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Review: Blackberry Smoke, O2 Academy
Superficially, Blackberry Smoke’s fellow Atlantans Biters might have seemed an odd fit as support act for this tour. But they prove complementary in the best possible sense, their brand of period Brit glam rock filtered through a Cheap Trick sensibility proving a welcome contrast to the headliners’ whisky-soaked Southern rock.
When Noel Fielding lookalike frontman Tuk Smith declares “I wanna be Ziggy Stardust” during his band’s set-closing anthem 1975 (“when all the kids were cool,” apparently), it’s a surprise that no one storms the stage to correct him. “I’m sorry young man, but I’m afraid you’re a couple of years out there. By 1975, the deceased dame had left Ziggy far behind and was well into his dire ‘plastic soul’ phase. Most right-thinking punters left him to it for a couple of reinventions.” But it’s hard to take the sneery, condescending view of the Mojo-reading Old Music Bore when Biters are such damn fun, with Smith sharing yarns from his vast repertoire of disgraceful road stories (“…and then he cheated on his girlfriend with a man”).
is needed now More than ever
Many of their lyrics lament being a band out of time, despairing at those of their generation who listen to computer-generated music or experience the world through their mobile phones. Who could blame anyone for wanting to return to a rose-tinted – let’s tweak it a bit – 1972 in such circumstances? They win plenty of new fans tonight and even make the effort to reach out to the snooty Americana brigade by breaking out the acoustic guitar for newie Going Back to Georgia.
True story: when it emerged that, like its predecessor, Blackberry Smoke‘s second album Little Piece of Dixie wouldn’t get a UK release, your correspondent contacted an Atlanta eBay trader to find out how much it would cost to send a copy to the UK. They seemed bemused that anyone in little old England would be interested in a local bar band, but obligingly toddled down to the post office to find out. Who’d have predicted that, just a few years later, the Smoke would be headlining an absolutely rammed Academy? ‘Too rock for country. Too country for rock.’ announces one of their T-shirts, adapting Lonnie Mack, which summarises the problem they face across the pond. Enlightened European audiences like, well, ourselves tend to be a little less obsessed with pigeonholing and have clutched the hairy quintet to our collective bosom.
Of course you can hear all their antecedents and influences at play, from such ’70s forebears as The Band, Little Feat, Lynyrd Skynyrd and – especially – The Allman Bothers to great jam bands like the Dead and Gov’t Mule, modern metal and even a dash of prog (they’ve been known to cover Starship Trooper, but not tonight). What’s really impressive is how Blackberry Smoke manage to create something so fresh from these familiar building blocks, investing many a cliché with wit in the lyric department. “I may not change the world/But I’m gonna leave a scar” drawls the aptly named Charlie Starr in that powerful, thick-as-mollasses voice of his on crowd favourite Leave a Scar.
They’re not a band for fancy stagecraft, but these road-hardened veterans (‘Always on Tour’ runs another band slogan) are such great musicians that they have no problem shaking the set up each night and chucking in a couple of curveballs. Tonight we even get The Move’s California Man. Who’d have predicted that?
Their brilliant UK breakthrough album The Whippoorwill dominates the set – although, alas, they don’t play the haunting title track – showcasing Blackberry Smoke’s diversity from honky-tonk bar-room singlongs (Six Ways to Sunday) to Starr’s finest lament, One Horse Town; a tale of conformity and thwarted ambition that speaks to anyone who hails from a rural shithole, where you “don’t climb too high or dream too much”. Elsewhere, they rock as hard as just about anyone on Waiting for the Thunder, with Starr’s gargantuan vocals reverberating around the cavernous Academy.
Starr’s voice and guitar-playing blends superbly with that of Paul Jackson, while skilful bassist Richard Turner is something of an impassive John Entwistle figure and his equally unflashy drummer brother Brit proves more than equal to the task of delivering everything from a shuffle to a hard rock beat. The icing on this particular Southern rock cake is keyboard player Brandon Still, whose organ and piano embellishments add so much extra texture.
Obviously, we need a jam. Unlike the dreaded drum solo, that’s one ’70s staple well worth reviving. Sleeping Dogs, another track from The Whippoorwill, segues unexpectedly into Led Zep’s Your Time is Gonna Come, which works remarkably well when repurposed in a southern rock context, and, eventually, a truncated iteration of the Allmans’ ever-evolving epic Mountain Jam.
It’s all absolutely magnificent stuff, with the world-weary Ain’t Much Left of Me bringing the curtain down on a three song encore. Not since the ’70s has Southern rock seemed in such rude health.
All photos by Jeff Oram – Silent Fox Photos
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