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The Rockingbirds

Venue: Ducie Bridge
Town: Manchester
Date: 29th March 2013
Website: http://therockingbirds.co.uk/

NOMA is the latest in a long line of new areas that Manchester seems obsessed with building and The Ducie Bridge seems to be only structure there that is neither shiny new or a construction site and it is reassuring that it remains unscathed.

Gigs are a up a steep, narrow flight of stairs leading to a room that has bench seating around the three walls that don't have a stage attached to it. These, plus the few additional seats around the small tables dotted around are filled soon after the doors open. I suspect that this is because The Rockingbirds audience now like to take the weight off their feet rather than a desire to get in early to see the support bands.

The first supplemented his sparse, blues electric guitar with a stomp box under his right boot and bells on top of his left. But, good as it was, it tired after about fifteen minutes. The second act started with an apology that he was a little worse for wear and probably wouldn't be able to sing quite as well as usual. Unsurprisingly, this didn't go down too well and neither did the later revelation that he took the gig on for free beer.. For the record he played acoustic blues accompanied by a drummer.

But it was the Rockingbirds that the audience had come to see. The six piece from North London, who formed twenty three years ago, released two albums in five years then split up., then reformed for Heavenly records' eighteenth birthday and have just released their first album in five years, are a class act. There was, apparently some minor issue with the sound early in the set which was resolved in the time honoured way of pointed at something, then pointing up (or maybe it was down) then giving a thumbs up; all very low key. Unlike their music. The Rockingbirds are a country band - not necessarily alt-county or Americana or over produced Nashville. If they were in the Sates they would be playing to honky tonks full of people drinking beer and two stepping on the dance floor.

With a new album out it's natural that a good part of the set is drawn from it; Fanny, Lady of the Lamas, the bombastic Stop The War and, despite a call for Jonathan, Jonathan, a "more recent single" as Alan Tyler put it Til' Something Better Comes Along a track so catchy that got played pretty much all the way to Leeds two days later and is among the best that Tyler has written.

Few people in the audience would not have seen The Rockingbirds in the early nineties and it was the likes of Gradually Learning, Time Drives The Truck, Drifting and the afore mentioned tribute to Jonathan Richman that they wanted.. "I've loved you now for a good few years though we've never really met / I shook your hand at the Hammersmith Odeon that's a thing I won't forget" is possibly the greatest description of meeting a hero, but to me it just reminds me of my mum calling me when I was in trouble!

With their solid rhythm section, lead guitar, the bland of pedal steel and keys, Tylers voice (even when he is trying to do his best Willie Nelson) makes them, still, the pre-eminent English country band.

Words & Photography:John 'The Jacket' Hawes