Footprints and Dreams - JC Grimshaw (Village Bike 9)

Awhile back I was reading Folk on Tap, the Southern area folk magazine that talks of local artists and visiting folk legends. The one hole in its approach is the absolute lack of material on Island acoustic musicians although it does cover the Morris Dancing.

By chance speaking to a lady who reads Folk on Tap she avidly expounded the view that from what she read the Island didn't have too many musicians or music going on. I thought then that just one Sunday afternoon in the company of the Island's very own Buena Vista Social club at the Ryde Castle would have been enough to change her mind.

JC and Angelina Grimshaw hold court there, court in the tradition of Lord Buckley, the late bar room monologist revered by George Harrison: 'People are what it is about . . . they are mother nature's brightest flower, her sweetest, purest, most elevating thing that ever was. You are groovy flowers in a garden where I am privileged to stand and share a few moments with you.'

The tradition of 'hipsters, flipsters and finger poppin' daddies' as embued by Lord Buckley is alive and well at the Ryde Castle any Sunday afternoon, musical sessions where anything can happen with a fine collection of horn players, blues singers, tea chest bass courtesy of Stevie James Gadd and 'wood, wire and strings'. All kept in some semblance of order by JC and Angelina with much madcap dancing from the one and only John Rufus Grimshaw.

Some of the songs on JC's new CD Footprints and Dreams have been featured there, hope to hear of more these too. Took me a while to get right into this one, more layers than an onion as it were but I'm there now hanging on the nuances and smiling at the lines delivered so deftly like JC's notes on the sleeve: 'a collection of encounters and incidents in the poet's ragged love life.'

A delightful burnt weeny sandwich jammed between two cracking bar room belters. The first Jenny Do You Remember? deserves to be heard in Whelans, Dublin or the Roisin Dubh, Galway 'and there was coffee and Django on the jazz box'.

The final song, Sweet Old Kissing Blues from the pen of JC's dad John Rufus at his most eloquent:

'Sermon on the mountain
if you slip you tumble hard
jug band needs a genie
busking in the devil's yard
hard luck and bad times
don't hold no charge for me
I'm getting drunk on milk and honey
and I'm going back to my used to be'

After the rocking opening the pace slows for a couple of songs. The delightful beery swell of Footprints and Dreams like a boat pushed by the tide against Ryde Pier.

Christopher Marlowe Image recalling JC's earlier two songs for the Island Sessions, playing as he suggests 'poetic jujitsu' like a cross between Robyn Hitchcock's Raymond Chandler Evening and Dar Williams Mark Rothko song. More of John Rufus oils on the CD cover to give paint to JC's surrealistic pillow of rhymes complete with the cornerstone of the album the interaction between JC's strings, Rupert Brown's tinkers bag of percussion and Paul Armfields as ever right there double bass. One for the Tate Modern.

'Writing rhymes on endless time
sketching pictures, shooting lines
and there's laughter across the wishbone
and the flowers look divine'

I'm hung on the next song, a belting anthem to a love affair gone wrong and delivered as telling as any song I've heard JC do. The cornerstone again is flying, sounding like an Egyptian vamp fit for a Pharoah. Angelina just perfect on support vocals across a chorus that just sings:

'Roll out the carpet she's coming your way
unlock your doors and leave all on display
offer yourself and surrender your fate
let your in house emotions pick up the slate'

The Lighthouse Man which follows is a perfect contrast, just JC and guitar, wistful and open chords akin to the kind of song that Woody Guthrie might have sung rolling West on freight train.

More deep, dark poetic reflections on Love In the Mist and Controlled Starvation. The former with just a hint of that marvellous Irish violin playing vet Donal O'Riain, picks up on the Egyptian vamp of Roll Out The Carpet but for me doesn't quite hit the same nerve.

The latter has the delightfully named Amanda Lynn Kane who often does songs between JC's sets at the Ryde Castle, the song again doesn't hit me right in the nerve endings but it's got some great harmonies.

Riding On A Smile has long been a favourite of mine, just JC on guitar and vocals and Amanda Lynn Kane here and its great to have it on CD at last for all the times I can't make it into the back bars it was written for.

'I've been rambling with the boys,
slept beneath the stars
singing for our supper
by playing around in bars
we were only dreamers then
and nothing much has changed
just the colours getting brighter
on the stories as they age.'

Riding On A Smile ushers in the fabulous Share A Memory with its marvellous harmonica backing and sure footed slow blues feel, once again the combination of JC's voice with sister Angelina's backing vocals is beautiful. Kind of song that those inspired Dance Preachers would have me clinging to the bar for support.

Likewise You've Got Me Dreaming Girl is the kind of easy going, understated hip groover that JC and all excel in. And then its the 'like the charge of *********** Light Brigade' as John Rufus once described the tea chest bass playing of Stevie James Gadd for the closer Sweet Old Kissing Blues.

These guys are just too good to be kicking around in Island pubs and when the opportunity presents itself they need to grab that bigger stage. But I'm sure glad that JC and the crew are an integral part of this wild and wonderful music of the diamond Wight Island. Nothing ever happens on the Isle of Wight?

Mike Plumbley

Angelina and JC Grimshaw,
Summer in the Square, Newport, Isle of Wight
JC and Angelina and Paul Armfield at the 12 Bar, London
Around the Village interviews:
Angelina Grimshaw
Cathy Flux
Paul Armfield