That the Railway Inn in Winchester has become a hotbed of Americana is due, in the main, to the sterling efforts of promoters, SC4m.co.uk, AKA the husband and wife team of Oliver and Birgit Gray. Wind the clock back to May 2003 and, in Oliver’s own words, “We started off booking Peter Bruntnell, partly because he’s a mate and partly because he’s a crazed genius.” Since that seminal moment, Mr Bruntnell has reappeared at the Railway on umpteen occasions and it would seem, based on the packed room, that the good folk of Hampshire are still lapping him up. Continue reading “Peter Bruntnell + Sophia Marshall, Railway Inn, Winchester, 12th September 2019”
Appropriately enough, ‘Ol’ 55′ was playing on the intro’ tape as John Paul White prepared to take the the stage at a near- full Islington Assembly Hall, unusually set in an all seated configuration. ‘The Hurting Kind‘, the new album by White, is very much in the same frame as the Tom Waits classic -big emotions and big melodies. It’s an album that suggests that John Paul White has shrugged off some of the post Civil Wars angst of his previous album ‘Beulah‘. 
The faded western cantina chic of Omerea was the perfect backdrop for tonight’s opening act – and later Dylan LeBlanc’s band – The Pollies, a four piece of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. They hail out of Muscle Shoals and look the part of rural Alabamans – although when guitarist and singer Jay Burgess refers to the band as, “Rednecks, that’s what we are,” a correcting holler from the stage rear interjects a preference for “Southern Gentlemen”. 
