Michael Chapman 14th May at The Hinckley ACT
| Author: Mary Clark | Published: 11th May 2008 12:34 |
"We are overwhelmed he has agreed to pay for us in Hinckley...."
Playing at Hinckley and Burbage's newest musical venue THE HINCKLEY ACT. Wednesday 14th May 2008
8pm
Tickets £8.00
at :
Advanced Carbide Tooling Ltd
Unit 7 Watling Close
Sketchley Meadows Business Park
Hinckley
LE10 3EZ (Road Map)
Leicestershire
Tel: 01455 234040
"The songs would have been more than enough on their own, but I think I'm on safe ground when I rave about his playing. The bluff Yorkshire folk/blues singer transformed into an intense, gifted guitar player. So intense you could lose yourself in his playing. Pieces like Wellington Skellington about his dog no less, and the beautiful La Madrugada - a slice of sensual classical guitar, revealed a playing talent that can only be described as 'awesome'."
"I don't normally go for masterclass stuff but this has been a classic guitar concert with equally good music and vocal content presented in a warm, personal, unique style by a man who is still expanding his already vast musical experience. No boring old has-been going through the same old motions, the excellent Mr C is very alive and kicking. Long may he continue!"
.Music: Michael Chapman, Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Michael Chapman's characteristically droll introduction of his Postcards of Scarborough as ''a medley of my hit'' is doubly misleading. Although its appearance on a popular 1970s sampler album makes it the song by which he's generally remembered, this homage to drab hotels, duff food, and melancholic regret never actually dented the charts. It's also far from his only classic, however.
In a 90-minute set that brought Big Big Country to a magnificent finale while showing that the sexagenarian Yorkshireman remains a productive composer, particularly of guitar instrumentals that skilfully evoke their roots off America's beaten track, Chapman drew on a repertoire stretching back to his first album, the glorious Rainmaker, proving it a source of renewable energy.
Rainmaker's wistful One Time Thing, shorn of some of its guitar scenery, sounded freshly minted, and its near-contemporary, Soulful Lady, whose recorded version boasted one of Mick Ronson's finest guitar solos, found Chapman producing a rocking acoustic sound to rival his old band all by himself.
Chapman always was a superb guitarist, with a thumb and fingers for a rhythm section capable of extending his range - as here - from bluesy picking to Django Reinhardt-style swing sophistication, ragtime intricacies, and an apposite bottleneck elegy to his late friend, John Fahey. His voice, careworn and naturally downbeat, may not have been Chapman's fortune, but it suits his songwriting perfectly, and his own confession to out-miserying Leonard Cohen is soon nullified by humorous anecdotes about trains, boats, and the aforementioned Fahey's dinner-table eccentricities. A Fully Qualified Survivor indeed, and since he only lives down by Hadrian's Wall, can someone not ensure that Chapman visits us more often?
.Rob Adams Glasgow Herald
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