrangement. We didn’t want them to kind of get left on that album so we decided to use them again.

The Embers And The Flame in particular gets the full bells and whistles production with the horns really driving the song along while the guitars and pedal steel give it an almost Flying Burrito Brothers’ feel and it fits right into the country soul aspect of the album. I was wondering if when you were writing the new songs for the album you were consciously trying to fit into a country soul bag?

LD. Well the new ones do lend themselves to more of a country soul approach. You can obviously hear that it’s country soul because of the horns and the organ but at the end of the day the song itself will give you the flavour of where it’s coming from. When we play them live, whether it’s with the seven-piece band or just the two of us this country soul edge will come through. Of course it will sound different but we’ve always been quite passionate about being able to deliver the songs fully just as a duo and we don’t hide behind the band. It’s the songs that dictate the genre more than the dressing up they get on an album or a band gig. 

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The album ends with Shallow which is a more stripped back affair and features your daughter, Mabel, singing.

LD. She’s very talented and becoming quite the multi instrumentalist. She been coming on the road with us for years and she knows all our songs and now she’s of an age where we thought we could put her to work! It’s not just us saying, “oh it would be nice to have our daughter on the record“, she has something to contribute and it was actually our producer, Neil Brockbank who said, “I think we should have Mabel on this” and afterwards I thanked him for being so nice to her he said, “I wasn’t doing it to be nice. She was the perfect fit for the song”. 

Well he did a great job with the production, the band sound great.

MWK. Neil’s got a great deal of experience and he and the band have worked with people like Elvis Costello and Van Morrison so they have a good understanding of soul and country. We had planned to record some of the album in America but that fell through but I don’t really think it matters if its Tooting or Tennessee as long as you can get that feel. It is much more of a mixed bag than the other records and hopefully that adds to the interest. We’re really proud of it and we’re really looking forward to going out on tour with the band. 

Finally can I say that the album packaging is excellent. The pictures of the pair of you are really evocative with something of a southern gothic touch and the photos of the religious items inside the cover are kind of spooky.

MWK. The photographs of us were taken by a well-known Dutch photographer, Marco Bakker. We always pride ourselves on the packaging of the albums. In these days of downloads the nicer and more tangible something is to hold and look at is important, it’s part of the creative element to making a record. As for the pictures inside the sleeve, one night we played in The Hague and the promoter put us up in what basically was a monastery. It was kind of scary really, long corridors full of dusty old religious iconography so I ran around taking pictures of it and we decided to use some of them inside the album cover as it kind of fits in with the whole Testifying gospel vibe we were looking for.

Still Testifying is released on June 2nd and My Darling Clementine tour through June and July, all dates here

Website

Photography by Marco Bakker

Neil Brockbank:  Just hours after this interview was published it was announced that producer Neil Brockbank had died. The band and many others are devastated by this news and Michael Weston King paid tribute to Neil with some touching words on his Facebook page. He produced numerous albums for many artists but is probably best known for his lengthy body of work with Nick Lowe. Our condolences to his family and his many friends.

My Darling Clementine with Mark Billingham. The Other Half. CCA, Glasgow 8th September 2016

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The Other Half is a collaboration between star-crossed lovers’ country duet My Darling Clementine (Lou Dalgleish and Michael Weston King) and crime writer Mark Billingham that exists as an album and a stage show incorporating spoken word, forlorn country songs and, on stage, an evocative media presentation. King and Dalgleish as My Darling Clementine had already delivered two delicious albums of fretful and quarrelsome duets, a homage of sorts to the troubled lifestyles of several venerated country duets (the ghosts of George Jones and Tammy Wynette looming large) before a mutual friend suggested they work with the author. Already a fan of the band and of the genre (Billingham had given his cop antihero, Tom Thorne a “love of country music both alt and cheesy”) they crafted The Other Half.  The story line centres around a waitress in a dusty Memphis bar and the patrons she serves, their back stories illuminated by songs from My Darling Clementine’s albums along with two new bespoke songs. The album was extremely well received and the stage show has been performed on a regular basis over the past 18 months however, as Weston King admitted tonight, rarely in Scotland. An appearance at the Aye Write Festival and a sold out run of shows at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe being the only opportunities north of the border to soak up this tear stained slice of Memphis life before the announcement of two shows during this run (in Glasgow and Stirling), tonight’s show promoted by Sounds In The Suburbs.

It was well worth the wait. Reading reviews of previous shows one kind of knew what to expect, a short set from My Darling Clementine before the disc was reprised, Billingham reading his vignettes, the band playing the songs in between, as on the album. However those reviews hadn’t prepared one for the classy interaction, the verve with which the songs and stories interacted, Billingham’s animated and playful reading, his southern accents at the very least interesting, the dark humour accentuated, the characters given life. As he spoke Dalgleish and Weston King sat stage right in the half light of a sorry standard lampshade, sipping from a bottle of bourbon (or perhaps weak tea) and, as expected, strode forward at their cue points to perform. However there were moments within the monologues when guitar was strummed or keyboard stroked behind Billingham’s podium adding colour to the dramatic effect. Behind the trio monochrome images set the scene recalling the world of Robert Frank’s America while a glitter ball was used to excellent effect as Marcia, the waitress recalled her glory days as a Vegas showgirl.

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As for the songs. Well, Dalgleish and Weston King have honed their act over the years, she in polyester and clutching a plastic purse, he besuited in ill matched jacket and trousers, squabbling and making up over the course of some excellent songs which accurately capture the sob stories so beloved by the record buying American salt of the earth folk back in the days. Skilfully woven into the narrative they illustrate Marcia’s customers’ stories, her memories and imaginations but they also stand alone, a nice example tonight on the tear jerkin waltz of No Heart In This Heartache with Weston King  pleading  an off mic “no” followed by a rueful shake of the head from Dalgleish,  playing the part so well. For those who know the album there were no surprises, the narrative and songs all in place but the conjunction of Donna’s story and the song No Matter What Tammy Said was a powerful indictment of domestic abuse. And while we’re not giving away the end here there was a fine upward curve with Going Back To Memphis a joyous beacon amongst the misery and loneliness while As Precious As The Flame cemented the joys of growing old together.

Sad stories and sad songs but a jubilant celebration of the genre all wrapped up in a tear stained package topped and tailed by some songs outwith the album. My Darling Clementine opened with three songs including a new one, Since I Fell For You and closed with a selection of songs they imagined would have played on the jukebox in Marcia’s bar. Cue Hank Williams and George Jones numbers (Good Year For The Roses, That’s All It Took and Your Cheatin’ Heart), all brilliantly delivered before Billingham came back onstage, guitar in hand for the closing rendition of Ray Price’s Heartaches By The Number.

There’s one more chance to catch this show in Stirling tonight while My Darling Clementine play Aberdeen on Sunday. All dates here

 

 

 

 

 

My Darling Clementine Tour and Album news

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Blabber’n’Smoke is mighty pleased to report that My Darling Clementine (Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish) are returning to Scotland in September, their first dates here since their successful stint at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe where they performed their Americana mystery tale, The Other Half with crime writer Mark Billingham. An intriguing blend of Billingham’s narratives about characters whose lives revolve around a small time bar in a small time town and My Darling Clementine’s songs the show and accompanying album (review here) were acclaimed and the trio performed the show across the UK until the end of last year. While plans are afoot for their next album My Darling Clementine are playing six dates in Scotland starting in Edinburgh on 6th September and two of the shows (Glasgow and Stirling) will feature Billingham as they again perform The Other Half. You can  read about the genesis of this multi media show in this interview from last year.

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On the recording front My Darling Clementine confirm that they are recording their next album which will be one step removed from the classic country duet style that informed their debut How Do You Plead? and its follow up, The Reconciliation. There were hints of a more Memphis based sound on some of the songs on the latter and on the new album, provisionally entitled The 3rd and Final Testament, the pedal steel and fiddle give way to horns and funky guitar, more Delaney & Bonnie than George & Tammy apparently. With a due date of March 2017 we can only patiently await the release but in the meantime the tour offers the opportunity to see the pair who have, according to Country Music People,  recorded the “greatest UK country record ever made”

My Darling Clementine

The Other Half

Mark Billingham