John Bramwell continued his never-ending solo travels around the UK with an intimate sold-out show at the Horse And Bamboo in Waterfoot on Thursday night. Mixing classics from his days with I Am Kloot and material from his solo albums as well as a blast from the past, he charmed the audience with stories, humour as well as some of the finest songwriting this country has produced since the turn of the century.
"Some of them are true, some of them aren't, but can you tell which?" John laughs as the night draws towards its end after another story about the inspiration for his songwriting and moments from his past. We're regaled with stories of when he was accidentally promoted to head of wine and spirits at Tesco as a teenager, tales of his beloved dog Henry providing inspiration for songs, audiences mistaking his tuning for a brand new song that wasn't to their taste and going to London to meet John Peel with his first ever single. He spends minutes between songs telling these tales, as fascinating and intriguing as the music itself, utterly charming the very polite and attentive Waterfoot audience.The songs though are what made John's name and tonight we get nineteen examples of the finest around. The first half, before John's much heralded drinks interval, is mostly songs from I Am Kloot. Favourites like I Believe, Bullets, From Your Favourite Sky and To The Brink are stripped down to the bare bones of how they were created with just John and a guitar and you can hear a pin drop as they're awestruck by the dexterity of the playing accompanied by the lived-in voice that is telling these often dark mysterious stories of drinking, disaster and lots of things in between. There's a simple beauty to the likes of No Fear Of Falling and Meet Me At The Station, the latter from his debut solo album Leave Alone The Empty Spaces, that almost feels effortless, other than the fact that John has few if any peers at doing this.
After the much fabled drinks interval the set moves through his career, starting with the outstanding Sat Beneath The Lightning Tree from Leave Alone The Empty Spaces. It's followed by Black And Blue, prefaced by a five-minute tale of his youth and how he first picked up a guitar, wrote the song at sixteen and used his redundancy money from the short-lived Tesco job to have it pressed as John Peel no longer played tapes. Peel played it the night after he delivered it to him at one in the morning outside Broadcasting House after travelling down from Manchester to do so. It's dedicated to Paula Greenwood, part of the Later @ team that promoted the gig and others in this beautiful space, who worked at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester at time and has been a long-term supporter. The song possesses a timeless beauty that still resonates today.
John jumps straight forward to now with the newest song in the set, When The Lights Go Out, dedicated to his lost friend Bryan Glancy, whilst Time's Arrow has a plaintive wonder to it as it ponders on the existence and fragility of life. A couple of songs from his most recent album The Light Fantastic with his new collective The Full Harmonic Convergence follow. Whilst the harmonies that the band bring to the song might be absent, It's Just You has a spiky punchy energy running through it as the guitar takes over whilst opener Leave No Traces is simply spellbinding.
The night finishes with four old favourites, the jaunty Over My Shoulder, the glorious The Same Deep Water As Me that even shorn of the rest of the instrumentation possesses the ability to hit raw nerves. The audience are then encouraged to singalong to the finale of Northern Skies and Proof to send everyone out into the Waterfoot night with the warmest of glows.
John Bramwell's website can be found here. He is also on Twitter and Facebook.
John's solo dates are all available to view here.
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