Opening for Robin Trower is a tough room to walk into. The crowd at Academy 2 had come for one man in particular and they were in early, drinks in hand, arms folded in that way a British blues audience has when it is waiting to be convinced. Jack J Hutchinson had them onside well before he was finished.
He opened with “Bullets” and went straight for the throat with it. Just the two of them up there, Hutchinson on guitar and vocals with Greg Smith on bass, and no drummer to hide behind. That is a brave way to walk onto a stage this size. With no kit holding the floor down, the pulse has to come from the players, and it does. Hutchinson drives the rhythm from the guitar itself, digging into the strings hard enough to keep the time moving while he sings over the top, and Smith fills the space underneath with a thick, rounded tone that does the work of a bass and a bass drum at once. The two of them lock together tightly enough that you stop noticing what is missing.
Between songs he told the crowd he was a local lad, and that playing Manchester still means something to him even though he lives down south these days. There was a proper cheer for that, the sort a hometown crowd saves for one of their own. He also made no secret of how much the tour means to him. Opening for Trower is a good slot for any blues rock player to land, and as he pointed out, he gets to do the job and then stand at the side of the stage and watch Robin play every night. Anyone who has ever picked up a guitar knew exactly what he meant.
That enthusiasm carried into the set. “Road to Hell” and “Shine a Light” kept the pace up, and “Call of the Wild” had heads moving down the front.
The one that stayed with me was “I Will Follow You.” He explained before playing it that he wrote it for his father, a big rock fan who had dementia, and the room went quiet for it in a way support slots rarely manage. Songs written out of that kind of loss can tip into sentiment very easily. This one holds its shape instead, and he sang it without milking it, which took some doing in front of a crowd who had come for somebody else. Whatever it costs him to play it every night, it landed.
The pair played like they wanted the room rather than like an opening act seeing out the clock before the main event, and by the time “Soul Believer” closed things out they had a good part of it. That one doubles as the title track of his forthcoming studio album, and on the evidence of the closing few minutes it is worth keeping an ear out for. Plenty of people around us were talking about him during the changeover, which is the surest sign an opening act has done its job.
Hutchinson has been building steadily for years now, and on this showing the slot suits him. Soul Believer gets its launch event at the O2 Academy Islington on 21st January, and this run with Trower should send him into it with plenty behind him. Worth getting into the room early for on the rest of the tour.
Setlist: Bullets, Road to Hell, Shine a Light, Burn, I Will Follow You, Call of the Wild, Soul Believer
JACK J HUTCHINSON GALLERY
Academy 2 is a low, dark box of a room, and it suits Robin Trower down to the ground. There is no stage set to speak of and no light show worth mentioning. A Stratocaster, a wall of Marshalls and a trio, and a room full of people who came to hear a man play the guitar. Trower had Richard Watts on bass and vocals and Chris Taggart on drums, both long-time collaborators, set up together to his left, and the three of them have the kind of understanding that only comes from years of doing it together. “Too Rolling Stoned” opened the night and settled the question of whether the tone has survived the years. It has.
As a musician myself, I spent most of the evening watching his left hand. Trower’s vibrato is the whole thing. He bends up to the note and then works it slowly, wide and even, with the wrist rather than the fingertips, and he holds it far longer than most players have the nerve to. His thumb comes over the top of the neck to fret the low string, which frees his fingers to add those little quarter-tone bends underneath the melody, and it is why his phrases sound like they are being sung rather than picked. He also leaves an enormous amount of space. On “Distant Places of the Heart” there were bars where he played nothing at all and the room leaned in to wait for him.
The tone is worth a paragraph on its own. He runs the Strat clean enough that you can hear the string being struck, then lets the amp do the compressing, and the Uni-Vibe swirl underneath gives it that slow underwater movement that has been his signature since the seventies. It is a sound built out of volume and touch rather than pedals, and in a room the size of Academy 2 it wrapped around you.
He is served brilliantly by the two men to his left. Richard Watts has been with Trower for years now and carries an enormous amount of the load, holding the bottom end down with a big round tone while singing lead, and doing both without ever sounding stretched. Chris Taggart plays the whole night a fraction behind the beat, which is exactly what this music needs. The three of them let the songs sit back and breathe, and that lazy, dragging feel is where the swing in Trower’s music lives.
The newer material held its own alongside the classics, which is not always the case at shows like this. “Live Your Time” and “It’s Not Time” sat comfortably next to “Somebody Calling” and “One Go Round,” all of them built on the same slow, heavy groove.
“Day of the Eagle” got the biggest cheer of the main set until “Bridge of Sighs” arrived. That song still stops a room. The opening chord hung in the air, the crowd went quiet without being asked, and Trower took his time over every phrase. It was the highlight of the night and everyone in the building knew it while it was happening.
“No More Worlds to Conquer” and “Daydream” followed, the latter stretching out into the long, patient solo it deserves, before “Little Bit of Sympathy” closed the main set with the heaviest playing of the evening. The encore brought “The Razor’s Edge” and then “Birdsong,” and he walked off to a room that would happily have stood there for another hour.
At eighty one, Trower plays with the confidence of a man who worked out what he wanted to sound like fifty years ago and has spent every night since refining it. There is no showmanship in it and no need for any. What comes across most is how much he still enjoys doing it. The pleasure he takes in a phrase that lands the way he wanted it is written all over him, and it is why this still sounds like a man playing rather than a man touring. Nothing about the night suggested someone thinking about retirement, and the diary backs that up. This was one of five UK dates, and a fortnight from now he opens a nineteen date American tour in Fort Lauderdale that runs to mid October, with two live albums out this year and a new studio record already finished. Manchester sent him off with a proper ovation.
Setlist: Too Rolling Stoned, Live Your Time, Distant Places of the Heart (Robin Trower & Jack Bruce song), It’s Not Time, Somebody Calling, One Go Round, Day of the Eagle, Bridge of Sighs, No More Worlds to Conquer, Daydream, Little Bit of Sympathy
Encore: The Razor’s Edge, Birdsong
With thanks to Lee Puddlefoot of Mascot Label Group for the media accreditation.
Photos by David Beech Photography
ROBIN TROWER GALLERY
