A mix of, as the title says, old, new and songs from the 2022 Crescent Theatre show by The Gerry Colvin Band (Jerome Davies, Trish Power, Lyndon Webb and Marion Fleetwood) and The Gerry Colvin Big Folk Orchestra, it’s a new one that gets the ball rolling with ‘Click Club Chair’, a samba tinged la la la-ing refrain number about meeting his wife to be at the legendary Birmingham live venue (“She was standing on a chair waving her arms in the air/Caterwauling to her favourite song”).
Premiered live back in 2022, that’s followed by the first recording of the melancholic circular guitar chiming ‘The Forgotten Man’, a song about a singer “playing in his forgotten band/In a forgotten bar off, off Broadway” who faded from the spotlight when his style fell out of fashion (“They didn’t want those protest tunes no more/His songs were mirrors and they didn’t like what they saw”).
Striking an associated note, another new one, with dobro, twangy guitar break, fiddle and mandolin, inspired by a comment from a musician he met in America, ‘I’m A Songwriter Me’ is a wryly cynical take on the contemporary folk process (“Never put a sheep back into a pen/Haven’t used a pen since I don’t know when/Coz I cut and paste my lyrics on the ole P.C.”), being creatively stumped (“when I find my head on the writer’s block and the axe just laughs at me/I just call up old Cecil Sharp and I plunder history/If it’s good enough for them its good enough for me”) and looking for that elusive hook (“A rhyme for angry a Novello award”). The pinnacle of success achieved with “playing my songs on the BBC Radio Hebrides”.
Kicking up the tempo, the accordion and fiddle-propelling five-minute ‘A Folk Melody’ with its musically tumbling narrative of the genre’s journey is another brand new song, a celebration of the genre (“That’s where it started a whittled bone/Tooting along to the cawing song of a murder of crows/And there was the kidskin over a hollowed stump…it’s in that soul it started rock and roll/It’s the Cotton Club wrapped in grime it’s the fire in coal/It is the White Horse on every breaking new wave/It’s the history of all country it’s the world’s band-aid/It’s the parent who endures distain from their little ones/But knows eventually they’ll see the power of Folk song/It’s a Mozartian lullaby sang to every new-born child/The tears of slavery and liberty”).
Also new is breezy shuffling, jazz-tinged ‘Inconsiderate Man’ with an acoustic solo from Lyndon and typically sharp Colvin lyrics about self-protecting misanthropy (“Inconsideration is my first and last and middle name/Ask anyone who knows me they will say the same/But it saves me from the pain that I don’t want to go through again”).
The final new number, set to a slight marching beat with mandolin trills and cornet, while the word title pun rather stretches grammatical accuracy, ‘War Feats’ is a clever metaphorical anti-war protest number about a soldier who loses five ‘toes’ comrades in a battle he was too scared to join (“I see their faces in my sleep I hear them a calling out to me/But I cowered in the mud pretending I could do no good…They called me the lucky one came home to crowd and pipe and drum/But would give a Kaiser’s wage to go back to that sombre day/And climb out of that long grave trench walk towards the barbed wired fence/Call ‘let those five toes alone’ Instead I hid and thought of home”).
One of the oldest songs, dating from the Colvin Quarmby ‘CQV’ album, the jaunty countrified social commentary ‘Crumbling Country Stand’, about the ordinary working man upon whom the foundations are built, gets a new treatment with the band line but retaining mentions of Ikea, Sky Sports, Colonel Gaddaffi and Tony Blair while the final three are all culled from the Crescent Theatre spectacular. Originally featured on ‘Jazz Tales Of Country Folk’, the bitter post-break-up ‘I Killed A Flower For You Today’ gets a rework with the sparse, moody piano and upright bass-anchored arrangement now featuring brass and rounded out with a soulful closing vocal from Jackie Walters (formerly Jackie Clarke of Asia Blue).
Finally, there’s the fingerpicked acoustic love song delicacy of ‘The Ocean’ and the eight minute plus closing audience-participation rousing ebb and flow rhythmed ‘Leave A Light In The Window’ with its brass and strings and big gospel vocals finale with Walters, Jane Pearl and Jennie Williams. This year marking the 30th anniversary of founding ColvinQuarmby and his first recordings after the demise of Terry & Gerry, it’s clear his consummate genius as writer and vocalist remains undiminished.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.gerrycolvin.co.uk
‘Click Club Chair’ – official video:
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