Jonny and BMX Bandits at FRETS

Friday 20th February saw me head through to the beautiful town of Strathaven to see Norman Blake and Euros Childs play a rare show as their side project Jonny. With Stu Kidd on drums, the trio released a self-titled album back in 2011, full of improvised stoned humour, gorgeous harmonies and melodies, and some genius songwriting.

6-years previously, I'd caught Norman and Euros play the Strathaven Hotel (blog here) under their own names, one of the last shows I caught pre-lockdown.  

FRETS has grown from strength to strength since then and Norman has a particularly strong affiliation and association with them, after all, FRETS founder Douglas McIntyre was responsible for forming Butler, Blake and Grant - who now have a second album coming out and they have toured all over.

Before Jonny, we had the joy of a stripped back BMX Bandits set. Duglas T Stewart on vocals and kazoo and Rory on guitar and harmonies. Joined by long term friend and collaborator Stu Kidd on drums and backing vocals for a couple of tracks.

Duglas was in fine form, mixing humour with emotional stories about wellbeing and the importance of friends. The set was largely similar to the Mono show they played earlier in the month, although the addition of Little Hands was one to warm hearts throughout the room. What a song! I appreciated it all the more after Duglas' warm reflection on the inspiration for the song. 

The Bandits were playing a show in Japan and Duglas was very taken by a girl dancing down the front. He turned to Francis on drums and said 'I'm going to marry that girl'. And he did! Duglas spoke very fondly about writing the song and how his wife Midori made such a positive impression on everyone she met upon moving to Scotland.  Sadly Midori passed away and Duglas highlighted how important it is have to places, items or songs to remind us of people.  

I hope Duglas and the current incarnation of BMX Bandits can play some full band shows this year. He has a fine catalogue of songs to dig into. The Sailor's Song was a stunning opener, the closing refrain of I could watch you dancing all night gets me every time.

Jonny were also full of humour with Euros cracking everyone up when saying that a mis-print on the dressing room sign (Jonny spelt with an 'h' - "Jonny don't do drugs, Jonny don't do H") nearly caused them to cancel the show. He then talked of steel drums going missing on the motorway.  

Elsewhere, their cover of Bert Jansch's Baby Blue was absolutely gorgeous, even if the complex chord changes required a restart - with Euros, Norman and Stu all buckled over laughing!

The trio played virtually the whole of their 2011 album, sadly missing Norman's exquisite Never Alone.

Highlights? Circling The Sun was beautiful, the joy of Euros and Norman singing and harmonising effortlessly is something I could listen to for hours on end. Stu also joined in on a lot of the songs, so we had 3 part harmonies - glorious!

Bread was gooey and warm, with Euros really going for it. Blake's Dark Clouds from the Fanclub's Shadows album was lovely, while my out and out favourite was Cave Dance. A fun rock n roll number that morphs into a psychedelic synth jam. I don't think FRETS had heard anything like that before!

Norman highlighted that they still intend to bring out their Joe Meek covers album and played Summer Without Sun, recorded by The Charles Kinglsey Creation, featuring one of the owners of the fabled Rockfield Studio where the Fanclub have recorded. 

Dep from Monorail was in the audience. I hope his ears pricked up as Norman highlighted that this mixed album is sitting unreleased and that they would love to bring it out...