Written by Mark Whitfield | 22 August 2011

It’s been many years since the Jayhawks played Manchester with Mark Olson as part of the line-up, but few would have imagined back then that the band would sell out to an audience of a thousand in one of the most rammed gigs I’ve been to in the many years of seeing music in the Academy 2.

Mark Olson’s solo support (the oddity of being the support for your own band notwithstanding) seemed to divide the audience in two between those who enjoy Olson’s idiosyncratic vocal style and those who find it too ragged – still, his songs on their own merits are engaging and his delivery is unique if nothing else.  But it has to be said it paled in comparison to that of his band which he’s now reunited with after a 15 year hiatus.  Kicking off with 'Wichita' from the classic 'Hollywood Town Hall' album (according to the Guardian the second most under-rated album of the nineties), it was as if he’d never been away.  Louris and Olson’s harmonies are exquisite in the true sense of the word – Olson can at one and the same time sound completely off key and note perfect with those harmonies – and their trademark complementary vocals sounded astonishingly good in a live setting after all these years.

Ploughing through (and it did feel like ploughing – there wasn’t much banter, although they did come across as genuinely appreciative and almost humbled by the audience response) tracks from the early Jayhawks albums (the ones before Olson parted ways), the band indeed played almost every single track from 'Tomorrow the Green Grass' and there was little evidence (bar one song at the end) of not only any new material but also any of the Olson-less years material, which is a shame, as despite the albums not being as consistent without his presence, there were still some wonderful moments which it would have been interesting, maybe even cathartic, to hear Olson’s take on.

The encore too felt a little low key with an ending which felt sudden and perhaps not as uplifting as it might have been, given the 90 minutes that preceded it.  Still, they’re small gripes in what was otherwise a genuinely great evening of music, proving that the Jayhawks still perhaps have the best years ahead of them.  United as a band again, the Jayhawks are home again.

Written by John Hawes | 14 August 2011

There are plenty of bands who are basically ‘rock’ but with the addition of an acoustic guitar, or a fiddle, or a mandolin can reach out into the realms of folk or country or blues.  All need something to set them apart from the rest; to get them noticed.  Will Miles is no different but rather than relying on a gimmick, or a flashy guitarist or a cover version of a pop artists song he takes a more straight forward approach: he makes every song that he and his band play sound like the best thing that you have ever heard.

Most bands have one track that you like better than anything else they do.  Imagine you were in a crime drama and you were the top detective, or maybe the pathologist.  Imagine your beeper goes just as you are midway through the opera and you have to leave, making your apologies as you step past people (you always sit in the middle of a row)  to get to the crime scene.  When you get there, all dressed up in your tuxedo or ball gown, you must think: “I wish they’d beeped me later so I could have heard the end of the second act”.  With Miles, if you got bleeped in the middle of his show you’d be mighty annoyed.

This is the launch of Miles’ debut album ‘Out From The Shallow Water’ from which the majority of the tracks are taken from and each one is enhanced slightly from its predecessor. ‘Welcome Rains’, with the addition of Carly Frey on fiddle sounds a bit bigger than the opener ‘Shallow Water’.  In turn, ‘Promise of a Man’ is that bit more emphatic than ‘Welcome Rains’.  By the time I've realised that the huge piano led track is actually a cover (Nick Cave’s ‘Mercy Seat’) I've convinced myself that things cannot get better, that at some point this gig has to level out, that Miles will need to coast for a bit; but he doesn't.  ‘Angela’ has the addition of a mandolin to add a subtle change, and by the time of the closing track, ‘Blue Haven’ the band are back down to a five piece.

“It’s not the Rolling Stones” says Miles, “but it is new young music”.  Yes, yes it is.

Written by Paul Villiers | 03 August 2011

Thanks to the largesse of Rich and Sarah at Coventry’s Taylor John’s House (no it’s not really someone’s house – that’s just the name) americanaUK was invited to attend the midlands leg of the current UK and European tour. Full of wide eyed anticipation americanaUK pitched up early in order to catch a few words with the softly spoken but ridiculously talented American and to sample a pre-gig snifter of gin (a good mood setter for the intimate surroundings of this venue).

americanaUK receives an awful lot of music across our metaphorical desk and every so often something lands, usually without warning, that makes you sit up and think “Wow – what is this?”. Such a record was Nathaniel Rateliff’s “In Memory of Loss”.  Released last year it arrived as a fully formed piece, apparently from nowhere and with nothing to suggest it was coming. Naturally this was not entirely the case and as Nathaniel himself explained he had in fact been playing from an early age, initially drumming but picking up a guitar at age fourteen. From there it was case of playing in bands, small time stuff, strumming guitar, the odd gig. He is, when you speak to him, disarmingly normal – a proper ‘bloke’, a family man who has spent his time working (nine years as a truck driver for example) and, one supposes, honing his craft and writing his songs. The record itself is a nuanced piece – the voice obviously is the centre piece but there are a number of subtle touches of instrumentation which lift it way beyond simple singer-songwriter affair. americanaUK was intrigued to see how this would translate to the simple guitar and voice of this unaccompanied gig. We would soon find out.

There were two support acts before the main event – Boat To Row (gently acoustic, three part harmonies, lulling the crowd in) and Coventry’s Lucy Ann Sale, a guitar and piano playing chanteuse trying out some new material tonight with the able support of electric guitarist Andy Whitehead. Let’s hope they make it into a studio soon so they can spread the word via cd. And then it was time for the man himself – the candles on the tables flickered, the audience huddled over their drinks in hushed anticipation, Nathaniel stepped up to the stage. Attired in t-shirt, black jeans and stout boots, the simplicity of the setting beautifully complimenting the aura of the man. Seemingly without the need for a ‘warm-up’ period he launches into two songs which were unfamiliar to us but were, in a sense, vintage Rateliff – with this artist its all about the voice, the space and the feeling. One gets the impression that he could sing nursery rhymes and they would have a ‘murder ballad’ quality to them. From then on its a mixture of the familiar and not so familiar (brilliant solo interpretations of the tunes that make up “In Memory of Loss” -  including a request or two from your correspondent) . The audience, obviously knowing a thing or two about being in the presence of genius, were attentive but warm and enthusiastic in all the right places. This clearly was a live highlight of the year for many. After an hour or so and a couple of encores it was all over. Or it would have been if it hadn’t been for the artist’s willingness to hang about and chat with the audience (and indeed do his own merchandising). Such is the measure of the man. Listen out – this is a name you will be hearing plenty of in the future.

Written by John Hawes | 02 August 2011

The current Dirty Beggars set is not so much a gig of two halves, more a gig of two parts.

First you have the influences; the "sounds like"; the covers.  Unsurprisingly for a band in their early twenties the catalogue of Old Crow Medicine Show gets a good airing.  ‘Raise A Ruckus’ opened their show, ‘Tell It To Me’ came mid set and, joined by all the members of support band The Ely Plains, ‘Wagon Wheel’ was their penultimate song. Add to that Dave Rawlings’ (by way of The Grateful Dead) ‘The Monkey and The Engineer’, Steve Earle’s ‘Hometown Blues’, the standard ‘Truck Drivin’ Man’ and, erm, Beyonce’s ‘Halo’, and you have got a set that would keep most people happy.

However, this selection is really nothing more than filler material.  A band that have only just released their ten track debut album (copies were restricted to a handful of CDR’s as the proper ones were not ready) just don’t have enough material for a set that lasted well over an hour.  It is their own material, either self penned or written for them, that sets them apart from other bands.  Brothers Kieran, Finn and Pete Begbie harmonise that bit closer on ‘Too Tired (To Work Down That Farm Today)’. Mandolin, banjo, guitar and, especially, Pedro Cameron’s fiddle sound so much sweeter when playing tracks like ‘Hey Hey’, ‘Bite The Bullet’ and ‘Underneath The Sky’.  It is playing these tracks when their Scottish roots peep through.

I hope to be able to review the Dirty Beggars again in a year or two when they’ve released another album and the covers are reduced.  Although, I hope they find a way to keep ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ with Finn Begbie’s hypnotic harmonica riff in the set.