Hastings’ finest celebrates his blessed musical life in typically classy fashion.
Jason McNiff is such a regular on these pages that the usual artist background story that accompanies a new album seems surplus to requirements here. Firmly established in Hastings since 2019, his regular Friday Sundowner sessions, with a myriad of guests from around the world, have become the stuff of legend.
For Ten Blue Songs though, it is his Saturday Coffee House Sessions, featuring Matt Armstrong on double bass, alongside local players including Richard Moore (violin) and Bjorn Dahlberg (clarinet) that inspires the album. McNiff’s meticulous guitar work is as present as ever, but the addition of the violin and clarinet in particular adds a significant extra something to those tracks.
Nightshift Blues was inspired by Italo Calvino’s short story, Tale of a Married Couple, set during Italy’s post-war economic boom. McNiff explains, “It’s a very tender story about a husband working nights while the wife works days, and the tiny amount of time they get together. But in the song, I wanted to get inside the man’s head and imagine something darker; an inability to truly possess his wife’s beauty!” With a lengthy intro from that clarinet, the track opens in almost mischievous, playful tone and continues in much the same fashion. McNiff’s immaculate playing combines beautifully throughout, but it is the clarinet that is given full rein here and makes the track an obvious album highlight. Into that category must also be placed Folsom Prison Blues, which makes a similar impression even if the subject matter may be miles away.
It has to be said that McNiff has stressed that, despite the melancholy title and the fact that featured here are two tracks with blues in the title, it is a record of celebration. McNiff describes it as a celebration of the musical life he has spent years trying to build. “I always loved how Woody Allen would play his clarinet every Monday night for 50 years, missing the Oscars, but never missing a show. Now, I have three well-attended nights a week in Hastings, and I never miss a show! This album is evidence of our working life and couldn’t exist without the gigs”.
Whoever I Am sees McNiff channelling his inner Al Stewart and is a track where Moore’s violin comes to prominence. Inspiration here comes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver and their ability to write stories where nothing in particular happens yet they are able to create emotions whilst only presenting the barest facts.
Ten Blue Songs will enhance McNiff’s already firmly established reputation as a singer/songwriter of renown and will ensure that a significant chunk of the population will continue to cast an envious eye at those Sussex residents who have such easy and regular access to such a fine artist. A reminder, though, that McNiff will venture outside his Sussex confines to feature in our Americana 25 celebrations in Liverpool in November.
