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Gregory Alan Isakov + Chris Pureka

Venue: Grateful Fred's
Town: Formby
Date: 31st October
Website: http://gregoryalanisakov.com/

It may have been Hallowe'en but there were only good spirits here tonight at Grateful Fred's for another superb night of the best in Americana music.

As ever, the Grateful Fred House Band opened the evening, in front of a full house. They performed their customary eclectic set in a Tox-Mex style, beginning with Steve Earle's" Galway Girl "followed by "Sing Me Back Home" and a segue of "Before The Next Teardrop Falls /Together Again".They then took a somewhat different route with Green Day's "The Time Of Your Life", but it worked well. The GFHB concluded their set with "I've Just Seen A Face" by some local band called The Beatles.

Tonight was something of a double header as the "support" act was the highly regarded singer-songwriter Chris Pureka, who hails from Northampton, Massachusetts but now lives in New York. Unfortunately, Chris was suffering with a sore throat but even so, the quality of her distinctive voice was clearly evident. Indeed, Chris used the slight gruffness in her voice to good effect by singing a Tom Waits song " A Little Bit Of Rain Never Hurt No One", which was more than a little ironic considering that Hurricane Sandy was battering the East Coast of the United States at the time [and it was pretty wet in Liverpool too].

Chris's songs deal, in the main, with personal and emotional issues. Her set included a song for her Grandma ["Goodlife"] and "Barn Song".

Chris received a warm reception from the GF crowd, a number of whom had come specifically to see her.

I was really looking forward to seeing the headliner, Gregory Alan Isakov. I have only become aware of his music relatively recently but I have been mightily impressed. To me he seems to be the natural successor to a long line of excellent American singer-songwriters stretching back to the 1960's, I'm thinking of the likes of Tim Hardin, Phil Ochs and Leonard Cohen through to Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne. His music also reminds me a little of Nick Drake with its lush use of melody. Listen, for example to his song "Master and Hound" from his gorgeous album "This Empty Northern Hemisphere" and you may see what I mean.

My first hearing of Gregory live was on Clive Anderson's Radio 4 show "Loose Ends" a few days before this concert and, again, I was very impressed.

Tonight, Gregory was accompanied by two of his friends from his hometown of Boulder, Colorado, namely Ramaya Soskin on electric guitar and vocals and Bonnie Paine [from the band Elephant Revival] on saw [yes, saw], washboard and vocals. The words "haunting" and "other worldly " are probably over-used in writing about music but in Gregory's case they are most apposite. Gregory goes beyond the normal boundaries of singer-songwriter performances with his use of treated vocals, atmospheric electric guitar soundscapes [courtesy of Ramaya] and the eerie,ghostly bowed saw playing of Bonnie.

Gegory played songs from both "Northern Hemisphere" and its predecessor "That Sea, The Gambler" .Highlights included the aforementioned "Master and Hound", "Evelyn" and "The Stable Song", the latter featuring some ghostly electric guitar from Ramaya [appropriately enough for Hallowe'en].

Gregory also sang a lovely cover version of Leonard Cohen's "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong ".

In the spirit of democracy, both Ramaya and Bonnie had a solo spot.

Both were excellent. Bonnie sang a spine-tingling song called "If I Was A Raven" on which her extraordinary voice sounded positively supernatural [as her bandmates said "We're pretty sure she's an alien"].

I have been to many events at Grateful Fred's but this performance by Gregory and friends has to be one of the best yet.

Peter Cowley