John Gibson: Jonathan is no chip off his dad

Published on 15/06/2010 09:44

Good thing or bad, suit yourself. Jonathan Cairney is not like his father John. For a start, they talk differently. When John's talking (with that distinctive voice) mostly it's about himself.

Jonathan is happy to talk about singing and the piano and he is, besides, a listener where his dad wouldn't let you get a word in edgeways. I know because dad and I met more often than he toasted the haggis.

Jonathan (try not to get confused) was in Hendersons of Hangover Street, chatting about his cabaret show there, in the restaurant, in August. Just him, singing, with pianist Euan Stevenson at the Festival, an hour every night from 10:30 from August 6 to 30. They're at home with quality standards like We'll Be Together Again, The Way You Look Tonight and Days of Wine and Roses.

The latter is the journalists' lament and one of my favourite ballads. In fact, that's what they'll be calling their show.

Jonathan, pushing 40, is no stranger to the mic, having won a Perrier vocalist of the year award in London in 1999 "That brought me a lot of work for a year with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and on the strength of that I picked up a good few gigs.

"But Hendersons will be an Edinburgh launch for me. Euan and I have been strongly influenced by a rare 1975 album by Tony Bennett with Bill Evans, an improbable partnership repeated a year later. The brilliant Evans died in 1980."

Glaswegian John fancied himself as a singer, in more of a straight vein, you possibly heard (from him). His preferred base for the family was Fife, around Dunfermline. Jonathan's consuming interest in his late teens was the vocal aspect of jazz, notably at Cambridge where he earned a politics degree. One imagines it should have been music instead.

John was forever consumed with being an "actor," but, bless him, he made sure his song got a good education. It's going to be an education listening to the Cairney-Stevenson duo delve into the days of wine and roses.

Last words . .

. . . Elton said it, so it must be true: "The Rolling Stones are the perfect group. They don't give a s**t."