Gig review: An Evening with Eric Taylor

AS LONG as you were not in a hurry, or expecting a high song-to-ticket price ratio, this evening with Eric Taylor was a pleasant, if occasionally frustrating experience.

The veteran Texan troubadour and “admitted leftist” – who at 62 reckons he “can do what the f*** I want … and I do” – was as good as his word, endlessly tuning his borrowed guitar, fiddling with his levels, spinning out his anecdotes at a snail’s pace, lamenting the lost days of midget bowling and occasionally getting round to playing an invariably long song.

His lyrical guitar-picking had a leisurely authority and his conversational vocal style modulated from a gruff whisper to a groan, but scintillating storytelling this was not. Where he did score was with the cumulative picture he painted of the songwriting scene he emerged from, through his fond tales of contemporaries Townes Van Zandt, Bill Morrissey and Kate Wolf and performances of songs either written or inspired by them, including the mellow blues of Van Zandt’s Brand New Companion, which was arguably the most direct song he sang all night. But then he did only manage to perform seven numbers in his two hours onstage.

With Morrissey’s death earlier this year, Taylor is the last of that particular bunch, prevailing through a series of strokes and heart bypasses. Understandably, he was feeling emotional by the time he closed with the Wolf-inspired A Picture I Took Up On The Great Divide, fulfilling his need to bear witness if not necessarily the audience’s expectations of a good time.