I describe myself as a live music junkie – I can never get enough – and the particular joys for me include favourite artists, much loved venues, and of course new artists and new venues. The start of the week found me in the gods at the O2, Greenwich, for Radiohead, and then the following night a few stops up and east on the Jubilee line to a new venue for myself, the Cart and Horses, at Stratford. The pub – now with a basement live music venue – turns out to be the birthplace of Iron Maiden, being the band’s first home, where they apparently played weekly gigs during their early years from 1976 to 1978.
The heavy metal heritage turns out to be surprisingly apt for this top notch americana double headline show, featuring Hannah Aldridge and Jason Charles Miller. The show is the last night of an extensive tour, starting in early October in Spain, and taking in a series of band shows, in the UK, which will form the basis of a live Aldridge album for release next year.
Aldridge opens the evening, having alternated opening with Miller on their dates, with a fine acoustic rendition of ‘Aftermath’, from her second album, “Gold Rush”. Dressed from head to foot in black, Aldridge fits her self-described “dark country“ genre, telling us later that she is signed to a Swedish metal label. From the get go Aldridge further cements her reputation as a formidable live performer, owning the stage. She follows this with ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-aged Man’ (co-written with Lahlan Bryan and Damien Cafarella), from her 2023 release “Dream Of America”, opening with a classic Aldridge line “Is that a black widow spider or a skinny young blonde that is waiting for you down by the nail salon?“ Aldridge is a vigorous guitarist, and during the song her ‘A’ string snaps, and we learned that the backup guitar went home to the USA with the band the previous day. Cue Aldridge departing to change a string, and Jason Charles Miller coming on for a short stand-up comedy routine! Back on stage, ‘Beautiful Oblivion“ from the same album was inspired, Aldridge told us, by a conversation with a depressed friend, on ketamine!
She recalls that she has known Miller for many years, and remembers his early advice to her – “be as weird and dark as you want to be“. Her next song, ‘Some Ghosts (Don’t Make a Sound)’, a single release from 2021, was a co-write with Miller, and Randall Clay. The song was inspired, she told us, by her grandfather preacher, imagining him as a killer, not too great a leap of faith apparently from the Church of Christ background, which she describes memorably as “Amish with electricity”. Singing “Sunday morning Papa was preaching with fresh dirt under his nails and I can’t tell you where the body wound up but I know his souls in hell” her song takes us straight to the dark heart of dark country. ‘Lace’ is a longstanding live favourite from “Gold Rush”, a co-write with Ashley McBride, which we learn started out as a song about demon possession—before they realised they knew little about it, settling on a song about obsessive sexual desire, with Aldridge’s phrasing as she delivers the line “I like my men like I like my whisky, right here on the tip of my………tongue”, with a pause that seems to go on forever, adding to its force.
Aldridge’s father, Walt, who sadly had passed away the previous week, was a well regarded musician and songwriter in Muscle Shoals, and was a co-writer with her and James LeBlanc on her next song ‘Yankee Bank’, her bank robbery song, which narrowly missed the cut on her debut album “Razor Wire”, being added to the recent ‘Deluxe’ Tenth Anniversary Edition. The string change shortened her set by one song, her cover of ‘Psycho Killer’ being the casualty, Aldridge closing her set with recent album title track ‘Dream of America’.
After a short break Jason Charles Miller takes the stage, with black once more the order of the night, and we quickly learn that he has a background in metal bands himself, having founded rockers Godhead back in the ’90s, with his raspy high register vocals equally well suited to his intense outlaw/alt country songs and delivery. Opening with ‘The River’, from his album “Cards on the Table”, Miller quickly establishes his rock credentials, with his powerhouse vocal delivery, and riff-driven songs. A pause to adjust the microphone mid song elicits a ‘one of those nights’ comment, recalling also bags lost by Aer Lingus for five days, before the first of several songs from his 2018 release “In The Wasteland”, ‘No Bridge Left Unburned’, with a big riff, telling the story of a doomed relationship. ‘Run For The Hills’, his recent single release, has been garnering country music radio plays, Miller telling us that this often entails three short slots on different radio stations, several hour drives separating them, much more tiring than regular gigs, but ‘must be done’.
‘Wasted Years’ is Miller’s acoustic reimagining of the Iron Maiden classic, those high register vocals in full force, so it’s a “must play” in the birthplace of the band, before Miller was joined by Aldridge for ‘Natural Born Killer’ , leading Aldridge to add to the “perils of the road” litany, the current tour having featured the only fight at one of her gigs, between a Swedish sound engineer, and a critical audience member! Their vocals blend perfectly, on this and the slow ballad, ‘Here To Kill The Pain”. Miller has an active career as a songwriter, and as a voice actor, and his song ‘You Get What You Pay For’ was a rare example, he told us, of a song being picked up for a big TV show—”True Blood” – just a couple of weeks after it was written. And, although not featured in his set, a big Disney teen movie hit, ‘Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’, from one of his father’s sayings, demonstrates serious versatility. But those big riffs and powerful vocals remain his on stage USP, Miller closing his set with ‘Hundred Pound Hammer’, featuring an unsettling riff, very metal, and ‘Knives in the Dark’, the title number from his 2024 release.
A very fine evening from two masters of the darker side of americana.
