If you assumed that country music was meant solely for wannabe cowboys wearing stetsons then think again
Carter Sampson
at ACE Space,St Nicholas Road, Newbury
on Saturday, March 15
Review by FRED REDWOOD
IF you assumed that country music was meant solely for wannabe cowboys wearing stetsons then think again.
Now recognised as the fastest-growing genre of popular music in the UK, the best of modern country is about real life in today’s mid-West, not some Ronald Reagan fantasy world.
First up on Saturday was Lancashire-born Joe Martin, a fine lyricist with a good voice and an eye for detail. His depiction of an abandoned mining settlement, Coal Town, was as relevant to the wastelands of the North of England or the South Wales valleys as it was to the Nashville area where he has honed his craft.
More personal songs were filled with sharp imagery tied up with killer lines. I particularly liked the sad young waitress cum bar room songstress who wanted more from life.
He describes her as a “part-time singer and full-time dreamer”. Ouch. On meeting an old love: “We went from strangers to lovers; Now we’re strangers again.” Enough said.
Then we had Carter Sampson from Oklahoma to add rock to country.
Looking rather like a librarian let loose in the dressing up box, with a superb English backing band who were musically tight at the end of their three-week tour, she was a delight.
This was powerful feisty stuff, with one raunchy number about a door-slamming argument which gave guitarist Joe Coombs an opportunity to let rip.
In between numbers her reflections on growing up in the Dust Bowl were witty, with just an undercurrent of pathos. There was, perhaps, one love song too many in Hello Darling, but that was made up for by her memories of her grandmother who would spoil young Carter by wheeling the television into the bathroom as she soaked in the bath, all the while eating a tray full of cheese.
This was not the first time Carter Sampson has played at Ace Space and going by the enthusiastic response from the audience she will have no difficulty filling the hall in the future. Catch her if you can – good things are happening at this friendly little club.
