Review: The Bros.Landreth, The Tunnels

What makes Elliott Morris any different from the abundance of singer songwriters in support slots with just an acoustic guitar for company? Well, for a start he’s quite the chatterbox with a constant stream of entertaining chat between songs – tales of gigs, background to the tunes and snappy reactions to crowd comments suggesting he’d make a rather good stand up. His guitar playing stands out too, attacking the instrument with aggressive strumming, bashing it for percussion and picking out intricate melodies on the neck. In fact it seemed he had 12 fingers such was the plethora of notes and chords ringing round the room – particularly evident on Something’s Got to Give. His material was well-constructed, mostly up tempo and influenced by folk (an entertaining aside revealed that a lot of “night visiting” songs were written in order for minstrels to gain access to girls’ rooms for “late night tea and cake”). Some Things Aren’t Meant to Be was the standout tune: if it’s possible for a song to break the fourth wall then this one did when he sang a verse about the song itself… Elliott closed with a cover of Wait Until Tomorrow, reinventing Jimi’s tune as a folk belter and concluding a satisfying opening set.

The Bros. Landreth played a blinder of a gig despite on stage gremlins and mishaps including dead microphones, dropped bottlenecks and David Landreth (bass) head butting the working microphone. Their sound was warm and funky, with blistering slide and delightful keys – bringing to mind Little Feat at their greasy best (in fact Joey Landreth – guitar / vox – admitted after the show that Lowell George is “my Elvis”). They opened proceedings with a rather unexpected cover of Let ‘em In, taking the tune to the church and reinventing it as a Muscle Shoals groove. Runaway Train chugged along nicely; meanwhile their sultry cover of John Hiatt’s Alone in the Dark left the crowd in need of a post coital cigarette (hands up everyone who can connect the tune to Jamie Lee Curtis).

The band abandoned instruments for a coupla numbers, gathering round the mic to reinvent tunes as acapella numbers; led by Joey on guitar, Greenhouse was stunning and how refreshing that the crowd actually bucked the current trend amongst audiences for inane babble during quiet numbers. Cody Lwasuik and Darryl Havers proved that not only are they respectively a great drummer and keys player, but have good pipes too.

This was one of those special gigs when the crowd and band are so in to the performance that something magical happens and everyone is just lost in the groove. The band were clearly enjoying playing and thrilled by the crowd response, there was no pretence or bullshit and the event became truly inclusive. Case in point, a shout from the crowd for Firecracker was originally rebuffed due to lack of rehearsals but crowd pressure saw the band attempting the tune, Joey corpsed twice on verses but was prompted back in by the requester; leading to a unique performance that left people laughing and applauding in equal measure. Final tune The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down was a raucous singalong with the band joined by Morris for a fittingly communal finish to a great night of rock n roll. The band promise to be back in the near future, be there.

Photo credit: John Morgan