Martin Stephenson Darwen Library Theatre
There’s a tale, possibly apocryphal, that Martin Stephenson & The Daintees, urged to devise a running order for gigs, used to tape a blank piece of paper to the stage floor rather than conceive a set-list, so contrary to the conventions of pop stardom were they, even in that brief 80’s period when they sparkled for a few months as the likely next-big-thing.
The Geordie singer-songwriter refused to play the fame-at-any-cost game and, now past the half-century mark, flirtations with hits and major labels a distant memory, still tours occasionally with the old bandmates label bosses wanted him to drop.
But his gig at Darwen saw him accompanied only by faithful collaborator Jim Morrison – yes, you heard that right – who turns out to be far from The Lizard King re-incarnated but a consummate fiddle/mandolin player whose accompaniment helped nudge Stephenson far more towards the rag/folk/bluegrass territories he gravitates more readily toward these days.
There are a few nods to the indie-pop heyday but even when Stephenson and the latter-day Daintees nominally followed a popular current trend by presenting their classic “Boat To Bolivia” album in concert a few month ago, they broke with protocol by seldom following the original record’s track-listing!
An encore “Wholly Humble Heart” with backing vocals by support act Liza P – girl, not so nervous, you’ve earned the right to belong on that stage – was a rare foray into the four classic Daintees albums which had Martin flirting with Smash Hits and TOTP but for the most part the near two-hour performance ploughed far more idiosyncratic and esoteric furrows.
And a Martin solo gig certainly doesn’t follow too many established parameters: not even the songs are guaranteed to follow the intro-beginning-middle-end sequence without an aside or throwaway gag and as well as introducing most numbers with witty, engaging, sometimes rambling monologues, you’re just as likely to get a tale or an ad-libbed recollection where the chorus or middle-eight might usually go.
He projects the persona of happy-go-lucky troubadour, looking for all the world as if he could have stepped out of a John Steinbeck short story in his boiler suit, battered jacket and cap, but the sometimes manically meandering raps disguise a wisdom and sadness which he expresses even more articulately in song than he can in spoken word, like only a true artist can – it’s what separates the truly gifted and inspired from those of us who fancy we have mastery of the word but only in prose on the page.
We have already touched upon old age and death on opener “Old And Grey” when he introduces the second number by describing childhood friends racing around the County Durham countryside, a tale which somehow includes giving Bryan Ferry’s one-time postcode out, then briefly encountering a pal’s older brother, a tall, handsome student athlete.
With everyone chuckling and consumed by nostalgia at the boyhood remembrances, in a typically striking sudden diversion Stephenson describes how the young fellow, unknown to his pre-pubescent admirers clinically depressed, torched himself to death in a field less than a week later, an incident which haunted him to write the musically jaunty but lyrically impossibly tragic “Ballad Of Joe McCue,” obviously still a painful and formative experience some 40 ears later.
There is the wisdom and experience in his work that you would expect from a 50-year-old whose lived a bit, and the cavalcade of characters encountered down the years named in the often-hilarious tales includes the unlikely trio Courtney Pine, Lyle Lovett and Roy Buchanan.
But there are closer-to-home subjects that have provided material for his muse and he speaks touchingly about both his parents. Before Daintees’ favourite “Little Red Bottle” he admits to being a recovering alcoholic and introducing some of the more personal love songs demonstates a perspective on looking back on idyllic-but-short-lived teenage romance and regretting being trapped in more damaging long-term relationships gone bad (“I Cannot Run”).
The musicianship is incredible, instrumentals peppering the set to demonstrate how the one-time boy-most-likely has spent the intervening years during which he eschewed temporary rock star frippery studying under flat-picking and rag guitar masters such as Doc Watson and absorbing time-honoured styles and techniques in order to pursue a less lucrative but wholly more rewarding, for himself and his followers, route.
Domiciled in the North of Scotland with partner, and fellow prodigious talent Helen, he marches to a different drum than the celebrity path would have required and in pubs, clubs and small venues up and down the land delights audiences who are quietly happy that he, and they, inhabit a different universe to the one peopled by Made-On-TV-Shows-Ersatz-Pop-Stars.
Jim’s brushstrokes and mournful accompaniment bring an added poignancy to sentimental but never mawkish material such as “Home,” “The Joy That You Give,” and the magisterial “Solomon” an epic piece of songwriting mastery that stands out as one of the two “Greatest-Leonard-Cohen-Songs-Which-Len-Didn’t -Actually-Write” in Martin’s collection (the other being “Rain” off the Boat To Bolivia album).
“We were the only band that used to celebrate if our single fell down the charts,” he recalls of the Daintees days, “The management would go mad because someone had spent weeks trying to get Kid Jensen to play our record.”
He might not get invited onto the 80’s Revival Circuit to play the hits that shoulda-been-but-weren’t but you’ll never see the same Martin Stephenson show twice, possibly never hear the same song played the same way twice: just celebrate that this profoundly individual performer is keeping the songwriting/storytelling tradition live and alive for those who want their music real, not packaged and homogenised and sanitised on a reality TV show.
Long may his on-the-surface ramshackle but ultimately deeply satisfying method-in-the madness approach to providing a magical and unique night’s entertainment continue to warm what can only be in the presence of such skill and talent, our wholly humble hearts.
blueyedboy 