JC
Grimshaw's solo CD 'Dance When You're Living' (Village Bike 8)
available from Big Paul in Ottakers, Newport,
Isle of Wight, £10.0
'Give me smokey bar rooms and a lot of heavy rain'
Ok so I am biased. It has been my great pleasure to share a few evenings listening to the music of JC and Angelina Grimshaw as a duo and in the boot kicking Dance Preachers. If you have not been lucky enough to catch them live here's your chance to make up for lost time. For biased or not, JC Grimshaw's Dance When You're Living is a corker by anyone's standards. And mine are pretty damn high.
Dance When You're Living contains twelve original songs from the Poet's Cottage kitchen table. A couple from Angelina Grimshaw, some lyrics from father John Rufus Grimshaw and John Claude Grimshaw contributing the rest of the lyrics and music.
JC's stamp is all over this. His smokey vocals and inspired mandolin, guitar and harmonica work. Angelina contributes some equally dusky tonsils. Either ghosting behind JC or like her heroine, the gin soaked Bessie Smith, singing about broken hearts and leaving trains. And to cap it all off there's the rhythm section, the ever surefooted double bass of Paul Armfield pulling out all the stops and Rupert Brown clattering over the switches. These guys really know how to rock and pull back and let it roll again.
It's all so seamless it sounds like it was cut live. And just like those classic live sessions in many fine pubs like the Travellers Joy in Northwood, the Spyglass Inn, Ventnor, The Wight Mouse at Chale, The Waverley in Carisbrooke or the Ryde Castle Hotel Sunday shows, Washboard Steve and Stevie James Gadd step up to add errm washboard and tea chest bass.
Pick a favourite track? The more I listen to this its more like sitting in a strawberry patch and trying to decide which one next. This flies all over the place.
The lope of the Ballad of Rod Garfield like a swaying kerosene lamp in a dark Mississippi night; JCs jangling guitar work on Hey Hey Hey pulled straight out of a Delta juke joint jitterbug; Honey Man like the the Hot Club of France with some glorious bass play from Paul Armfield and JC's running the scales down like that master himself Django Rheinhardt;
The rollicking
Pretty Girl with that thin stream of harmonica rising and falling through
it and more of that fine drumming and guitar picking;
The crash of chords that opens up Silver Locket before JC lays down the
sweetest little riff down and then the rhythm section and Angelina come rolling
in behind JC's lament to a former girlfriend. As a surefooted riff as you'll
hear anywhere. Superb stuff;
Back to the blues, and how, with Mean Old Women, laid down solid by the drums and bass before the slide and guitars come in as black as night; On Goin' Away Angelina's deep South call lulls you into this one before Rupert goes awol and kicks every tin can in sight and rattles the hell out of his kit. JC skitters strings all over this and Armfield holds the back line superbly;
Fired
up the CD rolls neatly into that well loved favourite of groovers at their gigs
Well Well Willy with Stevie James Gadd on tea chest bass and Washboard
Steve on hand, on washboard. This is a pearler, JC lays out his lines like a
hoe down dance caller;
Little Boat carries on where Well Well Willy left off, a breathless rush
of ringing guitar, Rupert's percussion rattling like a tinker's caravan and
JC and Angelina squeezing lines between the mayhem;
Angelina's gospel like Train A'Comin slowing it down, all beautifully understated, like some cool shade on a hot day; Show Some Kindness knocked my head off the first time I heard it, here on this CD. It begins like a haunted prairie ballad from one of my favourite Texas songwriters, simple evocative guitar intro before JC and Angelina's vocal pours in and Rupert Brown shakes some spot on tambourine and then you have to scrape me off the ceiling;
A song
like Dance When You're Living can only have come from the pen of John
Rufus Grimshaw, bucketfuls of JC's hallmark slide and guitar picking all over
this, superb back and forth vocals from JC and Angelina and the rhythm section
just rolls it sweet and fine. JC sings 'Moonlight melodies scored in Lover's
Lane, give me smokey bar rooms and a lot of heavy rain'
I'll drink to that.
Grab yourself a copy of this little gem from Big Paul in Ottakers, Newport for ten quid. Then go home, push back the furniture and come out dancing.
Mike Plumbley