Review by Gary Spiller for MPM
It’s safe to say that 2024 has been an incredible year in musical terms for us on a personal level. Amongst the magical maelstrom of crowd surfing wheelie bins and marauding Vikings with more theatrical fire than a blast furnace there is, nevertheless, space and time sufficient for moments of intimacy and unbridled passion. This, precisely, is what tonight’s draw serves up in veritable bucketloads.
Make no bones about it East Anglian blues-rockers When Rivers Meet can ‘rock out’ amidst the best of them but this evening’s performance is a much more stripped back, and indeed personable, affair. Taking a shift from their full band focus and heading back to their pre-Covid roots husband and wife duo Aaron and Grace Bond, the founding nucleus of WRM, have hit the road for their month-long curiously entitled Red Rum Duo Tour.
My intrigue as to the meaning behind the tour’s title is answered, mid-set, as this is the name given to Aaron’s foot percussion element. Simply put …. Red Rum the Drum.
From Aberdeen to Portsmouth. and a whole pile of locations in between, the mileage is clocking up. However, there’s no sense of any road weariness as Grace and Aaron, as fresh as that proverbial pair of daisies, step beaming widely, onto the Acapela stage. Housed in a former Horeb Presbyterian Chapel in Pentyrch, a village lying to the north-west of Cardiff, this spacious yet intimate venue is the perfect setting for the lofty, soulful airs of this extremely talented multi-instrumental partnership.
With occasional knowing glances and looks of unbridled love and expression that smoulder between themselves the unknowing would very swiftly realise that the chemistry between this couple goes much deeper than the music alone. This is the charismatic nature of how the evening unfolds; it’s so evident that there’s a stabilizing balance between their adoration for one another alongside that of their music; a dazzling meld of southern fringed blues-rock with dashes of Americana and delicate rootsy folk incursions. A confluence of genres just and true to their name.
With a quick “How you all doing Cardiff?” enquiry from Aaron take-off is achieved with a stonking deliverance of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Burning Hell’ which takes us down to the crossroads to strike the devil-bound deal. With an ‘alakazam’ its sultry, sweltering delta blues weave a sorcerous invocation. Twixt tracks Grace, with an anglicised “Yaki dah”, raises a glass to the ensemble in a warm welcome as Aaron dispenses with his footwear prior to explaining “I keep sliding off the drum in them!”
Interspersed amongst their well curated twenty plus tracks are several other meaningful covers including a couple by The Civil Wars, a band which upon first viewing on the Jools Holland show immediately captivated. “We realised how many rungs we had to go before we were that good” explains Grace before despatching the midnight arenaceous blues of ‘Barton Hollow’. A most apt ‘From This Valley’, from the CW’s eponymous second and final, to date, album is paired, in a set-ending brace, with the stunning incantation that is Son House’s ‘Preachin’ The Blues’.
There’s personable chatter aplenty from both giving a feel akin to ‘An Evening With’ as in between switching from a slowed down seductive ‘Ring of Fire’ to Sonny & Cher’s ‘A Cowboy’s Work Is Never Done’ Grace illuminates upon her dream of being a cowboy. With tongue firmly in his cheek Aaron lasciviously quips “That’s the same dream I have!” A playfully searing glance from Grace and he furthers about him “being in the shit!” These ‘exchanges’ between tracks serve to further enhance the intimacy of the show, something that isn’t so possible in the full band experience.
Second song in is the gritty alluring blues of ‘Battleground’, from 2020’s ‘We Fly Free’; a release that was considered their debut until the re-release of ‘Liberty’ from 2017. A long-forgotten album that WRM had eschewed until recently. Grace explains that ‘berating’ The Dusk Brothers for not reissuing their early EP’s she realised the hypocrisy thus how ‘Liberty’ came to be unearthed recently. The folky serenity of ‘Need To Be’ is offered, late in the set, as acknowledgement to their ‘original’ debut.
Both their EP’s – ‘The Uprising’ and ‘Innocence of Youth’ – have their moments in the spotlight this evening with the foot-stomping swagger of ‘My Babe Says That He Loves Me’ the first of them. Grace’s Paul Stanley inspired mandolin is handed it’s first outing immediately catching both the eye and ear. The early year’s of travelling up and down the country in their fabled VW camper have certainly shaped this pair and the tales both amuse and provide insight. There’re recollections of playing a set twice in a Suffolk pub as they’d started too early and had run out of material, no such problems with material shortages nowadays.
Vocals are exchanged atop the sensitive, soaring melodies of ‘Don’t Tell Me Goodbye’ before the attention is turned upon last year’s ‘Aces Are High’ record-busting long-player. The swampy blues rocker ‘Play My Game’ detonates into life with Aaron’s raw bleeding Telecaster contrasts deliciously with Grace’s expansive vocals. This track is one exceptionally good reason amongst ten that created history with WRM becoming the very first independent UK blues outfit to make the top 10 of the Official Album Charts.
Mandolin and slide guitar alloy together hip-swagger of ‘Free Man’ prior to fellow ‘Uprising’ track ‘Tomorrow’ doffing a cap towards the tonage, in part, of the Red Chilli Pepper’s ‘Californication’. Now there’s a track I certainly wouldn’t mind this duo applying their twist upon!
The svelte darkened devil’s blues of ‘He’ll Drive You Crazy’ sees Raven – a cigar box guitar creation courtesy of sound engineer and tour manager Matt Waller – introduced to Acapela prior to a coupling of the fuzzed up southern ‘Friend Of Mine’ and the head-nodding richness of ‘We Fly Free’ wraps up the first of the two one-hour long sets.
“We’re wondering how many of you have heard this one before” introduces Grace as they return to the stage for the second half. The raucous opening riffs and swamp-dwelling rhythms of their statement track ‘Did I Break The Law’ need no introduction in this company. There’s a moment of light-heartedness as Grace niftily ‘rescues’ her husband’s errant pint of juice from bouncing off it’s hosting table mid-track. Ever the gentleman there’s time for him to offer his gratitude.
“You can’t have a [blues] show without a murder section” expresses Aaron as they rip into the obsidian blues of ‘Kill For Your Love’ and the tenderness of ‘Bury My Body’.
The buzzsawing from ‘Innocence Of Youth’ is hot on their heels ahead of the incandescent raunchiness of ‘Walking On The Wire’. Soaring and gracefully swooping the acoustics of ‘Golden’ possess the power and finesses of the hunting eagle in full flight.
One can but marvel at the overall majesty of this couple. Raise your glasses for we have witnessed a moment of the highest order safe in the knowledge that there is even better to come. Chasing rainbows one by one there’s a story bursting from every page of When Rivers Meet.
Photography by Kelly Spiller for MPM
