#gibson studios

Nothing says ‘Spring has sprung’ like ice cold rain …

… and the arrival of the annual Maverick Festival Preview. Horizontal sleet blowing down the concrete canyons behind Oxford Street wasn’t the happiest evocation of the summer festival season but the yearly fanfare for Maverick’s rural celebration of Americana got Plunger more in the mood.

Festival organiser Paul Spencer introduced proceedings with the time-honoured “thanks to Southern Comfort for the bar and Gibson for the use of their room”, before a brief run through highlights of this year’s line-up including The Cordovas, “like the Band crossed with the Grateful Dead”; “the first band to sign to Stax in forty odd years” Southern Avenue; Bonnie Bishop; Danny & The Champions Of The World; and this year’s special element celebrating the music of Hawaii, featuring Hawaiian singer Kehau Kahananui and pedal-steel, lap-slide etc. whizz BJ Cole. Aside from these headline artists there are lots of excellent artists Plunger have seen before: Curse Of Lono, Hillfolk Noir, The Goat Roper Rodeo Band, Lucas & King, Terra Lightfoot and Pepe Belmonte.

After Paul’s unplanned comedy intro (“He’s played Maverick many times: I’m sure you’ll recognise him, please welcome Mr Don… what’s his surname?) Don Gallardo (with Travis Stock on bass and vocals, Jim Maving guitar/vox and Steve Brookes drums) played a four-song set featuring the bouncy Half-Step Toodle-Oo stroll of Stay Awhile with fine three-part vocal harmonies; a Parsonsy rework of louche saloon country in Diamonds & Gold where Jim added some nice pedal-steel mimicking Les Paul lines; and the breezy Burritos-style West Coast flavour of Something I Gotta Learn. Wrapping up was the pulsing, bass-driven, dark-tinged Henley/Frey rocker Banks Of The Mississippi where Jim tore loose a little more on guitar in a double-speed Skynyrdesque wig-out and the extended chugging coda included a neat Miss You tease closing in kill switch feedback grandstanding.

The surprise second artist was bluesman Tom Attah: despite lurking on the fringes of the blues scene for ages Plunger hadn’t yet managed to run into Tom, so it was ironic to finally catch him at an Americana event. Tom’s wry statement “I’m a black man in a suit, with an acoustic… so obviously I’m going to be playing heavy metal for you tonight” introduced a set of classic blues mixed with humour: from a back porch finger-picked How Long Have It Been Since You Been Home to a Petway-via-Hendrix run at Catfish Blues with frenetic fingering and Tom’s vocal switching from gruff baritone to falsetto wails, topped off with a Foxy Lady tease. “The next song is a slow blues, because all blues is slow. And sad…” heralded I Can’t Wait To Get Back Home (“Guildford, in my case”) a song Tom wrote for Nick Griffin, “because he’s a twat” and dedicated to Nigel Farage “because he’s a twat too!” Tom employed octave pedal and loop station for a cleverly-built-from-the-bass-line-up Help Me: perhaps tongue in cheek, since with a loop station of course you CAN do it all by yourself. The final song Killing Floor morphed into Got My Mojo Working culminating in fairly enthusiastic boys-versus-girls crowd call and response (“I thought I’d get you involved as some of you are obviously in fine voice at the back there…”)

With the warmth of the music, and plenty of food and drink from Maverick’s regular suppliers (including some very fine ale from Grain Brewery) you could almost forget that it was classically arctic Bank Holiday weather outside.

Mastodon & Thin Lizzy-Emerald (Acoustic)