A night on the town in the company of Keith Donnelly proved to be just the tonic in Nuneaton last night. In these troubled times of War, Poverty, Pandemic, Brexit, Climate Change, Shortages and the rest, sometimes you just have to gather communally together and be silly. Sometimes, doesn't the tv news and the tabloid melodrama seem more absurd than life itself? So it's good to have a (good!) beer, relax and sit back and laugh collectively at the little things. In that way perhaps only temporarily we can forget for a while about the ones we can do little to change.
Keith Donnelly was just the man for the job. From his first entrance to his final encore he was excellent. I wasn't the only one to have tears of laughter running down my cheeks several times last night. The personal highlight for me was his reprise of "Sub Conscious Cry for Attention." This was a very early album track from the "Don't Make Me Laugh," CD. It is a very clever piece of musical satire. Brief, cruel and effective. I hold my hand up and confess: it was a personal request from me last night. I have always found that song quintessentially KD. Deadpan delivery. Clever lyrics, poking fun at singer songwriters. Hugely overstated vocally which only makes it even more amusing. I could tell by the reaction of some of the audience that they hadn't heard it before. They were soon in as much trouble as I was.
It was a memorable occasion in several ways. Flossy back on a stage singing with Nunc at NFC for the first time in six months. Des Patalong fooling around with his enormous jingle pole.( Matron!) Craig Sunderland literally letting his hair down. Welcome visits from many local musicians . It's always good to see local artistes support their local clubs. So it was heartening to see Warwickshire Folk Royalty like Max Wright, Jak Lynch, Kathryn Fear, Brian Philips, Bob Brooker, Lauren South and a few more adding to our number. It turned out to be a decent attendance. At 7.30pm it was just Keith and I and the bar staff in the Queen's Hall, so it was so good to see the doors open and so many familiar faces coming in!
Nunc were not quite yet back to full complement, as Harpo Jon Harrington had suffered a bereavement and was unable to attend. ( Hugs from us all, Jon). We opened both halves with a few songs, some of which we'd not rehearsed together for a while. My thanks to the members of the audience who said such nice things afterwards particularly about a sensitive version of "Dark End Of The Street." Here is a picture by Max Wright. Flossy and I are enjoying Paul's solo.
Des was in a mischievous mood. His version of "Nelson's Blood," a well known Shanty was both unique and very witty. I've heard variations a plenty of this shanty but a line that ran as a personal advert for his own CD was a new one to me. I'm not sure the verse that ran " A weasel down the trousers wouldn't do us any harm," was in the original song either. I detect the hand of Mr.Donnelly in that version. I guess you'd be keel-hauled on a merchantman bound for Tobago singing that variation.
You seldom forget (or regret) spending an evening in the company of Keith Donnelly. There are plenty of people on the Folk circuit who fancy themselves as comedians, but most fall short when compared to Keith. I have seen him in many guises and in assorted company. Solo, duetting with Flossie Malialeville. Fooling around with Bill Bates and many other folk artistes. I can even remember seeing him when he had hair. He would drop into The Bulls Head Folk Club Brinklow hosted by Black Parrot Seaside in the 1970s just to do a floor spot. He was obviously a good guitarist even then, in a time when we often had similar "drop-in" cameos from Mick Stuart, Dave Bennett, Kevin Dempsey and Rod Felton. Keith clearly also had stage presence, comic timing and a certain charisma which made him stand out. Later he would return with Gilly Darby and Martyn Oram as the excellent trio Waterfall. His longevity on the Folk (and beyond) scene is legendary. But also well deserved. He was as good last night as I've ever seen him.
The quality of his comic material is such that it is genuinely difficult (without following him around the country) to distinguish between the unscripted ad libs and the regular patter. Falling (only just) short of a "routine," his stories anecdotes and asides are on a par with Max Boyce, Billy Connolly and Jasper Carrot. The latter is not surprising as Keith has written material for Jasper and has acted as warm up man for his stage shows. I once saw Jasper complete an entire evening whilst essentially, performing only one song. He had a guitar with him throughout-but he just appeared to get side-tracked. No one complained and sides were aching as the audience left. He gave the appearance of it all being unscripted. it so obviously wasn't.
He trod the boards at the nearby Abbey Theatre only recently playing the role of Danks the infamous murderer in Polly Button The Opera. Looking uncannily like Tom Hanks at times, he treated us to a brilliant monologue about the labyrinthine innards of the late lamented Coventry Ikea. This brought back fond memories of being trapped in there for hours and for some it revived much darker memories of what those Swedish meatballs could do to an overworked digestive system. (Danks? Hanks? Is there something going on here?).
Keith knows stagecraft. He used the Queen's Hall stage to the full last night especially with entrances and exits. And stomping about simulating his attempts to use the stairs to beat the Ikea elevators in that Coventry store. He also used props to great effect. The duck shaped microphone certainly, biu in particular the splitting guitar which disintegrated whilst he was playing it. ( He also reassembled it whilst playing both halves). He even used Des Patalong as a straight man, with a witty parody of "We Will Rock You."
He also managed to incorporate riffs and lyrics from a myriad of pop and folk songs we'd all known and loved into one medley. His narrative of how tangled up cassette tapes mangled the recorded vocals despite most of us trying to reassemble them (unsuccessfully!) by cutting the damaged bits out and splicing them back together with selotape was pure Comic genius.
The best way to see all this entertaining lunacy is by catching one of his "Live" performances. But if you wanted the essence of Keith's wonderful sideways swipes at the music business, captured forever in playable form, I cannot recommend too highly his three disc album "Ghost Eiders In The Sky." In which every genre (and countless numbers of well loved artistes) take an affectionate but merciless ragging. Getting a whole audience to howl out the chorus of the title track as an encore by singing "Quack Quack Quack ," (rather than the "Yippee i Ay: Yippe Ay O," of the original) is some feat. And symptomatic of the infectious madness which Keith can brew up. Especially as ( he correctly pointed out to us), The Eider does not actually quack but makes an effete mewing noise a bit like Frankie Howerd on Helium). Honestly, he quacked us all up last night.
Thanks once again to Rich Burlingham for laying on freshly tapped draught Goats Milk from the nearby Church End brewery, and to the bar staff, especially Holly who was on her first night at The Crew. And to Russ,up there in The Gods, driving the sound.
