Getting here!

Getting to the start of your holiday would never be a blog but getting to New Zealand requires about 23 hours in the air and, in my case, incarceration in a space so small that retrieving anything off the floor would defy the flexibility of a small chimpanzee. It was hard going and glancing at the screen to find that you still had another nine hours to go before reaching Auckland, after leaving Dubai seven hours ago, is not uplifting. I was sat on the second row behind a bulkhead on the second flight. Isn’t that where they seat young children so they can be plonked in a bassinet on a shelf I hear you all ask? Yes. So would a toddler, unaware that he was confined in a ridiculous small space, clamped to his parents for what must feel like most of his childhood not wail and complain? Yes. However, after a crash course in intensive crying and toddler tantrums through our recently becoming grandparents I coped well as I cranked up the volume on the inflight entertainment.

After being denied boarding by Qatar Airways in 2024, due to a worn passport, I obviously avoided them and selected Emirates. Apart from the route, times and cost the other thing to obsess about was the weight allowance. It was 30kg in the hold and a strict 7kg cabin bag. This would be surely enough for any tourist but remember I’m packing a bicycle and enough luggage and kit to sustain a camping trip. For literally weeks I weighed things and moved them around the bags and got to damn near 30kg for the hold. Turning up to Check-In at Manchester airport they asked me the weight, as well as had I deflated my tyres! They didn’t weigh the box or the other bag with 6kg in it. So much for all that anxious planning. On the 7kg cabin bag they never even looked at or weighed my bag as I boarded. At the Gate they’re handling a few hundred people and the last thing they’re thinking about is your hand luggage. Obviously we’re all scarred by Ryanair whose pernicious luggage policy is all about making a few extra €’s.

Last time at Auckland we’d queued for a long time at Security and read the signs that told you about their bio security priorities in NZ. On this basis I’d decided to declare what meagre provisions I’d brought. So when I wheeled through my big bike box I got asked what food I’d brought? I said some gels and packets of porridge. ‘No meat or honey etc.?’ Well, we’ve all seen these TV fly on the wall programmes where someone has their bag opened to find half a horse’s head (only the edible part of course) and pickled chicken entrails accompanied by a weak explanation that they didn’t know there were restrictions on animal body parts as they feigned to have a tenuous understanding of English! Anyway they scanned my bags and I was free to proceed to the car rental.

If you’d ask me what car would I have no plan to buy it’d be an EV: I have range anxiety and never anything Chinese. I won’t be helping the Chinese Communist Party unload subsidised cars on the West as they destroy car makers in their march to global hegemony. So, of course, I discovered I’d hired a Chinese EV. A Geely, this manufacturer own Volvo as well. Anyway as I shuffled along slowly in heavy traffic it repeatedly told me to concentrate on the road and seemed to be watching me (I later found out it was with a camera on the steering column.) I’d like to think I was occupying a person sat in a bunker in Beijing watching an elderly man seemingly juggling a water bottle, peering at his Sat Nav and singing loudly to The Mothers Of Invention whilst he ruminated on how the British ever had an empire if this was a specimen of their talent pool.

Anyway I got to the hotel but couldn’t work out how to switch the car off. So I relied on the well known, fail safe, strategy of opening the car door hoping this would trip something. It did and surprisingly no warning came up on the dashboard telling me that bailing out at speed was injurious to my well being. This all made me think he’d given up on me and gone for lunch.

So for Friday 13th things had gone well and next it was the challenging project of Tony vs. jet lag. I worried this would play out over several days.

The car park was full at the Newbald Village Hall or as the branding would have it, Newbald Live. The venue has had a considerable makeover since I last visited and it now provides a great room for visiting artists to play. There was a full house to see the latest Americana/Country act booked for the delectation of the folk from East Yorkshire. Richey is no stranger to our shores and it’s a treat to find her out in the country at lesser stops to play her selection of songs to new and old audiences. Her catalogue is one of the strongest I know and it has been consistent over nearly 30 years of recording. She played a selection of songs from her 1995 debut Kim Richey through to her 2024 release Every New Beginning.

The voice is still a tour de force that’s a beautiful instrument. To accompany herself she played chords on an acoustic guitar although the ‘pin drop’ numbers were when she put down her guitar and left the playing to her accompanist, Luke Brighty, on a restrained electric guitar. Take The Cake, off her last album, was one such song along with Girl In A Car all the way back from 2002. Between the songs stories came thick and fast, she looked back on her early years with amusing self-deprecation. She was asked by her record label about her ideas for a title for her debut LP? Without missing a beat she volunteered ‘Child Of The Wild Blue Yonder’. They heard her out and then called it Kim Richey! Over her long career she’s mixed with many bright lights in the Americana/Country firmament but she only name dropped Aaron Lee Tasjan, a neighbour in East Nashville who’s worked and toured with her. Joy Rider was one such collaboration where she sings about the childlike curiosity of a young boy who explores the world on his noisy motorbike.

The hits or singles were ticked off as she played Those Words We Said, Come Around and  The Way It Never Was. Then it was time to play her last two songs and quickly promote her merch including tea towels (that she’d spent a lot of time lugging around various gigs with little success!) These songs were the fabulous Chapel Avenue and then a singalong I’m Alright. We all shuffled into the dark chilly Yorkshire night with a glow after a very special evening.

Jay Buchanan – Weapons Of Beauty

Buchanan is the vocalist with, rockers, Rival Sons. This outfit has been Grammy nominated in the rock category and Buchanan’s sonorous yet powerful tones are a key reason. For those unfamiliar with his vocals David Gray has a similar attractive voice in timbre and resonance (but not possessing Buchanan’s 747 roar when he unleashes it.) After Buchanan sojourned in the Mojave Desert to find tranquility and space to pen a solo album he turned to Cobb to produce and craft this debut. Cobb has produced several Rival Sons releases. 

The excellent and poignant ballad, Caroline, opens the album and is an introduction to his powerful story about loss, grief and reflection (about her illness and health.) Buchanan says the emotions could be applied to other scenarios; the video is well worth a look. High and Lonesome, is a co-write with Cobb and this languorous bluesy waltz allows you to wallow in his beautiful achy tones. Sway, written to his wife, is an intimate ballad that has him swoop and soar in expressing his love. With a floaty John McVie type bass line Great Divide comes across as less pensive and earnest albeit about an ending relationship.

Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love gets a soulful rendition sounding like one of Buchanan’s heroes, Van Morrison. Here the vibe and tune overtakes the words as the take away. Cobb has deployed many arrangements throughout including strings and it’s this variety that complements the voice that repeatedly dazzles. Buchanan’s articulate profundity comes to the fore on Weapons of Beauty – “Give me the songs to sing in the fight / these weapons of beauty will destroy the night / it’s been so long. Give me the words / to say what I feel / I could speak this dream, for to make it real…”As an overall sound it’s not a long way from The Red Stray Clays with its pace, lyrical ruminations and sound. The Clays’ Brandon Coleman sings his songs like he’s holding court and Buchanan similarly dominates. On this latter point it can’t be a coincidence that Cobb has produced both. This is a glorious release 

Tylor & The Train Robbers – Live

Tylor Ketchum’s country rock band is based in Boise, Idaho up toward the Canadian border. It’s around here that the band tours bringing their tight and pulsating rhythms to some original lyrics. For those unfamiliar with their sound then The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and a little Tom Petty comes to mind. If you like your rock guitars then fill your boots. One of my eternal regrets after becoming aware of their catalogue was finding that I was two weeks early to a gig according to a bill poster I saw in Jackson, Wyoming. For all that this live recording compensates as the band work through 23 songs mainly from their four studio long player releases.

The hiring of Adam Odor to produce is a masterstroke. Odor’s been behind the desk on the Silverada and Mike & The Moonpies releases. All those releases ‘sing’ and, not least, because Odor finds the instruments behind the vocalist and promotes them into a palpitating rhythm with pedal steel and lead guitar always doing something interesting. The band have some killer cuts including The Of Ballad Black Jack Ketchum, a seven minute epic about a relative from the 1800s who was hung after a career of robbing banks and trains. This is followed by the title of their 2021 album Non-Typical Find, where a sun’s glint off a rib cage draws, way down in a valley, a walker to find a human skeleton and the tragic story of the woman’s demise after some perilous and then fatal hitchhiking.

The band keep it interesting with changes in pace between songs and I Got You starts with harmonica and some picking by Antonio Vazquez to a rhythm where you could imagine the audience dancing. Sat on a galloping drum beat Ketchum’s nasal tones advise that he and ‘his baby’ are Good At Bad News with sparkling pedal steel from Rider Soran that appears like shards of sunlight appearing between trees as you pass by them at speed. Hum Of The Road, another album title track enjoys harmonies on the chorus as Ketchum’s brothers, Tommy Bushman, on drums and Jason Ketchum on bass propel from the back of the stage. There are a handful of covers and the most attractive is Feel A Whole Lot Better from The Byrds where Soran and Vazquez exchange licks and the brothers lean in to provide harmonies behind Ketchum.

This is a long album with maybe too many tracks but it’s a reward for a loyal following who long wanted the live experience on record; for me it was time well spent.

Courtney Marie Andrews – Valentine

Andrews’ current, considerable, stature has been achieved through consistent quality records since her 2016 breakthrough, Honest Life. Parallels with early Joni Mitchell may seem too easy to conjure up but she has a dream of a voice that draws you in like a siren, a considerable talent on guitar and piano, sophisticated arrangements and the regular mining of her own personal life for lyrics. Inspiration for these songs came from relationships and the stress of seeing someone close struggle with ill health. These experiences took her to a plight, she calls, limerence: a mental state of being madly in love where reciprocity is uncertain and from here all sorts of insecurities, mood swings and emotions kick in. To deal with such turbulence, she says, the last year has been one of a lot of writing, hiking and travel.

With brutal honesty she wades into a selection of intimate lyrics that often reflect an observant and defiant mindset yet with compassion and support – “Close the curtain, say your confession / My lips are sealed at your discretion / It’s a scary world full of cons and clowns / A lot of bad people who will tear you down / Not me, no way”. The haunting Cons & Clowns comes replete with angelic harmonising, muffled snares, chiming piano chords and flute. Outsider with its plucked guitar chords and resonating bass sits on a foundation of sweet extended strings. Here Andrews is on the defensive seeking a place where she won’t be hurt “as it’s too painful looking in”. Little Picture of a Butterfly explores the helplessness of things we can’t control, again with relationships to the fore – “Guess your love is not a cure / Guess I should’ve known better / Guess I’m throwing out that sweater / After all that time went by / All I get is a butterfly”. With her voice to the fore we have fragments of jazz flute before a striding insistent beat grows and Andrews starts to become assertive of where she’s now headed after the heartbreak.

With, her producer and contributing musician, Bernhardt she’s created interesting arrangements and varied instrumentation that give up more on each listen. I find her voice compelling and capable of making me absorb all her heartfelt sentiments. I think this may be my favourite of hers to date.

Nicki Bluhm – Rancho Deluxe

This troubadour has released 10 songs that burst with tunes, sumptuous vocals and a variety of arrangements that defy them being easily placed in a genre. I’d say it’s a singer songwriter dalliance with lots of bright pop sensibilities. Bluhm says the recording “is a reflection of where I am at now in my life, which is contentment, a really fun place to be.” This assessment comes after many wearying years touring but now, she’s less peripatetic; this was recorded live in five days at her ranch just north of Nashville, hence the album title.

The timeless song selection might have graced a Linda Rondstadt album where a melody and a variety of styles were typical. Bay Laurel Leaves sits on shimmering strings with an earworm of a tune and talks of her current settled blissful state in Tennessee after earlier years in California. Long Time To Make Old Friends, a cover, is a modern upbeat blues redolent of Randy Newman, Cumberland Banks is an easy rolling country song with acoustic instruments inspired by her considerable touring with The Infamous Stringdusters. Falling Out Of Dreams is late period Fleetwood Mac in its bright rhythm and Stevie Nicks vocal with harmonies. Taking Chances is personal: an acoustic rhythm has her relating her time on the road and missing her own bed and friends at home. The melody grabs your attention and the chorus with lush harmonies make this a highlight.

Each song is a delight here and the delivery, arrangements are vibrant and energetic. Bluhm has a siren of a warm pleasing voice that draws you in with its personality, occasional sense of fun and range. Most of the song writes are a collaboration as is the playing throughout. She found the whole recording experience a joy and this vibe spills out into the music. A special mention must go to her partner, producer and bass player Noah Wilson who has done a terrific job.

Alison Brown and Steve Martin – Safe, Sensible and Sane

Banjo players, Brown and Martin, were enjoying playing and composing some songs and eventually had enough to make an album. They’d earlier worked together and had success with a couple of singles. The album’s an uplifting and tuneful affair expertly played and bursting with guest artists including Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, The Indigo Girls, Jason Mraz and Tim O’Brien. If the guest list is impressive then the backing musicians are top drawer; Stuart Duncan on fiddle lights up all the tracks as the rhythm thumps along underpinned by Todd Phillips’ bass.

Bluegrass is pure folk in its origins and there’s plenty of that here but Michael is pop with vocals from Aiofe O’Donovan and Sara Jarosz delivering a sweet and weaving duet. A video of the Brown and Martin playing at the famous Los Angeles Troubadour venue with Jackson Browne starts with an exchange that plays on their ages. Martin on entry turns to Browne and says “We have memories here, don’t we Jackson?”, Jackson, nonplussed replies “I don’t remember anything”. Turning to go Martin responds “Neither do I”. Martin, probably more widely known as a comedy actor, is 80 years old and Browne’s 77! Browne takes the vocal and sings of his life and his collection of a ‘box of memories’. A charming tale as Duncan’s wistful fiddle adds melancholy.

The single Bluegrass Radio sets off at a breathless lick and Martin humorously advises the incredulous listener about his improbable chart success in various States. Another single, 5 Days Out, 2 Days Back, with Tim O’Brien tells of life on the road as a musician where a young daughter waits patiently for his return. There’s also some near straight country on Wall Guitar (Since You said Goodbye), here Vince Gill wistfully sings of a departing lover and his solace with a guitar (off the wall.) The fiddle weaves some traditional country patterns if you had any doubts about the genre. Throughout the lyrics are contemporary with an absence the usual bluegrass ingredients; witches, murders and bodies dropped into deep wells. Nonetheless ancient celtic roots are never far away and the sweetest instrumental jam is between the ensemble and our own McGoldrick, McDrever and Doyle captivate with Evening Star.

I just felt an uncomplicated joy listening to this as it’s a consistent and beautiful excursion with bright fireworks of melodies all infused with a generally upbeat and affectionate vibe.

(Anna and I have enjoyed taking in concerts when in the USA. The vibe is different and it’s often easier to see American acts that seldom appear in the UK. Ashley McBryde is a Grammy winner and major Country music artist, very much at the top of her game at the moment. We last saw her at Leeds University: this was a very different setting and certainly more of a party.)

McBryde continued her US nationwide tour after taking 30 days off to write and rehearse new songs. Despite this creative pause she said she’d missed being in front of a live audience. The rowdy folk of Helotes, a small suburb of San Antonio, and further afield made it clear they’d also missed her. It’s been an interesting month for her in other ways as her alma mater, Arkansas State University, awarded her an honorary doctorate in music which she collects in May. Dr. McBryde has an impressive ring to it.

Despite the time away to create new music McBryde worked her way through an existing catalogue bar one intriguing Don Henley cover, The Boys of Summer. This song felt so right on a sweltering evening where outdoors we sat in 27° and swigged our cold beer as everyone joined in the chorus. It’s plain to see she is loved: perfectly natural with the audience, comfortable with a band that you’d call her family and beaming throughout often interspersed with deprecating jokes and a genuine appreciation for us all turning out.

She covered songs from all her recent albums including the collaborative Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville. From this album we got the comical Brenda Put Your Bra On and on cue McBryde donned a special Texas flag variant that went down a storm. 

The band is tight and over and above the guitars, drums and bass Wes Dorethy on fiddle and keys added some different colour and texture to the sound. Another stand out was the superb lead guitar of Matt Helmkamp. Inevitably, when individually introduced, the biggest cheer went up for the bassist, Caleb Hooper, a fellow Texan. As you might imagine Texans are proud of their State and its fellow countrymen. Dorethy, with his violin, stepped up to the front of the stage and McBryde introduced her latest hit, Ain’t Enough Cowboy Songs, by saying that she’d thought it was too country for radio (!) and nearly didn’t bother to release it as a single but lo and behold it had surprised and delighted her and her record label with massive streaming figures. Maybe this country music has a future? 

There were the usual up tempo songs such as Rattlesnake Preacher, The Devil I Know, El Dorado, First Thing I Reach For and Whiskey and Country Music with some sonorous B3 organ. However, when the band took a brief break she played Girl Goin’ Nowhere: a true epiphany. When she got to the lyric “I hear the crowd / I look around / And I can’t find one empty chair” the crowd exploded. Pure magic. The slower songs seemed intimate and sentimental in this setting especially A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega, Light On In The Kitchen and Sparrow. This gem is a long glance homewards with affection and gratitude to her parents and where her roots are firmly planted.

After 90 minutes the set was completed with Tired of Being Happy. You couldn’t disagree with her assessment of “where would country music be without a cheating song?” The open air venue was in a residential area and a 10.30pm finish may have been mandated and so no encore. It was a memorable and special experience and we trooped out past the $40 tour T shirts to Cliff Richard’s Devil Woman. From here we girded our loins to face the hectic San Antonio traffic back into the city.

The nave was brightly lit in the 19^th century East Yorkshire church where the duo delivered a beautiful set of 16 songs of American roots music dipping into country, folk and swing jazz. Ashley Campbell, the daughter of Glen Campbell, and Thor Jensen have been a duo since 2021. My awareness of Campbell came via a documentary (Glen Campbell:I’ll Be Me) about her father’s later life and his developing Alzheimer’s. It was an emotional roller coaster for those around him, not least of the joys, yet trials, of his touring with a failing memory. My other recollection of her  came when she released 2020’s Something Lovely, a tuneful country folk release that was quite contemporary. Her sound, now, is very much of a talented acoustic guitar and banjo player singing less contemporary but more folk roots music. Jensen, in many ways her foil on the night, is a virtuoso guitarist with an attractive tenor who’s been immersed in the New York jazz scene yet plays several genres. Instrumentally they complement each other and their easy humour was a pleasure to hear as they talked about Yorkshire, the USA and Northern Ireland.

The latter place is where they recorded their debut album Turtle Cottage. It’s from here that most of the songs played on the night come from. Jensen’s slightly jaw dropping talent comes in his guitar playing. When not playing chords he picks with outstanding dexterity and subtlety; you can imagine him in full flight playing Django Reinhardt gypsy jazz. Turtle Cottage is just the pair of them playing and so the replication is complete here. Campbell’s voice is light, warm and intimate and the night starts with A Song By Vampires For Vampires that’s surprisingly a love song (!)

Two instrumentals are included that add to their credentials as great players (Edge Of The World and Exit Zero) but the whole set is usually the intertwining voices usually replete with harmonies. Perfectly Alright is a highlight of this. Goodbye Cowboy is the nearest we get to 60s country with some captivating Latin guitar picking that documents a sad parting. The audience of over 100, who’ve enjoyed the church having quite regular eclectic concerts including Bernard Butler, make an audible sigh of pleasure as Campbell starts to pick the opening notes of Gentle On My Mind. Whether said or not it seems a tribute to her father. Tank and Babe is an energetic romp about a relationship that failed despite the best of intentions. It has a Joni Mitchell Raised on Robbery vibe of breathless levity and neat couplets telling of the couples’ shortcomings.

Asking the audience, for the encore, whether they wanted a Tom Waits or Willie Nelson cover was only going to get one answer wasn’t it? Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain closes the evening and we shuffle out into the dark and dank evening warmed and having been entertained in the presence of this accomplished pair.