Hot Club of Cowtown – The Met Bury, 16th November 2019
Back in Bury again, just two weeks since our last visit. Honestly, my heart lifts as we drive into this small town. I always smile when I pass the Roach Hotel, I must go there! Even if we don’t stay there I must have a beer and toast its fantastic name!
I fully intended that this blog would see me raging at the grave injustice visited upon Bury Football club. Bury FC were elected to the Football League in 1894. They won the FA cup in 1900 and 1903. In the latter final they beat Derby County 6-0, a score equalled only last year by Manchester City. Last season they won promotion to division 1………………….. However, on 27 August 2019, Bury were expelled from the Football League due to unpaid debts and poor ownership.
Why was this allowed to happen?? To add insult to injury, Everton Director Bill Kenwright offered to inject over a million pounds into Bury to save them but was stopped by the Football League as it contravened their rules…………Shame on you!!!!, shame on the Premier League and it’s Billionaire clubs who stood by and let it happen. This is only the beginning comrades, expect other clubs to perish, after all, once mighty Bolton Wanderers nearly suffered the same fate as Bury only being rescued at the eleventh hour.
Rant over (for now), I visited Wax and Beans for a second time. I love this record shop! There were punters sat drinking coffee and shooting the breeze and fellow vinyl foragers hunched over the record bins. I bought Love’s debut album, Nicely out of tune by Lindisfarne (Newcastle is our next road trip) and Hard Rain by Bob Dylan. Hmm, I swore I would never buy another Dylan live album. Much as I love ol’ Bob, his live albums suck! So why did I buy it? Well both Mick Ronson and T Bone Burnette are in his backing band on this album, surely reason enough? I intend to blog about live albums in the near future so watch this space.
Vinyl lust sated, I visited the Two Tubs. The small front bar was almost empty when I arrived so I got a good seat, bought a pint of Thwaites Best and settled down to relax.
Are you into Rockabilly? I was shaken from my reverie by a guy sat at the bar. Beg pardon? The guy saw I was wearing a Sun records sweatshirt. I explained that I had bought it from the studio in 2018. He was impressed thus began a very enjoyable discussion on music. It turned out that the guy was a singer in a Rockabilly band. We discussed the stuff he played and, to my delight, found we both love The Cramps. Our conversation carried on through a fire alarm (ironically caused by his vaping. Interestingly everyone in the pub ignored it!) and we covered much musical ground. He took a phone call from the drummer in his band. My new friend said he was off to the Thirsty Fish and invited me along. I had never heard of the Thirsty Fish so he told me where it was and I promised to see him in there later.
The Thirsty Fish is based in an empty shop unit on the front of the Millgate shopping centre. A none too exciting prospect thought I. How wrong was I? Eight real ales, a good number of real Ciders and a small selection of Continental Lagers are on sale. There are a few tables and bar stools in this small place. The décor is cool, the tunes played are excellent and the clientele are really friendly.
I started with a New Zealand IPA which was excellent then followed with a pint of Strong Mild (7%abv) recommended by a fellow punter. My Rockabilly friend’s drummer turned out to be good company with excellent musical taste. I could cheerfully have stayed all afternoon but in the interests of sobriety we bid our new friends farewell and headed off for a curry. We had a quick pint in the Waverley (another first) before eating at the Darbar restaurant next door. Suitably fortified it was back to the hotel for a power nap and a shower!
So to the gig. No beer bellies on show tonight thankfully. The punters were of a fairly diverse age range. I was delighted to see such a big crowd. When I mentioned that I was going to see the Hot Club of Cowtown, my work colleagues shook their heads with incredulity and assumed I would be the only person at the show!
The Hot Club of Cowtown is an American hot jazz and Western swing trio that formed in 1997. The band’s name comes from two sources: “Hot Club” from the hot jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli’s Quintette du Hot Club de France, and “Cowtown” from the western influence of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and other early Western swing combos, as well as the band’s love of fiddle tunes, hoedowns, and songs of the American west.
The band are fronted by violinist Elana James who is ably supported by guitarist Whit Smith and double bass player Jake Erwin. You would swear that there are double the number of musicians on stage. They sound fantastic and the crowd love them. Elana James pulls facial expressions that I found slightly unsettling, they reminded me of Popeye!!
They play two forty five minute sets which contain a healthy selection of songs from their new album Wild Kingdom though thankfully refrain from playing their cringe worthy version of Loch Lomond. Guitarist Whit Smith is absolutely superb. His solos are well constructed and beautifully played. Smith is also a good singer. I love the Double Bass so Jake Erwin was also a treat for me.
This was a great show and I loved seeing so many smiling faces in the audience. Tickets cost £19 which was an absolute bargain. The band hail from Austin Texas, the third act we have seen in Bury this year from that venerable city. Delines singer Amy Boone lives off SoCo, Tom Russell has just moved there from Santa Fe and all of tonight’s act are domiciled there. We visit Austin next year. I wonder if there are many Bury bands playing in the city?? Perhaps my new Rockabilly buddies will be starring on 6th street!!
The previous weekend the Met hosted the annual Bury beer festival. This weekend seemed to be the Bury smoking festival! I have not seen so many tobacco devotees congregated in a long while. Every pub we visited had a smoking crew outside the doorway. Inside each pub were a good number of vaping devotees. Post gig we adjourned to the Robert Peel fighting our way through the outdoor smoking throng. Inside, the pub was busy and the atmosphere was quite relaxed which belied the heavy police presence outside. We chuckled at a young chap who sported a king size tucked behind his ear, a sight we had not seen for years.
We stopped off at Rayners on the way back to our hotel. There was a good sized smoking posse chatting to the two doormen outside. Inside, we were almost the only punters!! A friendly barmaid, and good drinks at reasonable prices were a great way to end another excellent day in Bury, a true Jewel in the crown of England’s glory.
Postscript:
The next morning we decided to head for breakfast at the Art Picture house. As we rounded the corner we saw clouds of billowing smoke!! Fortunately it was not a fire, just another bunch of enthusiastic smokers outside the pub. This was 9.0 am, inside there was a goodly number of punters scarfing full English breakfasts washed down with early morning pints. I hung my head in shame as I drank my Cappuccino!!
Postscript 2:
Hard Rain is pretty damn good, not my favourite live album (blog will follow soon) but pretty damn good. Bob, you are forgiven!
