This was Steve Wynn's second London show on his current tour to promote his new book I Wouldn't Say it If It Wasn't True A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate (www.jawbonepress.com), I couldn't make his Sunday afternoon hoedown on Hoe Street with chart topping interviewer Stewart Lee, who was in the front row at this show, in the week his Number one single is re-issued again this coming Friday, on Asian Dub Foundations 94-To Now Collaborations album. It's strange when it's a comedian in the audience who has had the biggest hit rather than Peter Perrett who was also there.
The show started with Steve wearing his glasses and reading from the book to tell us about his very first band in high school and how aged 12 he retired for the first time, after they had played there first big gig, before he whipped off his glasses and played a restrained version of Jumping Jack Flash, a song I don't recall hearing him play live during the very close to 40 years since I first saw him live at the Marquee in 1984.
Steve then told us about the first song he ever wrote aged about 12, by way of an intro for Sing My Blues that first juvenile effort that was far better than expected. Steve then spoke about his first proper band Suspects and how that bands elder statesman Steve Suchil turned the young Steve onto all sorts of less well-known band's including the Velvet Underground and the impact hearing the Banana album had on him. The stripped back acoustic troubadour version of Sunday Morning was heartfelt and rather touching.
It was then time to find out about Steve's first big road trip out of California down to Memphis by greyhound bus in search of Alex Chilton his hero from the still totally obscure Big Star, he found him by visiting the Memphis address on the Tav Falco's Panther Burns record he owned, Tav opened the door and directed him to Alex's favourite watering hole, where Steve spent the next week buying Alex drinks and chatting about life music and everything but Big Star, that spurred Steve on to form The Dream Syndicate and record the first ep including That's What You Always Say that was played as frantically as he could get it on an acoustic guitar.
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More early tales led into Definitely Clean, the band's trajectory took off and they hooked up with Rhino to record the Days of Wine And Roses in one speedy blur, most of the audience sang along to When You Smile. After a fierce bidding war the band then signed to A & M and quickly lost the plot during the months long recording process for the Medicine Show album, that left Steve an drunken wreck needing to sing about goings on in Merrittville.
Steve then sang a new song from the current album that was about the experiences in the book. The band were trying to adjust to the major label lifestyle for Medicine Show but it was a bit much, Steve's stories about the band's first European tour made clear, they had more road crew than they were used too, as well as a label that had hired the band its own PA system.
The second new song was Making Good On MY Promises that almost sounded like a song from Fluorescent. Steve then told us about how the band started to fall apart around the time of Ghost Stories and that the album finished with what he thought was a perfect last song for a band When The Curtain Falls that sounded really powerful sung stripped back and acoustic like this.
Steve than gave credit where it was due for this tour and promised us, he will be back next March for a full band tour, at a yet to be determined venue, with no dynamic pricing envisaged, before he closed the show with a great version of The Days Of Wine And Roses.
Of course after the show Steve did the traditional in-store signing session so we could all get our books and or albums signed. I look forward to reading the book soon.
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