Salutations such as, ‘John Betjeman with a guitar…intense virtuosity,’ are not to be dismissed lightly and so first things first I put it to the sound engineer that a set list would come in handy. ‘Too right!’ He replies, sanguinely, ‘Have you got one?’ So, songs referenced are sometimes by context more than title. Welcome to a Nick Harper gig. Expect the unexpected: the unpredictable will surely happen.

We start with a delicious fantasia of dissonant harmonics but shuffle a bit uncomfortably because there’s a feeling he’d left his guitar the night before in the airing cupboard because of the frantic fiddling with the tuning pegs. But, Harper has a cunning plan, the tease. He’s one the most breath-taking, passion-pushed guitarists I’ve ever seen. Think of the subtle, textured tapestries of Bert Jansch coupled with the roller-coaster, pithy wit dexterity of Richard Thomson, oh and a side order of Leo Kottke. Mid song banter has us howling with himself being the foil to his confessional follies.

So, you let your guard down and he emotionally mugs you with the lingering, ambiguous refrain, ‘You and me in shadowland.’ Well, alright, you had to be there. We had a song in tribute to a Bolivian president, ‘Evo Morales’ that shivered with gentle, Latin cadence, as did the evocative ‘King of Spain’. ‘Field of the Cloth of Gold’, referenced the five hundred year old regal lovie smarm-fest in France; infer allegories as you will. These were followed by a political polemic that had the enigmatic metaphor, ‘…where my shadow is my only shade, I am the wanderer.’

But he really got to the heart of the matter with ‘Bloom’, a raw, sombre reflective number that drew a palpable, collective hush including the bar. Likewise, with his 2004 album titled, Blood Song(s). Still, it was only a matter of time before it all went a bit bonkers with him jumping on to the tables with Spamalot abandon. Evidently he’s got wireless gizmos aplenty because he banters about the room with pristine sound quality. It needs saying again what a consummate musician Harper is. I was told that Lowden customise his guitars and that he has specially tuned piano strings fitted.

As mentioned earlier, my informant said that he has tuning pegs instead of the standard machine heads enabling rapid shifts in tuning modes. Aspiring guitar hopefuls in the audience must’ve gone home and wept into their Bert Weedon Play in a Day beginners book because we saw Harper engage in chord structures so complex it was like watching an ‘E’ crazed squid on steroids. Criticisms? Did he really have to abuse his hospitality rider and drink red wine, a bloke, from a glass? Goodness me, we’re talking Saturday night in Kings Heath with a Weatherspoons only 200 yards away and about to kick off. That’s your cutting-edge devil may care troubadour for you. And yes, he had let it breathe, the Jessie. Closing numbers included a sing along Monty Python ditty, ‘1 of the 38’ and ‘Build your own Temple’ by which stage we were expecting his poor guitar to explode. We disperse in to the freezing night a little bit warmer and much, much happier.

By the way, Nick’s dad, Roy, made a bit of a name for himself in the 60/70s in that Led Zeppelin, and a considerable potion of the western hemisphere, thought he was the best thing before, during and indeed, after sliced bread.

Review - John Kennedy
Photos – Ian Dunn