Better than TV

Words and pictures by Susan Cane

If you weren't familiar with the Albert Inn, in Bristol, then from the outside you probably wouldn't suspect it of regularly playing host to some of the best folk and jazz musicians in the world - not that I'm entirely sure what would constitute the type of place you would suspect of that sort of thing.

The red brick pub is on the corner of a street in the Bedminster area, and when I arrived, a few minutes before the doors were due to open, a small poster on the wall next to the door was the only indication of the event that was due to take place that evening.

Concerts are held in a long, dark, room which has a bar along the length of one wall. Most of the walls are completely plastered with posters and photographs of people who have played there - and others who haven't.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this gig. I had seen Californian songwriter Kristina Olsen play just over two years earlier, but I had never seen or heard Peter Grayling. All I knew about him was that he was a cellist and he was from Australia. I didn't know if they would play joint compositions, nor did I know whether the two would play together for the whole evening, or separately too. A couple of tour previews that I'd read, had commented that the duo were an unlikely pairing. This certainly turned out to be true; but in spite of (or probably because of) that fact, it was a clever combination.

Waiting for the music to begin, I found myself sitting next to a couple from Arizona, who were temporarily living in Bristol. They hadn't heard either musician, but they had come because they were blues fans and had seen the gig listed in "Venue" magazine.

Once the music started we heard songs from the duo's new album, "Duet" - many of which were written by Kristina, though some are by other writers. They also played some older songs that Kristina has recorded on her own albums, but this time they featured Peter's cello or mandocello. Kristina played acoustic guitar, steelbody guitar, concertina, saxophone and (just once) piano, as well as supplying the lead vocals.

Between songs Peter was very quiet, barely uttering a word. Throughout the evening he continued to play, often with his eyes closed, sometimes adding backing vocals to the songs - but always quietly laughing at Kristina's often ridiculous (but mainly true, I don't doubt!) stories. Kristina was very outgoing and talked nineteen to the dozen, speaking so fast that her sentences sometimes seemed to get 'tangled up' and she had to repeat a few words.

The first set started with Kristina standing to play her steelbody guitar and Peter sitting with his cello, to her right, for Furry Lewis's bluesy "Brownsville". That was followed with the jazz-tinged "The Three Bears", a short, snappy song, (written by Bobby Toup the writer of "Route 66") which Kristina sang to the accompaniment of only Peter's cello, plucked like a double bass.

"Dangerous" told the story of a man from Northern Australia, who risked his life in his job, flying medical supplies to Papua New Guinea. The twist was that it was his girlfriend who unexpectedly died, in a road accident, rushing to the airport to meet his flight.

Describing how happy she had been to have this song covered by Fairport Convention, Kristina said that Simon Nicol from the band had once taken her to a quiz night. The British passion for pub quizzes was something she couldn't understand. She had only been able to answer one question all evening, which was "What colour is the Northern Line, on the tube?" Simon, on the other hand, had been able to answer every question except one . . .

Speaking about the differences between her and Peter, Kristina even said that their only similarities were that they had both been raised without TVs - and they had both hated having piano lessons, when they were very young. Her father had equated the guitar with "heroin abuse and teenage pregnancy", and he forbade it, which was all the encouragement she needed.

This story was the introduction to "My Father's Piano", a ballad about the memories associated with a piano of her father's, that had been in her apartment since he died. The irony about it, she said, was that she'd had to take piano lessons in order to be able to play the instrument! A piano had been pulled to the front of the room, next to the little stage, so that she could use it for this song.

The longest and probably the funniest story of the evening, was about the time Kristina had been "backpacking with an agenda", in New Zealand. The agenda was necessary because she needed to be in certain places at certain times, for her shows. She needed to get to the North Island and of course things didn't go according to plan, as she found that the tide was high when she thought it was going to be low - because she was using the previous month's timetable.

She arrived to catch a bus with moments to spare, only to find that the bus she wanted hadn't been running for months - and the next possible alternative didn't leave until the following day. In the end she had stopped a boat and climbed aboard . . .

"Heart Hill", with Kristina on concertina and Peter on mandocello, sounded very like an old English folk ballad. This was quite fitting, given that it told the story of "a forest of trees in the shape of a heart" that she had seen next to the M6, apparently planted by a woman for her dead fiance.

"Wish You'd Stop Doing So Well" was about "an ex-boyfriend who had the bad taste to dump me. Always an unwise thing to do to a songwriter, don't you think?" The song was a comical tale of the ex-boyfriend's continuing success, after their split - he had a new girlfriend, he looked happy, he'd lost weight... The same man had apparently like listening to Throbbing Gristle. On being told that a recording sounded faulty, he had replied "I know you can't appreciate this music, but that's how it's supposed to be."

During the interval I told Kristina that I'd seen her at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas, in 1996, when she had given me a PD James mystery that she'd finished with and didn't want to carry around any more. As she told me, it's a small world . . . The book had suffered slightly during a storm at the festival one night, when my tent got flooded with Kerrville mud - but apart from that it survived to tell the tale.

The interval was also the time for the raffle, done in the Albert Inn's distinctive way. The first time I encountered one, I was a bit puzzled - but now it wouldn't be the same without one! The prizes always range from the 'ordinary' (a CD, a couple of tickets to a future show, a bottle of wine) to the bizarre. Though a bit odd, they're traditional for the Albert Inn - a cheap romance novel (on this occasion it was "Accidental Bride"), a garden gnome, and a toilet roll signed by the evening's musicians. I've always wanted to win the signed toilet roll, but I haven't been successful yet . . .

During the second set Kristina announced that she was going to do a song for "a woman with a concertina, called Rosie (the woman, not the concertina)". Somebody in Australia had sent a request for the song, via the Internet; but if Rosie was in the audience, she didn't make herself known. This was another very English-sounding song, again mainly due to the concertina.

Kristina and Peter had been interviewed on Radio Bristol, during the afternoon. They had been told to look out for the flyover, as a landmark, when driving to the radio station. Kristina explained that they had driven around and around, looking for it, "and I hate to tell you folks, but it's not there any more!" Yes, you'd think that the people at Radio Bristol would have known that the Bristol Flyover had been demolished a couple of weeks earlier. Its removal had certainly been publicised enough. All that remained, by the date of the concert, was a pile of rubble and a big crater in the road. As Kristina said, "We didn't equate that with a flyover".

Funny songs, sad songs, genuine songs from a diamond performer

During the second set the two musicians each played one solo piece - the only ones of the night. First of all we heard "a Kristina Olsen version of a David Bromberg version of a Robert Johnson tune". This was "Come On In My Kitchen", with some fine blues vocals and bottleneck guitar.

For his only introduction of the evening, Peter Grayling modestly told us "I'm just going to play a piece of classical music", and he chose a Prelude by Bach. It was unusual to hear that style of piece, amongst all the other music of the evening, but it worked well. It just added to the eclectic atmosphere of the show. It was also strange to hear such a piece accompanied by the occasional sounds coming from the bar, just a few feet from the stage - but it didn't seem to bother Peter, who had his eyes closed and was concentrating completely on what he was playing.

Throughout the evening we heard several funny songs and even more funny stories. I haven't been to too many gigs where the audience has laughed so much and so genuinely - there was no polite laughter here. So the occasions when we were hit with a really serious or thought-provoking song, were all the more powerful.

It was almost a shock to hear the introduction to "Eight Short Minutes" - a song that Kristina had heard at her songwriting group and had decided to learn, even though (as she said) it was more appropriate for it to be sung by a man. The writer, Andrew Lorand, had always brought funny songs to the group; this was the first time that he had brought a serious song. Its message was that somewhere in the United States, every eight minutes, a woman is raped.

"Pillow Talk", the only instrumental the two played together, was a waltz, with Kristina on saxophone and Peter on cello.

Though Peter was a man of few words, we were told a few things about him. Kristina referred to him once or twice as "Dr Peter Grayling". Revealing that he has a PhD in Botany, she also claimed that he is unable to identify any British trees. We then heard that at a festival in Tasmania, Peter's wife had gone up to bed early. Later he stood knocking very softly on the hotel room door. Eventually his wife heard and she came to open the door, asking him why he'd been knocking so softly. He told her that "I didn't want to wake you."

Introducing one of the final songs, Kristina spoke of being asked to write a song for an organisation called TV Free America, which had heard about her TV-free childhood. I bet they didn't expect quite what they got, written when she was trying to write a serious song and was "distracted" by her flat mates, and containing lines like:

"He reached behind the bed
A condom in his hand
He ripped the package with his teeth
Ooh what a man . . ."
and
"This is better than TV
They are really living
This is better than TV
This is a living room
This is better than TV"

By the time the music was over, we'd heard styles ranging from folk to blues to jazz to classical. It all went together perfectly. Pairing up musicians like Kristina Olsen and Peter Grayling wasn't something that I would ever have thought of, so it's a good thing that they thought of it themselves. Their different musical styles, and their very different personalities, went together better than I could ever have guessed.

Susan Cane