Chatham County Line / Alan Tyler & The Lost Sons Of Littlefield

Monday night was wet; if I were in Ireland the weather would be called 'soft' but as I am in Brighton wet will do just fine. The reason for me for leaving my Oyster card, tube map and times of the last trains out of Fenchurch Street at home was to see Chatham County Line on the opening night of their nine date UK tour.

Support was from Alan Tyler & The Lost Sons Of Littlefield, a UK country band led by the former Rockingbirds singer/songwriter Alan Tyler. They played an acoustic set with fiddle, guitar and stand up bass with songs mainly from their current album 'Lonesome Cowboys'. This was very safe, uninspiring country music proving that there are some things that are best left to our friends on the other side of the pond. Tyler's voice is rich and warm, Paul Lush's lead guitar is incisive but after a 45 minute set the only songs I remember were the lacklustre cover of Townes Van Zandt's 'Tecumseh Valley' and 'Drifting' from The Rockingbirds' debut album. Their set was well received and there was genuine appreciation from large sections of the crowd, but they didn’t do it for me.

I was told earlier in the day that the King and Queen was the biggest pub in Brighton and unless Wetherspoons have taken over The Royal Pavilion this was probably right. This is a big Tudor style building with old (looking) paintings, coats of arms and flags hanging from the walls. The only flag that matter though was the one from North Carolina that Chatham County Line take to every gig they play.

CCL are a four piece bluegrass band formed in 1999 principle songwriter Dave Wilson sings lead and plays guitar and harmonica; John Teer swaps between fiddle and mandolin and sings most of the harmony vocals; Chandler Holt picks banjo and sings; Greg Reading plays upright bass and sings. All this is done around a single microphone, their sound is controlled by where they stand on stage and, unless you dispensed with amplification altogether, you cannot get more natural, more honest, and more real than this.

They open with the bouncy 'The Carolinian' then straight into the 'banjo centric' 'Clear Blue Skies' followed by the mournful 'She'. These three served as a warm up for the next hour and 15 minutes. CCL are at home on stage, their song introductions/explanations are effortless taking in the recent political change, "I gotta whole lot less to worry about now' before 'I got worry'; taking the mickey at band members "John's not writing much, he's getting laid now" before "Gunfight in Durango' and doing a more than reasonable take on Jools Holland's gregarious nature when they appeared on Later... earlier this year - "Have you ever been to Chatham, in Kent?"

The majority of the set is taken from this year's imaginatively titled fourth album 'IV' including Holt's 'Whipping Boy' (he sings lead and plays guitar, Wilson plays mandolin and Teer fiddle) and the gorgeous 'One More Minute'. Dedicated to his wife Wilson sings of the heartbreak of leaving to go on tour as: "...these hands of time, too fast they wind..." it ends with just their four voices harmonizing.

After 'Chip Of A Star' they briefly leave the stage before returning for a two song encore, a cover of the Beatles 'Something' which was everything a cover should be: undeniably George Harrison's song – undeniably their style and 'Let It Rock' which does, in an acoustic bluegrass kind of way.

This was a nigh on perfect night.

Setlist:
The Carolinian
Clear Blue Skies
She
By The Riverside
Route 23
Bent Creek
I Got Worry
Lonesome In Caroline
Nowhere To Sleep
One More Minute
Country Boy-City Boy
Gunfight In Durango
What Would You Give In Exchange
Paige
Whipping Boy
Speed Of The Whippoorwill
Chip Of A Star

Encore:
Something
Let It Rock

FUTURE GIGS

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