Walking downstairs into the underground basement of the Slaughtered Lamb in a back street somewhere in the bowels of Farringdon, into a large and blackened smoke-filled room, littered with scruffy armchairs and wicker sofas, I gleefully thought to myself “Ooooh it’s a proper folk club!” Lovely lovely.
In this intimate and warm setting, STEVE MAYONE treated us to a heartfelt, sometimes gritty, sometimes moving, set of downright dirty Americana tracks and touching ballads.
One of the true values of a musician is whether they can translate their recorded songs into the striped-down acoustic arena. Needless to say, Steve Mayone can. Listen to his albums (“Bedroom Rockstar” comes highly recommended) and the likes of Brendon Benson, Tragically Hip and Ryan Adams spring to mind. However, hearing just the man and his guitar is a different
story altogether (although disappointingly there was no banjo in this set – as he really is a finger-pickin' good player).
The stand out tracks he performed included “Deeper in the Well”, a little slice of perfectly crafted bluegrass melancholy, reminiscent of Union Station perhaps. “She Runs Deep” was stunning, in fact the whole gig was. Warm and engaging, his music really hit a nerve, like hymns to the red-wine soaked state of mind I was in that evening. Oh yes, a nice bit of truly
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heartfelt Americana was enough to get my whimsical sense of poetry going. All he needed was lyrical references to forlorn bridesmaids and the Good Lord Jesus and I would have been weeping in the aisle.
Funnily enough, the room was packed full of trendy hair-cutted indie kids who were a bit po-faced to start with, and by the end they was some real toe-tapping going on along with the rest of ‘em. The ignorant buggers were chatting rather too loudly to start with (which is annoyingly often the case at acoustic music nights), but a Mexican Wave of shushness soon sorted that out – the Mary Poppins spoon-full-of-sugar method (i.e. make it fun).
So all in all, Steve Mayone, he’s really rather good. If he’s ever in your neighbourhood go check him out. At the very least, get yourself a copy of ‘Bedroom Rockstar’. You won’t be disappointed.
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