Peter Viney's Blog

Twyford St. Mary’s Church
Twyford, near Winchester

Monday 18th July 2022, 20.00

SUPPORT: Our Man In The Field

THE DELINES:
Amy Boone- vocals
Willy Vlautin – guitar, vocals
Cory Gray – keyboards, trumpet
Sean Oldham- percussion, vocals
Freddy Trujillo – bass guitar, vocals

SET LIST

Songs are by Willy Vlautin

This Ain’t No Getaway (Sea Drift)
Eddie and Polly (The Imperial)
He Don’t Burn For Me (The Imperial)
Roll Back My Life (The Imperial)
I Got My Shadows (Colfax)
Left Hook Like Frazier (new)
The Imperial (The Imperial)
Surfers in Twilight (Sea Drift)
Colfax Avenue (Colfax)
Daybreak (instrumental)
Little Earl (Sea Drift)
That Old Haunted Place (The Imperial)
Drowning in Plain Sight (Sea Drift)

encore

Hold Me Slow (Sea Drift)
Let’s Be Us Again (The Imperial)

St. Mary’s Church Twyford is a working Church of English parish church. We sat in the pews, next to a spinner with books by Terry Waite and Cliff Richard’s autobiography sat on a shelf behind. I’ve been to concerts in ex-churches before (The Union Chapel, Salisbury Arts Centre) but this is only the second one in an operational church … the first was Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar in Salisbury Cathedral. It’s a great idea for a venue. Pews; a small kitchen serving water, lemonade and beer; toilets. There were two friendly volunteers to shepherd cars through to park in a field behind – and they were there to see us out too. It must raise funds to maintain the building. Some bits are Norman, others from the 1400s, though the majority is Victorian. The pillar right by us looked Norman to me.

This was our second Twyford concert in a row. Last time was the Swiss Cottage for Emma Swift. This time The Delines from Portland, Oregon. They’ve had a long trip from Bury yesterday. Norwich tomorrow. Then straight to Italy. That’s an old-fashioned kind of zig-zag route tour. It’s also the hottest day of the year, and for many years, though for the West Coast of the USA it’s not at all exceptional. We had dire warnings about only driving if necessary, and to carry water. It’s not Death Valley. Or Spain. Or Greece. Or Southern Italy. I’ve driven in all of those.

And Mr. Booking Agent, please have mercy
Don’t book the jobs so far apart

Robbie Robertson & Van Morrison

The Delines are Americana, or country got soul, or in their own word retro-country. They use pedal steel on earlier albums, but not in the current band as above. I had just two Delines albums, Colfax and The Imperial. I looked on SetList com, and while their sets aren’t set in stone, they’re very similar. Tonight was identical ti Hove a week ago until the encores. I bought the recent Sea Drift at the venue.

The virtue of The Delines is that they are instantly recognisable. Soft intimate vocal in a world-weary voice, a languid jazzy / bluesy ambience, spare and subtle guitar, but with trumpet cutting through for that soul edge. The opening song This Ain’t No Getaway illustrates it perfectly. Then you get the Willy Vlautin lyric. I’ll quote the picture this one paints:

It’s six o’clock in the morning
Sun’s coming through the shades
The stereo’s too loud but 
The neighbors are scared to complain
There’s a half a pack of Winston’s and an overfilled ashtray
A pint of V.O that’s nearly put away 
And sitting on the TV is a loaded .38

That’s not just a song lyric. That’s the gripping first page of a novel. It’s also an odd song to open a set with it.

They don’t do cheerful, but Eddie and Polly was a single from The Imperial and the backing is instantly brighter, with added backing vocal. Then the lyrics hit you, and Amy Boone is acting and interpreting, not just ‘singing.’ The world created by Vlautin’s lyrics and Boone’s vocals reminds me of Margo Price or Lucinda Williams. OK, that’s why I got the albums.

He Don’t Burn For Me has a classic country lilt, but it’s a blues, a failed torch song:

All these couples who fall apart
Like deserted cars alongside the road

Break up songs are pure country, but The Delines do film drama, not a stereotypical my old tractor just broke, my wife ran off with my best friend and on the way they ran over my old dog Shep. The trumpet part is pure Stax / Atlantic. Every time that trumpet comes in the lift is palpable.

Roll Back My Life is the third in a row from The Imperial. We’re deeper into very slow, late night, spare keyboard accompaniment. The feeling is more Dinah Washington now, This Bitter Earth came to my mind.

I Got My Shadows is from Colfax.They have set a loping pace, and they’re sticking to it. This starts out in the bluesy style, but then moves into a full deep soul sound in the chorus:

It’s not so bad getting up alone
And walking to work alone
Coming home alone

It’s all keyboard and bass guitar, with the lightest of percussion applied in the main part, then the drums lift us into the soul singer lines. Lovely, subtle guitar ending.

Left Hook Like Frazier was announced as a new song. On one hearing I can’t remember enough to say more than ‘It sounds like The Delines.’ The title fits the mood of break ups and fights.

The Imperial, the title track of the second album. A nice guitar figure at the start. To be honest, I was beginning to feel like a change of pace. This keeps the mood – she’s meeting up with a drug dealing ex-boyfriend who is being released from prison after a ten year sentence. The lyric is completely intriguing, like a synopsis / outline for the next Netflicks binge-watch American crime and murder series.

Surfers in Twilight is from The Sea Drift. We’re going even slower and more measured. It’s like we’ve gone back to the origin of The Imperial story.

Patrol cars stop, police rush out and
Throw my man against a wall 

I loved the guitar playing against the mournful trumpet. Lovely stuff, and the vocal’s whispered. Willy Vlautin must be building up to a country soul single-story opera, though he could probably assemble one from the existing..

Colfax Avenue from Colfax is the theme of the box set you don’t want to watch last thing at night. It must be named for the Denver street that originated in Gold Rush days, and was called the longest, wickedest street in America. The woman narrator is singing about her little brother, out of the army, and a friend tells her He left the Lion’s Lair with a bloody head and he could hardly walk … It’s the same theme as Simone Felice’s returned soldier who got fucked up over there. It’s a similar mood. Lyrically there is an affinity with Simone Felice, but they don’t have his edge of anger at all – the narrative mood is usually defeat and resignation.

Daybreak sees Amy Boone leave the stage for a four piece instrumental from the band. Pleasant indeed, though not earth shattering. It’s an interlude, a rest for her voice.

Little Earl is the single from Sea Drift, and the opening track. Sea Drift is themed as songs inspired by The Gulf Coast. Gently noodling keyboards. We still have an injured brother bleeding in the backseat the trumpet is another soul excursion which mutates into jazz. The trumpet stuns me every time it comes in. They had a 7″ single on the sales stand. I hesitated about buying … I do like 45s. But it was £15, too much for a single. I contemplated it at the end, but the show was running late and I decided to get on the road.

Previous setlists say that next up was a non-album song, Felony Flats. In fact, it’s That Old Haunted Place from The Imperial, which is named as ‘Felony Flats’ in the last line. It starts with almost a silent movie flourish on keyboards. The name is used as a slur in various US cities in the Pacific Northwest for a high crime area next to a river or a creek. There is such an area in The Delines base, Portland, Oregon, another in Aberdeen, Washington where Kurt Cobain grew up. Others in Spokane, Vancouver-Camas, Washingtom and Wasila, Alaska.

Drowning in Plain Sight ends the main set. It wasn’t familiar as I hadn’t heard the Sea Drift album until the way home. There was a Norah Jones touch too, but again the long trumpet play out is magnificent.

Encore

We only got two. The recent set lists are either three or four songs. I really missed hearing The Oil Rigs At Night which was done on other recent sets, and is my first choice (next to Wichita Ain’t So Far Away, which they don’t do).

Hold Me Slow is from Sea Drift and nothing bad happens! I noticed the spoken first line:

Open up a bottle and I’ll close the shades

which echoes the opening song of the night:

It’s six o’clock in the morning
Sun’s coming through the shades

Great song too.

They ended as usual with Let’s Be Us Again with more vocal from Willy Vlautin than we had elsewhere.

Overall, the sound and style reminded me of Lambchop. I thought about Emma Swift a few weeks ago in this same Twyford village who said they’d added Don’t Think Twice to their set because they needed a change of pace. I felt the same here. Just one number with more pace would be beneficial, though they don’t do any stuff like that. It was an excellent set. I do have comments on sound and logistics though.

The sound

A church acoustic requires some adjustment for most bands. It tends to lively with echo. We sat at the last pew on the audience right. The sound board was right in the same position on the left, so we should have been hearing what the sound engineer was hearing. The powerful thing about The Delines is the intimacy of Amy Boone’s voice, coupled with memorable and evocative lyrics. It’s akin to Leonard Cohen in that voice and lyric is paramount. I thought they had vocals too low in the mix, and when a singer switches from singing to chatting they usually need more volume. I’d noticed that this did not happen in the support set, when the chatter between songs was partly inaudible to us. It was the same here with the chatter. I glanced over. No sign of any activity on the soundboard. Yet the drums were just right, a gentle wash of percussion which sounded natural. Guitar sounded good. The acoustic really, really favoured trumpet and when the keyboards were in electric piano mode. The trumpet soared, which is important as it adds a soul and a jazz aspect. Bass guitar was too loud in the mix, not a disaster because he’s a very musical bassist, and the sound was clean and undistorted, and on the albums, bass is always prominent. I thought he noticed and turned down, either that or we got used to it. BUT I really wanted more on her voice. She needs Leonard Cohen’s sound engineer (and mics) because he could go from a bellow to a whisper over the backing band with the lyric biting through with clarity. I thought the church acoustic added an echo and harsher edge to the voice. I also add my normal grumble. I know they have presets on these boards, but you can’t judge the sound of any space from a soundcheck in an empty room compared to the sound with 200 bodies absorbing it. I so admired the Cactus Blossoms engineer a few years back, who stood up as soon as they started and walked round the hall with an iPad making adjustments.I never see sound engineers nowadays checking from different angles once the band are playing.

Pacing a show

We had a bad drive with hold ups, but got in our seats by 7.40 for an advertised start of 8 pm. It was as said, a very hot night, though the church was mercifully cooler than outdoors. Everyone was in by 7.45. We were among the last arrivals. The support act started just before 8.20, and on that night I don’t think any of us welcomed a sticky forty minute wait. They finished at 8.45, and there were only minutes needed to take off their pedal steel, but The Delines didn’t go on to 9.15. I’ve been in dressing rooms where bands have said, ‘Give it fifteen minutes. Build up anticipation.’ But it doesn’t, does it? The Emma Swift show started as soon as we were all seated, before 8 pm. Van Morrison is never a minute after advertised. In the current situation at the snarling tail end of Covid, I’d rather have had around forty to fifty minutes less time sitting in a pew.

I have sympathy. I’ve driven Lancashire to the South Coast enough. It’s a long exhausting day. Maybe they needed to chill, or digest dinner. Who knows?

The sales table

We realised once they started, that the duo Our Man In The Field also had to run the sales table. Nice T-shirts. Nice hard-to-find stuff from band members. T-shirts in four styles. The new CD and LP. A limited edition single of Little Earl. However, more unwanted advice from me. £16 is way too much for a Sea Drift CD which amazon is selling for £11.30. They said ‘It’s a special edition’ but it’s exactly the same. Then £15 is too much for a 7 inch single which Amazon is selling for £10.51. I heard people saying, ‘Let’s check amazon.’ They will. However the moment’s been lost. They might change their mind. The Manfreds fall into the same error. I can say this as one who has had CDs and DVDs (and T-shirts) pressed. By selling direct, you’ve just lost the retailer share of the sale price which could be 33% to 50% or even more on amazon. The artefact has cost you no more than £2, depending on the run (and nearly all that’s the packaging), probably much less if you did 2000. So you sell CDs for a straight £10. Vinyl is more problematic because limited pressing facilities mean you’re paying much more. You should still be able to call it £20 given that there’s no retailer / amazon cut. Round numbers ruled before everyone went cashless, so bands priced CDs at £10, LPs at £20. CD singles at £5. Vinyl singles? Up to £10 but only of a desirable limited edition. You need to price to sell. At £10, I might have been tempted by the single and the solo albums too. Also print a price list rather than have everyone asking. The sales table should be a major profit addition.

Support

Our Man In The Field

Alex Ellis- vocal, guitar
Henry Steele- pedal steel

There were just the two. Guitar and vocals plus pedal steel. Three are shown on line, four are listed. There’s great acoustic bass and cello on Pockets on YouTube.

SET LIST

(Tell me the titles and I’ll add them)

1

2

3

4

5

6 Thin (I Used To Be Bullet Proof) – current single

It’s all new to me, (and I always think a support act should do just one cover version people are familiar with.) They had an album in 2020 In The Company of Strangers which has a full band, and no pedal steel. The YouTube material has full backing. That must be so hard stripping material back to just two, but in some ways the guitar interplay was so good that there is also a plus side.

They have a Delines connection, as their second album (I presume forthcoming) was recorded in Portland, Oregon and the pedal steel has a strong Americana feel. As above, they had to run the sales stand too.

The pedal steel / acoustic guitar blend sounded sublime in the church acoustic. Lovely vocals. As with The Delines there is a consistent mood and pace, and they’d benefit from a little light and shade.

I’m going to be critical here because I really liked the songs and I really like the playing. Their website describes Alex Ellis as an ex-actor. That surprises me, because I have addressed many audiences this size on flat floor spaces with no raked seats. YOU CAN’T SIT DOWN. At the back we couldn’t see them at all, even by craning our heads through gaps, and I’m over six foot tall. Robert Fripp of King Crimson insists on sitting to play as do classical and early jazz guitarists. Some have a thing about guitar straps distorting the neck (but surely not if it’s attached to the body!) But in front of 200 people in pews he was throwing away much of his impact to large areas of the audience. If you really must sit down to play, then get a high guitar stool with step / footrest. Folk singers used to carry them. A musician friend had to use one when he broke his ankle – I went shopping with him for one. But in that Pockets video on YouTube he’s standing up and playing.

To make matters worse he did long muttering intros which we could barely hear. The same was true of Amy Boone, and I’d blame the sound engineer for failing to adjust the levels between singing and speaking. He projected when singing, he just spoke quietly and amiably for intros. PROJECT. To me the combination of invisibility and inaudibility partly destroyed their hard work and beautiful guitar playing. But I am checking out songs on YouTube.