Until a few days ago when bluesmick posted a recording of their Prince Albert Brighton gig, i'd never come across DADDY or their members Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack. It's always great to be turned on to new music and musicians, and the regulars at the Cosmic American nights in Nottingham were able to fill me in on some of the background of the two performers.
The Cosmic American evenings seem to have a loyal following and there were 80-100 people present to watch the performance on Thursday night, compared to an estimate of 25 people at the Brighton show. With a support act of Dean Owens the format was amended also with rather than 2 sets, the performance following the more traditional headlining format, although we were not shortchanged with a show clocking in at 2 hours.
The two performers provide an interesting contrast as they traded songs from their careers. Will Kimbrough is the performer you immediately notice. As a previous winner of the Americana Instrumentalist of the Year award, his stunning guitar patterns raise eyebrows and garner appreciative applause during solos. His songs are of an high standard too, range from country ballads, to gospel, and pointing a route through the everyday mundane travails of love, work and washing.
At first Tommy Womack seems to take the backseat on this particular journey providing guitar and harmonica support. Once you start to get a feel for his songs however the talent rapidly emerges. Wry social commentary abounds in his writing, always emphasising the poignant and absurd, and always on the lookout for an amusing payoff line. This is one of the hardest tricks to pull off in the musical world and really until my discovery of Tommy this week , the only person who i'd say pulls this off as well is the great underated Dan Bern.
The total highlight of a great night though was my first hearing of Tommy's song The Replacements from his 2002 Circus Town album. After listening to music all my life sometimes it feels like i have a jaded palette, so when a song connects as much as this one its a great feeling of discovery. My later teenage years were spent almost obsessively listening to those twin pillars of the 80s american college music scene R.E.M. and The Replacements. As much as i listened though, almost as entertaining were the many stories that filtered across the atlantic in the music weeklies about The Replacements bizarre behaviour. The Replacements as a song is a tribute to all that was great about the band, while not shirking from hiding the bad, and the payoff line '...and when they were good, God got up to dance ', just makes me regret even more that I never caught this great band live.
A Full Show MP3 Download Is Available HERE
Setlist
A Full Lossless FLAC Version Of The Show Is Available HERE
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