Fishcakes, Mousse, Shirts and Tilston
Otterton Mill is a café/restaurant venue that has an oak-beam ceiling charm, and the audience at last night’s Steve Tilston
intimate gig added a particular genteel, OAP feel: most [if not all, me being
the odd one out] had attended first to have a meal, and the aroma of hake fiscake
was still rife when I turned up, though by that stage many were eating their
delicate mousse desserts or drinking coffee. The men were - as with the majority
of gigs I attend these days of bands and/or singers I liked back in the day -
either greying or balding [or had already arrived] and wore an array of
colourful shirts stereotypically Hawaiian, Lee Perry Polo or check/plaid [ah,
that’s me then…..]. Tilston played two 45 minutes sets, and to complete my
portrait of the audience I will just point at that during the interval most had
more coffee and twee desserts whilst I had a strong cider [rock’n’roll!], and
the guy sitting next to me did the crossword he had torn from a newspaper and
brought along in his trousers pocket. And I will also mention his kind wife had earlier
before the start offered me some dark chocolate she had brought along in a
Tupperware sandwich box.
Steve Tilston is one of the genuinely great English
singer/songwriters, and he was/is friends with, amongst others famously of the
early 70s, Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch and Wizz Jones, the latter whom influenced
him in his early days and when he played at Les Cousins in London [and when Steve
asked last night’s audience if anyone there knew the club there was a knowing
assent from a few so perhaps my shirts and desserts caricature isn’t entirely
fair]. Tilston doesn’t appear to carry the wider acclaim/knowing of his
contemporaries just mentioned, and indeed my crossworder and darkchocolater
didn’t seem to know much about him either, though had seen him at the Mill
before. However, this might change as more people see the Al Pacino film Danny Collins based loosely on an
incident in Steve Tilston’s life: you can see a video of Steve meeting Al here – Pacino looking like an airbomb has just exploded in his face – and more on
the pertinent background story with a review of one of Tilston’s great early
albums by me here.
Tilston’s guitar playing is as delicate to virtuoso as ever,
and his singing voice is wonderful: folksy when needed, with the attendant
resonance that makes it generic, and also quite beautiful with an occasional
warble that I so like on his two earliest albums. He opened with his Fairport
Convention song [written for them] Rocky
Road, with its quick guitar, and then an upbeat Weeping Willow Replanted with its bluesy undertones, a reworking of
Weeping Willow by Blind Boy Fuller.
He also played the beautiful Fisher Lad
of Whitby and the reflective The Road
When I Was Young which I am sure had many in the audience in addition to me
feeling likewise and rueful. It is a familiar set, so I won’t name others from
this expectation, and Tilston tells a set narrative too, for example recounting
when at his daughter’s wedding he didn’t play the requested Jacaranda, but instead – as we discover
when he starts to play – Let’s Face the
Music and Dance, at which point the audience last night [perhaps now
fulfilling the caricature] all joined in.
Tilston also played a significant selection from his
imminent new album Truth, including another
sweetly nostalgic song Grass Days
recalling his early musical career and outlook, the plaintive The Way it Was recalling the loss of a
dear friend and musician, a wonderful tribute to Nick Drake The Riverman Has Gone written like and played in Drake's inimitable sound/style, and Yo Me Voy
which as a recent song reminded me of Tilston's earliest work in the beautiful melody
and the distinctive, light warble in his fine vocal, this song as well as
others played on his 10 string acoustic guitar. I will review this album later.
No comments:
Post a Comment