Rob Tognoni - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 22 June 2018

I’m just getting myself a beer in the bar when Rob Tognoni comes onstage, but still manage to latch onto his modus operandi pretty damn quickly, as he and his trio crash into a spiky riff, soon accompanied by a catalogue of sparky guitar licks, leading up to a high-powered wah wah solo.  Oh yeah, there are some vocals in there too, delivered in a kinda tuneful, enthusiastic bark, and the overall package is enough to get the crowd on side from the git go.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I know Rob Tognoni’s canon backwards.  The Australian has been on the go for a long time, and has a catalogue of albums stretching back to the mid-90s, but I only came across him for the first time last year.  So I vaguely recognise ‘Birra For Lira’, the title track from his 2015 album, which features another squawking solo, but for much of the set all bets are off.

Rob Tognoni and Gaz Rackham - lean on me

Never mind, by the time he gets stuck into another stomper from his 1995 album Headstrong, it’s clear that with his impish grin that this is a guy who enjoys his work.  Given his Australian provenance it’s easy to say that there’s an air of old-fashioned hard rock a la AC/DC to his sound, but ‘Bad Girl’ does fit that bill, with its sledgehammer riff and drummer Mike Hellier doing his best impression of Phil Rudd on-the-money timekeeping.  And while Tognoni – aka the Tasmanian Devil – doesn’t don fancy dress, he’s still a showman, of the arm-flourishing, lip-pursing, hip-wiggling (yes, hip-wiggling), machine gun soloing variety.

Bassist Gaz Rackham – who could be cast as the cousin of Eric Stoltz in Pulp Fiction – seems permanently amused by his gaffer’s antics, whether of the shape-throwing or the plank-spanking variety.  But with his 5 string bass he and Hellier make up a rock solid but supple boiler room on the likes of ‘Drink Jack Boogie’, a Johnny Winter-ish affair that’s one of the highlights of the night, with a decidedly bluesy intro from Tognoni, and the more subtle title track from his Tognoni’s latest album Brave, with its offbeat rhythm.

They close the first of two sets with a jam on ‘Dark Angel’, building from a slow bass’n’drums intro to feature crunching riffs and fluid licks, and some impressive pickless soloing from the Tog, even if his nod to ‘Toccata and Fugue’ is a bit naff.

The second half kicks in interesting fashion, as some slow funky blues develops into something that may or may not be called ‘One More Hit’, and which feels like the Stones taking a walk on the wild side with Lou Reed, semi-spoken vocal and all, but with Tognoni then getting excited enough to be play with his teeth, get down on his knees, and embark on some windmill armed, toreador-like guitar heroism.

It’s all a bit endearingly daft, but he does demonstrating good taste by then covering Rory Gallagher’s ‘Shadow Play’.  It’s a great tune of course, and though RT isn’t Rory he doesn’t let the side down. In fact by now I’m forcibly reminded of Larry Miller, another meat-and-potatoes hard blues-rockin’ geezer and Rory fan who is great fun.

The R’n’B groove of ‘Mr John Lee’ (as in Hooker), is swingingly good to the point that plenty of asses are being shook in the audience, and a reading of ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ is like a Tour de France descent in top gear, with suitably brisk drum and bass solos and ‘Let There Be Rock’ style dynamics.

Andrew Robert Eustace - rollin' down down the Delta

They close with ‘Hey Joe’, which features some unsatisfyingly noodling guitar to these ears, though the Togster does conjure up some decent low volume weeping guitar effects, followed by more energetic guitar wrangling, and a sturdy rocker of an encore sends the crowd away happy.

In the support slot Glasgow’s Andrew Robert Eustace and his band deliver an entertaining set of Delta orientated electric blues.  Eustace is a tall and genial sorta guy, effectively gruff line on the vocal front and satisfyingly useful in the guitar department.  ‘Can’t Wait To See That’ is a decent Mississippi stomp, with two guitars rollin’ an’ tumblin’ around the riff and a scrabbling solo.  But the following ‘Broke Down And Beat’ is a highlight, a chunky shuffle with an appealing groove topped off with a good hook in the chorus.  ‘Bad Weather Blues’ is a strutting, upbeat 12 bar, with a fiery solo from Eustace as the band stoke the engines for a crescendo that should really develop into something bigger.

Things get a bit samey as the set progresses, even though they relax a bit as the songs go by, and the lyrics of ‘Running Man’, confessing to killing a man, feel a bit inauthentic.  ‘Crooked Old Dog’ rattles along nicely though, with its semi-Celtic guitar riff and a hint of stop-time rhythm, and ‘Had Enough’ slithers down the Delta nicely on a jittery riff.  They could do with developing a bit more rhythmic variety – a Bo Diddley beat might be a useful avenue to explore – but Eustace and chums seem to have a clear sense of the sound they’re after, and the man himself injects some personality both vocally and on guitar. 

Listened to lately . . . Rob Tognoni, The Waterboys

Rob Tognoni – Brave

“Well throw another prawn on the barbie Bruce, and chuck me a cold one!”

Ahem.  Or to put it another way, with Aussie blues rocker Rob Tognoni coming to a parish near me next year, in the midst of numerous laps of Europe, I reckoned it was time to delve into the Tasmanian Devil’s catalogue.  So here we are with his most recent album, the 2016 release Brave.

If you like Dan Patlansky you might well like the Tog, methinks.  Sonically there are similarities, and they share a hoarse rasp on the vocal front.  But where Patlansky often

Rob Tognoni frying a few frets

deploys a post-grunge punch and edginess, Tognoni tends towards more of a good time

hard rockin’ vibe.  So ‘Voodoo Girl’ sounds like Big Boy Bloater on vocal duties for a rehash of Thin Lizzy’s live version of ‘Rosalie’, and ‘1974’ is a nostalgia trip in a similar vein to that Kid Rock mash-up of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Werewolves Of London’ from ten years ago.  ‘Latino Lounge’, meanwhile, is wah-wah laden lunacy.  It’s something you could imagine Dave Lee Roth cooking up with Steve Vai maybe, if they’d had a heavy night of partying, accompanied by an incessant tape loop of Phil Daniels’ contribution on ‘Parklife’.
Not that it’s all comic cuts.  ‘Dammed [sic] If I Did’ is a neat semi-acoustic blues that could have come from fellow Aussie Russell Morris.  On ‘You’ Tognoni conjures up violin effects, and adds in some Latin percussion for variety – as he also does on the title track. ‘Fly Like An Eagle’ revolves around a fresh, ringing guitar motif, while ‘Happy Birthday’ is straight ahead boogification, and the closing ‘Don’t Be Too Hard On Me’ is a lick-embroidered slice of SRV-style rockin’.

Don’t go to Rob Tognoni for philosophy.  Don’t expect the meaning of life – unless, of course, the meaning of life for you is brightly lit, let’s have a laugh, fret-frying rock’n’roll.  He’s a good bet for that.

Check out Rob Tognoni's 2018 European tour dates here.

The Waterboys – Out Of All This Blue

And now for something completely different.  When The Waterboys first came to prominence, back in the early Eighties, I would have positioned them among the widescreen New Wave acts of a Celtic background that included U2, Simple Minds and Big Country.  But that was a long time ago, and perhaps distracts from the extent to which roots music styles have informed the work of Waterboys kingpin Mike Scott in the subsequent decades. 

Mike Scott - spindly legged mystic rock'n'roller

Whether it’s the Celtic folk stylings of Fisherman’s Blues, or the punchy R’n’B undertones of Modern Blues, Scott has an inventive way with roots music, welding it to his clever, idiosyncratic lyrics to create music that’s fresh and original.

This year’s model of The Waterboys came in the form of Out Of All This Blue, a double album released back in September, on which Scott has opted to base most tracks on ‘drumscapes’ that he has constructed electronically, rather than relying on yer actual drummer type fella.

Now, that wouldn’t be my choice. Electronic beats have their place, but they’re no substitute for the rhythmic drive that contributed to Modern Blues being a belter of a recording.

Still and all, you can’t keep an imaginative muso and wordsmith down.  And Scott has duly achieved a decent hit rate of quality songs.  The likes of ‘If I Was Your Boyfriend’ and ‘If The Answer Is Yeah’ weld catchy tunes to Scott’s trademark humour and way with metre, and ‘New York I Love You’ – among others – displays his near unique talent for enlivening a narrative with a distinct sense of place.

The second disc kicks off in fine form, starting with the driving ‘Hammerhead Bar’ (with real drums from Ralph Salmins, I note), memorialising the madcap hostelry John Entwistle had in his mansion. ‘Mister Charisma’ is a brief and ambiguous contemplation of Keef and his eccentricities.  And ‘Nashville, Tennessee’ is a rootsy bit of country that simultaneously manages to celebrate Waterboys keys player and Nashville resident Brother Paul ‘Goldilocks’ Brown, and Memphis: “My heart is in Memphis, but my ass is in Nashville, Tennessee”.

Even the bonus ‘Blue Variations’ disc (in the deluxe edition) has some treats to offer, such as the opening ‘The Memphis Fox’, an ass-shaking instrumental take on ‘The Connemara Fox’ (from Disc 1) with Paul Brown’s organ to the fore over – fair play – a kick ass drumscape from Scott.  There’s a nu-soul in an alternate version of ‘Didn’t We Walk On Water’, with scat vocals from Jess Kav, and a live version of ‘Nashville, Tennessee’, recorded in Nashville itself on the day it was written – to a wowed audience, natch.

Okay, there are some lightweight eccentricities along the way that will probably make your shrug your shoulders rather than tap your toes.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained – and going on a trip with Mike Scott is always an adventure.

You can find details of The Waterboys' 2018 tour dates here.