The Singer And The Song: Making It Real

“Blame it on Eric Clapton and the myriad hordes who followed in his bluesbreaking creamy footsteps, but the present-day perception of the blues is that it’s all about guitars, mostly brandished by men.  But while many of the blues greats wielded the six-string razor (alongside those who blew the harp and those who pounded pianos), most of those Real Guys would tell you that the Real Deal was about the singing and the song, rather than the solo: the instrumental flourishes were the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself.”

-  Charles Shaar Murray, The Blues Magazine Issue 10, November 2013

 
I couldn’t have put it better myself.  No really, I don’t think I could.  But I’m still going to bang on about it for a bit.

When I was in my early teens back in the Seventies, getting into hard rock, the greatest acclaim was reserved for the “axe heroes”.  Sure, there were some singers who stood out from the herd for their voices, and/or for being cracking front men.  But still – guitarists were the real gods.  

Put that fag out Bob - it'll ruin your voice!

And a lot of the time, listening to current day blues albums and going to gigs, it seems to me that the belief that the guitar is the main thing still prevails – except now among middle-aged blokes rather than impressionable teenagers.
But with all the music I’ve listened to in recent years, I’ve begun to think that, as Charles Shaar Murray (a self-confessed guitar geek) put it in that intro to a piece on Etta James - the Real Deal is about the singing and the song.  Often nowadays though, the vocal duties are taken on by the guitarist/band leader, regardless of their aptitude.  Sometimes they're great, of course.  But sometimes, to these ears, it’s the wrong move.  Maybe they don't think the singing bit is that difficult, or that important.  Maybe they just don't want to split the pay check another way.  But for me, whatever potential there may be in their music, they’re hamstrung if the vocals don’t cut it.
But here’s the thing.  What does “cutting it” mean when you’re singing popular music?  It can’t always mean being technically perfect with a four-octave range.  If it did then half the blues, rock’n’roll and rock music over the last 80 years would have gone straight in the bin.  And for many music fans, me included, the ironing out of vocal imperfections with auto-tuning is a sin, not a virtue.  So what is it that works then?

A couple of years ago I heard Ian Hunter, of Mott the Hoople fame, talking to Johnnie Walker on his Sounds of the Seventies radio show.  He said that if hadn’t been for Bob Dylan, he could never have made it in rock music.  Dylan was nobody’s idea of a quality singer, Hunter suggested, but he made it okay to be a “personality” singer.  Keith Richards, in his autobiography, also commented on the impact of Dylan’s vocals:
“Bob has not got a particularly great voice,” says Keef, “but it’s expressive and he knows where to put it, and that’s more important than any technical beauties of voice.  It’s almost anti-singing.  But at the same time what you’re hearing is real.”

Guess who?

In other words, if you’ve got something to say, and your voice can communicate that to people whatever its weaknesses – I mean, really get it across like you mean it – then that’s an instrument as valuable as any guitar.  That “something to say” though, brings us on to the matter of the song.
Okay, I know I just mentioned Dylan.  But a rock’n’roll song doesn’t need a Nobel Prize-winning lyric to be great.  Take Little Richard and ‘Tutti Frutti’.  The lyrics of ‘Tutti Frutti’ are pretty much doggerel, but it still takes off like a runaway train, powered by Richard’s urgent, whooping delivery.  If this song and singer convey anything, it feels like pure exhilaration – amped up, maybe, by the knowledge that in its original, illicit version, the lyric was a paean to gay sex.  Did “getting away with it” add to the rock’n’roll thrill?  A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!
A singer has to have a certain something to make a song like ‘Tutti Frutti’ work – so-so just won’t do.  (Okay, so the godawful Pat Boone managed to shift shedloads of his cover of ‘Tutti Frutti’, but who gives a shit about his recording now?)  Maybe too, it needs to be just the right “certain something”.  The voice needs to fit the song and the sound.
In a more subtle vein than Little Richard, the song that first turned me on to King King was 'A Long History Of Love'.  It's a smouldering, slow bluesy affair, and Alan Nimmo's warm, soulful voice brings the emotion of the lyric to life with total conviction, aided and abetted by a guitar solo that weaves its way deliciously around the melody.  Alan Nimmo isn't the only singer who could have done this - I can well imagine Paul Rodgers delivering the goods, for example - but

Alan Nimmo - I second that emotion

it's still a vocal performance that really makes you believe every word.

Different singers, different capabilities.  Jimi Hendrix, it's said, wasn't keen on his own voice, couldn't bear to be watched while recording his vocals, and used to insist on spurious extra takes because of his insecurities.  But as his engineer Eddie Kramer put it, "Jimi was not a great vocalist in the classic sense, but his vocal style was suited to what he did to the nth degree."  The warmth of his voice, his sense of rhythm, and his playfulness all combined to make his singing a perfect fit for his overall sound.  Take a relatively simple track like 'Freedom', for example.  If it weren't Jimi singing, how well would it work?  He even managed to take on Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower' - as I've observed, another singer with a unique voice - and make it his own.

Whatever the limitations or idiosyncrasies of your voice, rock'n'roll will still give you a shot at the title, if you can find a way to make it work.  I don't mean that any old shit will do - my heart sinks when I'm sent an album to review and I encounter a vocalist who doesn't realise, or perhaps doesn't accept, that they're trying to sing in a key they can't handle.  No, getting it right demands awareness of your capabilities, and of the possibilities.

A little while back I watched the Joe Cocker documentary Mad Dog With Soul, in which Billy Joel observed that there was such a thing as "shouting in key", but said that wasn't what Joe Cocker did.  The thing is though, that "shouting in key" can be just peachy, if you understand the possibilities of

Sean Webster - emotional gold

what you can do with it, and "find a way to make it work".  Hell, just listen to Lemmy barking his way through 'Motorhead'.  His voice may be as rough as a badger's arse, but he fucking owns that song.

The opposite is true too though.  One can have a voice that's technically fine, but fail to be expressive with it.  For example, I'm not a big fan of Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and one of the reasons is that his long-standing vocalist may be blessed with a good singing voice, but he leaves me cold.  His voice comes, and it goes, and it leaves no mark on me whatsoever.  The same is true of John Mayer, however good some of his songs might be.  His voice is frictionless, it generates no traction.  Whereas the criminally less well-known Sean Webster has a voice that takes Mayer's 'Slow Dancing In A Burning Room' and turns it into an emotional tour de force.

Personal taste comes into it too, naturally.  I really enjoy Ian Hunter's English-accented delivery, but a very credible fellow blogger once likened it to "a coalman shouting down a back alley."  Whereas for my part you can argue all day long that Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison were landmark artists, but I just don't like their voices.  You pays your money, and you picks your poison.

Some of my favourite lines in poetry are by Hugh MacDiarmind, in his epic poem 'A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle':

And let the lesson be - to be yersel's

Ye needna fashion it's to be ocht else.

To be yersel's - and mak that worth bein',

Nae harder job to mortals has been gi'en.

That's the challenge for the rock'n'roll singer.  To be yourself, and make that worth being - to do it your own way, but still connect.

Of course, you could argue that the same principles apply to a guitarist.  But the singer is more exposed, at the mercy of their physical abilities.  As Neil Peart said, the drummer has the hardest job in a rock band, but the singer has the worst job.

I remember asking the singer and guitarist Marcus Malone about the challenge of reworking studio arrangements of songs for live work.  "A song's a song," he said, explaining that he has stripped songs back to two-person acoustic arrangements at times.  "I think people go for the voice mainly, it's the main melody.  All those other things are good around it - it's like, y'know, dessert!"  The icing on the cake, as Charles Shaar Murray said.

I still love great guitar playing.  But it's not the be all and end all.  With most of the artists I've grown to love over the last decade - like King King, Samantha Fish, Ian Siegal, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - there's a distinctive voice in there, working its personal brand of magic.  There's a singer, and a song.

Give Me The Truth - Blues Enthused looks for answers from Sean Webster

Notalotta people know this, as Michael Caine imitators like to say, but Sean Webster has followed in my footsteps.  See, although he’s now based in the Netherlands, the soulful singer and guitarist grew up in a Nottinghamshire mining village called Elkesley.  He probably went to school in nearby Retford, as I did myself for a couple of years back in the late Seventies.  He may even, like me, have enjoyed gigs at semi-legendary local music venue the Retford Porterhouse, which at one time or another hosted bands like Def Leppard, Saxon, Dr Feelgood, and even Robert Plant’s Honeydrippers.  Or maybe he didn’t, because he’s younger than I am and may have missed its heyday.

But that’s where the resemblances end.  Because Sean Webster grew up to be a very gifted guitarist and singer of soulful blues, whereas I – didn’t.

Sean Webster - cool or what?

So with his band's new live album Three Nights Live coming out on 2 September, I swapped some questions and answers with Sean, to find out about his musical journey.

How did you get started in music, Sean?  Who were your early influences?

Music was always a feature in the house as I was growing up. My Grandma bought me my very first guitar at the age of 3 I think. Sadly she died when I was about 8 yrs old so she never saw me even take much interest in it. I actually got started at school at the age of 14. My early influences were Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits. The usual I guess.

And how did things begin to develop for you as a professional musician?

I think they are still developing!!! I’m not quite sure when things got better, but I do remember filling in for a band on the main stage at Burnley Blues Festival back in maybe 2002 or so, and that jumped me ahead quite a bit.

You’re based in the Netherlands nowadays.  How did that come about?

I was touring The Netherlands back in 2008 for the first time, and I played a few festivals. One happened to be in Giethoorn where I met my wonderful wife. After a shaky start between us, I finally moved to Holland in 2010. After a short stint in Australia in 2012, my wife and I moved back to Holland and now live in the village we met in.

Being based on the Continent, how widely do you tour in Europe?

I’m always looking to broaden my touring and pushing to get into more countries etc, but so far I’ve played in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Poland, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg.

Next year I already have a 3-week tour of Czech republic booked and will hopefully tour Spain and possibly parts of Russia too.

The new album includes a cover of John Mayer’s ‘Slow Dancing In A Burning Room’, and I’ve also heard you perform his song ‘Gravity’ live. What attracts you to his work?

John Mayer just has it. He is one of the world’s best guitarists, he writes great songs, has a cool vibe, and is one of the very few crossover artists that attract all ages. If he wants to, he will be around for a very long time. 

Which may all very well be true, but let me say this, dear reader. John Mayer isn’t half the singer that Sean Webster is.  So if you want to hear an imaginative John Mayer song like ‘Slow Dancing In A Burning Room’ delivered with real emotion, go listen to Sean Webster singing it.

And speaking of emotion, I’m reminded that Steve Van Zandt likes to introduce his song ‘Some Things Just Don’t Change’ by saying that he wrote it for David Ruffin of The Temptations, who he says was “the King of Despair – your girlfriend left you, David Ruffin was your man.”  Well, due respect an’ all Stevie, but if you’re looking for the King of Despair, then Sean Webster is my man.  

So what’s it all about Sean?  I’ve joked in previous reviews, about so many of your

Dwelling at the dark end of the street

songs being about relationship pain and misery.  But I don’t imagine that’s entirely representative of your life, so how does it come about?

Actually it is quite representative. Perhaps not any more as I’ve finally found true happiness, but still I sometimes think how my life would be if it all turned black. 

To quote Billy Crystal's character in When Harry Met Sally, "That, my friend, is a dark side."  Okay Sean, but do you ever start off writing a cheerful song, only for it to take a left turn into something dark?

Erm . . . . No. My wife always says why can’t you write a happy song. I joke saying, when I find happiness I will. But like I said, I am happy . . . .  Maybe I’ll try . . . . I doubt it - but maybe.

What’s the song by someone else you really wish you’d written, and why?

I think Etta James's ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, because it’s such a great song that speaks to me every night I play it. I don’t believe in faking it, so if I stop enjoying playing it I’ll just stop. But each time I play ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, it speaks to me. I guess I think about what it would be like if my wife left and some nights I’m on the verge of tears. I guess that’s why every night someone in the audience is in tears. They feel it.

Conversely, what’s the song you’re most proud of having written yourself, and why?

Tough question. I think if I’m allowed two, they would be ‘The Dream’, which I wrote directly for my wife quite a few years ago, and ‘Leave Your Heart At The Door’ the title track of my last album. I don’t tell many people but it’s a song for my daughter about growing up. She’ll understand when she gets a bit older.  She’s only 4 now.

Are you going to be touring in Britain and Europe to promote the new album?

Definitely!!!! We have a 2-week tour planned in September for the UK finishing up at Carlisle Blues festival, and then we’ll be touring the album into next year in Europe. 

I start a 9-date theatre tour in The Netherlands with some high profile Dutch guys the day after Carlisle, so I’m pretty tied up for a while but I am writing a new studio album and will keep popping up with my band.

As I wrote in my review of Three Sides Live, more people should be listening to Sean Webster. More people should be going to see him. It’s as simple as that.  So now’s your chance – get hold of the live album, and catch him on tour wherever you can.

Go to the Sean Webster Band website to order Three Nights Live and check their tour dates.

Read the Blues Enthused review of Three Nights Live here.

Sean Webster Band - Three Nights Live

More people should know about Sean Webster. More people should be listening to him. More people should be going to see him. It’s as simple as that.  And his new live album Three Nights Live underlines the singular quality of a soul-blues sound that deserves more attention.

Now when I say soul-blues, I don’t mean Stax horns.  And12-bar action isn’t the primary focus either.  But what the hell else can you call it when the guy sings like Joe Cocker, his songs are high on emotional content - generally located at the dark end of the street, to quote the James Carr song – and his guitar playing enhances the intense mood?

This is not throwaway stuff. Take his cover of John Mayer’s ‘Slow Dancing In A Burning

Sean Webster - hear him now

Room’, which comes along three songs in.  A subtle ballad, it weighs in at ten and a half minutes, but it’s so engrossing that the time passes easily.  It opens with mesmerising guitar on the intro, building tension before floating into the body of the song, on which Webster and his band contrive to create an intense atmosphere.  It helps, of course, that as a singer Sean Webster could wipe the floor with Mayer’s airy efforts every day of the week and twice on Sundays.  But it also reflects some guitar playing with real purpose, adding fuel to the song over washes of organ from Hilbrand Bos, and even including a neat little snippet of the melody from Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ as a cherry on top.

The album opens ‘Give Me The Truth’ and ‘Hands Of Time’, both taken from Webster’s last album Leave Your Heart At The Door, and both with the energy to give momentum to the album.  The former has a strong melody, to which Webster brings a typically expressive vocal, augmented by some “woah-oh-oh” harmonising, while an excellent guitar solo builds suspense as it weaves around the melody.  ‘Hand Of Time’ then reinforces the impression that Webster knows how to write a damn fine tune, as the patient, pulsing beat and throbbing guitar on the intro lead towards a hook to be savoured.

‘Slow Dancing In A Burning Room’ then kicks off a run of four tracks in a similar mode.  And if I have a gripe at this point it’s that four songs on the trot about heartache and pain, ranging from seven to over ten minutes, is a little bit much.  Not that they’re bad in themselves – though I think he has stronger songs in his locker than the last of them, ‘Don’t Feel The Same’ – but for me a shorter, snappier affair in the middle would have been good to cleanse the palate.  Try writing a funky little number about going on holiday with the missus, eh Sean?

But I digress.  ‘Heart Still Bleeds’ is a strong song does have a laid-back intro, and some bright chord sequences, and you might even call the tune jaunty if it wasn’t the backdrop to more emotional turmoil in the lyric.  And there’s no arguing with a guitar solo that soars and changes pace, over shuffling drums, en route to an immaculate, attention-holding ending.  ‘Hear Me Now’, meanwhile, is probably as bluesy as the album gets, with a halting, hesitant

Songs from the dark end of the street

rhythm that echoes the doubts in the mind of the character in the song.  It also displays excellent dynamics as the intensity rises and falls, with a rousing ending on which Webster’s voice rides the mounting tension.  And if I don’t find ‘Don’t Feel The Same’ so interesting melodically, it still has a tasteful, elegiac organ solo from Bos, and a stylish guitar solo built around a repeated motif, before gliding down to a delicate ending.

‘The Mayor’ does bring a shift in mood, a driving affair with a tough riff, that’s kept crisp, and provides a breather before they tackle Keith Urban’s ‘’Til Summer Comes Around’, also previously included on Leave Your Heart At The Door.  It has a loooong intro, that starts quietly then picks up and recedes again, as a precursor to an evocative song with a restrained arrangement that puts Webster’s voice well to the fore as the lyrics paint a vivid, melancholy picture.

They go out in more upbeat fashion, with the funky, high stepping ‘Highway Man’ the set closer, and then the encore of ‘You Got To Know’, which rides along on a swinging beat from drummer Ruud Gielen and walking bass from Floris Poesse, with Webster adding some chiming, funky guitar and a breezy solo, to deliver a satisfying finish.

Mixed and mastered by House Of Tone knob-twiddler Wayne Proctor, a man who knows a bit about soulful grooves, the sound is clear and unfussy, letting the quality of the performance shine through.  Three Nights Live is a treat.  It captures an artist of real substance, with his own distinctive vibe.   If you’re a fan of smouldering, soulful blues, then this is for you. 

Three Nights Live is released on 2 September, and available for pre-order now.

Sean Webster Band - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 16 February 2018

To be honest, I’d never heard of Sean Webster until just over a year ago.  Not a dickie bird, until I was interviewing Ash Wilson and Webster’s name came up – and then coincidentally I caught the Sean Webster Band supporting King King in the Netherlands.  Between then and now, his album Leave Your Heart At The Door has had regular airings in our house, so I was looking forward to this headline appearance at the Edinburgh Blues Club.

Sean Webster - Man In Black

Webster and his amigos don’t disappoint.  Opening up with the tough and powerful ‘God Forsaken Town’ (the titles of some songs are, alas, guesswork on my part), they shift into the strutting ‘Can You Make A Move’ and quickly demonstrate how tight they are, with top quality use of dynamics, while Hilbrand Bos adds the first of a few impressive organ solos.  But it’s on ‘Hands Of Time’ that they really get into their sweet spot, an example of Webster’s strong songwriting that’s also a good platform for his soulful voice.  The following ‘Too Many False Alarms’ opens in slow and sparse fashion, and Webster decorates it with some lovely echoing guitar tones, before unfolding a solo that shows off the ability, when he’s at this best, to put you through an emotional wringer.
Webster may be the heart of the performance, notwithstanding his unassuming chat between songs, but his well-honed band also bring plenty to the party.  Since I saw him last he’s recruited a new rhythm section, with Floris Poesse contributing supple bass and Ruud Gielen whacking the skins mightily when the occasion demands it.  The ensemble cook up successive storms on ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, and some muscular funk-inflected Rock on ‘Give Me Time’.
Webster himself offers some expert storytelling on an evocative cover of Keith Urban’s ‘Til Summer Comes Around’, and after the rousing ‘Give Me The Truth’ he goes full tonto on the soul vocals front, with an impeccable reading of ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, on which he delivers a solo that weaves around and about the vocal melody, elaborating and amplifying the emotion of the song as it heads towards a compelling guitar and vocal ending.  And by the way, Webster does all this with just the one guitar – none of that endless swapping and re-tuning that so consumes some guitar geeks. 
The rocking ‘I Got The Blues’ includes some extra fun in the form of a sotto voce guitar and keys passage, before they close with ‘Mr Highwayman’, on which Webster and Bos depart the stage for a while as Poesse and Gielen embark on a highly entertaining rhythm section blowout.
I don’t know how many of this audience were familiar with Webster and co before tonight, but they roared for more, and got it in the shape of the slow and moody ‘Gravity’, with a very ‘Greeny’ intro, and finally the rousing, emphatic ‘You Gotta Know’.
Sean Webster is a damn good songwriter, he’s got the vocal and guitar chops to do the songs justice, and a well grooved band to do it with him. Other artists may get talked up big time, backed up by record labels and PR machinery, but to my mind the Sean Webster Band are among the unsung heroes of the current blues scene, and deserve more attention.
Speaking of well-grooved bands, local support act Cow Cow Boogie were also a wow.  “Is it rockabilly?  Is it R’n'B?” I asked myself as they ripped through the likes of ‘Scorched’, ‘Somebody’s Always Talking’, and ‘Candyman’.  And the answer is, "who cares?"  This was the first time I’d encountered their stew of styles, incorporating stand-up bass, and several tons of twang courtesy of both Stevie Slide on lap steel and Steve Milne on guitar, and it warmed up a cold February night no end.

Heads down, no nonsense Cow Cow Boogie

I’d seen singer Nicole Smits guesting with other people from time to time, but here she was on another level, hopping, bopping, and twirling about the stage in a way that suggested she’s truly at home on the Cow Cow Boogie range.  More to the point, her vocals are Patsy Cline-outstanding on ‘San Antonio Rose’, and even better on the irony-laden ‘Do Me Wrong’, her phrasing expert as she delivers sliding and cracked notes to truly tell the tale.  Special kudos too for managing to do something different with ‘John Henry’, in a convincingly jazzy arrangement involving just Smits plus Scott Mather’s double bass and George Logan’s drums. Hats off to Cow Cow Boogie for blending different genres into a coherent aesthetic with such conviction.

The Blues Enthused Christmas Stocking 2017 - Part 1

So this is Christmas, and what have we done?  Another year over – and it’s been a pretty good one on the blues’n’roots’rock’n’rollin’ front.  It’s been a year of discoveries too.  Not necessarily all new artists by any means, and not all written about here either, but people I’ve tripped over the first time. Let’s unwrap some of the new finds Blues Enthused made in the course of the year, shall we?

Simon Campbell unwraps some 60s British blues - 21st century style

Just to prove the point that there are old timers out there you can still get acquainted with, I had fun reviewing the latest album by Washington DC’s The Nighthawks for Blues Matters magazine.  All You Gotta Do is a pretty damn enjoyable collection of old-fashioned R’n’B from a gang who’ve been around for god knows how long.  Check out this footage of ‘Livin’ The Blues’, from their earlier album 444.

Simon Campbell has also been kicking around for a looong time.  But in the company of his missus Suzy Starlite, he put together new outfit the Starlite Campbell Band to release one of my favourite albums of the year, Blueberry Pie.  It’s a crackling modern take on Sixties British blues, with strong songs, great guitar work, and sharp lyrics.  Lend an ear to these snippets of tracks from the album, and see what you think.
Just to complete a trio of oldsters, while I was on Blues Matters reviewing duty I also encountered James Litherland, once upon a time guitarist and vocalist in Colosseum.  His latest album Back'N'Blue is a classy collection of tunes showing the songsmithery of an old pro.  Often cool and funky, with clear, looping guitar lines snaking around your ears, he also weaves in some other styles with ease, and whenever I give the album a spin it's a treat.  Here he is wandering around the music shops of Soho, and going for a pint in the Angel pub - good choice by the way - to the strains of his single 'Can't Live Without You'.  Oh yeah, and there's Les Binks, once of Judas Priest, on drums!

I’ve also been introduced to a couple of truly solo performers, of the one-man band variety.  Latterly there’s been Canadian Steve Hill, who manages to get all Zep-tastic with guitar, cymbals and kick drum, all on his ownsome.  Here he is giving it big licks on ‘Dangerous’, from his album Solo Recordings: Volume 3.  And earlier in the year I reviewed High Dollar Gospel, the latest album by a fella from Virginia called Eli Cook, for Blues Rock Review.  In

Sean Webster - naturally soulful

the review I wondered why I hadn't heard of him before.  But bizarrely, I think I may have caught a bit of Cook playing live a few years back, late night in a bar in Charlottesville, Virginia.  I gather he does play with a band on occasion, but he was on his own that time, and he’s on his own here with this version of ‘Catfish Blues/Gasoline’.

Nearer to home, I reckon the newcomer making the most impact on record this year was Ash Wilson, with his album Broken Machine.  Wilson didn’t just announce himself with some bloody good soulful blues, served straight up, he chucked in a few twists of Josh Homme-like stylings for good measure.  You can also read here about how a rather iffy synth gave an edge to the title track of the album.  Wilson has ended the year taking over from Innes Sibun as guitar honcho for Sari Schorr, but here he is playing his own haunting tune ‘The Hitcher’ in London back in August.  And yes, those are indeed Bob Fridzema, Roger Inniss and Wayne Proctor making up his band.

Ash Wilson also described how he’d played previously with Netherlands-based Sean Webster, and spoke enviously of Webster’s aptitude with an emotional, soulful vocal.  By complete coincidence, it turned out Webster was the support act to King King on a jaunt I took to the Netherlands back in February, so I swiftly had the chance to catch him live

Elles Bailey - the kid shows promise

before reviewing his impressive new album Leave Your Heart AtThe Door.  Here he is performing one of my favourites from the album, ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’, with guest vocalist Pennyleen Krebbers, who also featured on the album version.

And it wouldn’t do to end this instalment without a contribution from the fairer sex – in this case the up and coming Elles Bailey.  The husky voiced Bristolian’s album Wildfire showed real promise, and she and her band lived up to that promise live too, straddling roots genres to good effect.  Here she is with a stripped back take on one of her best songs, the Janis Joplin-inspired ‘The Girl Who OwnedThe Blues’, from a Whispering Bob Harris session.

That little lot should keep you entertained for a while when the rest of the family decide to watch some rubbish Christmas telly.  Look out for Part 2 before the leftover turkey is finished!

Don't miss out on Part 2 of the Christmas Stocking.  Check it out here.

Sean Webster Band - Leave Your Heart At The Door

It’s reassuring to find that Sean Webster dedicates Leave Your Heart At The Door to his wife, because otherwise – boy, you’d think the guy had an unhappy love life.  Or to put it rather differently, Webster specialises in dramatic monologues about heartache.  Deceit, despondency, defeat – these themes are his stock in trade, lyrically.

But if that sounds a bit miserable, it should be said that Webster and his pals carry it all off marvellously.  He has the happy knack of his setting these tales to melodies so natural that they sound like someone must surely have written them before.

The eleven tracks here come divided almost equally between soulful slowies and funkier, more upbeat tunes – for all that the words may sound pretty bleak across the piece.

Sean Webster - sure got the blues

So on the one hand we get a plaintive ballad like ‘Wait Another Day’, with its gentle arrangement and a soulful delivery.  On the other there’s the melodic opener ‘Give Me The Truth’, with its “woah-oh-oh” vocal theme, a great blend of guitar and keys, and a tasteful guitar solo from Webster resolving neatly back into the melody.  And there’s ‘You Got To Know’, with its rolling groove and surges of organ from guest keyboard player Bob Fridzema, who adds a few trills of adornment for good measure over the pushy drum rhythm from Joel Purkess.  For once the lyric here is determined rather than desperate, the protagonist insisting on getting the girl to whom the song is addressed.  Either way, Webster’s vocals sell the story in the rasping, emotional manner of Joe Cocker.

A couple of the more downbeat outings may not really hit the mark, but down the stretch the album really hits top gear.  The brisk friends-and-lovers narrative of ‘You Can Say’ is reminiscent of Texas on a good day – although Webster sure is different from Sharleen Spiteri – and builds up to a repeated refrain before fading out.

The title track ‘Leave Your Heart At The Door’ ups the ante in the manner of a top drawer Deacon Blue ballad.  It’s a cautionary tale about the emotional upheavals that await in adulthood, fatalistic about life’s ups and downs – mostly downs – with some nice chiming guitar lines.

Which just leaves the closing double whammy of ‘I Don’t Wanna Talk About It’ and ‘Til’ The Summer Comes Around’.  The former has an insistent groove and great melody, especially on the chorus, and musically could easily be taken for a steamy booty call song.  Lyrically though, this duet with PennyLeen Krebbers has the air of a bedtime conversation in the dark between a couple where the woman has just confessed she’s met someone else.  Dark stuff it’s true, but it doesn’t half develop some rousing momentum.  Album closer ‘Til’ The Summer Comes Around’ meanwhile, is an exquisite reading of Keith Urban’s narrative of young love and estrangement, wistful in the manner of Springsteen’s ‘Sandy’, and with an excellent guitar solo to boot.  Suffice to say it became a favourite of my other half when we caught the Sean Webster Band supporting King King on their recent Netherlands tour.

If you like a bit of bluesy soulfulness, delivered with conviction and great musicianship, Leave Your Heart At Door will surely fit the bill.  Just keep the Kleenex handy.

Leave Your Heart At The Door was released on 24 February 2017.