The Big Untidy Magazine

Lost Jacobite Tour

If ever there was a perfect Big Untidy venue in Berlin, it has to be East of Eden (Schreinerstr.10, Friedrichshain). It's actually a secondhand bookshop, small and with hidden corners, and - yes! - usually a little untidy. It's run by Glasgow-born singer-songwriter Mark Mulholland and offers mostly English-language books. Now and then they also put on special events - poetry readings and concerts. And it was here, on a rainy Monday evening (December 11 2006) the legendary Dave Kusworth (and friends) came to play the closing date of the Lost Jacobite Tour (in memory of Nikki Sudden). Exactly two weeks before I'd gone to see Dave play at one of Berlin's coolest venues, White Trash. That was a full band gig (and featured Nikki's bass player John C Barry in the line-up). For East Of Eden it was a more stripped-down affair featuring just Dave Kusworth (vocals & guitar) and Darrell Bath (vocals & guitar) with Robby Schmidt (percussion). A small crowd of ten (or so) fans had gathered and were waiting patiently for the band's arrival. The gig had been due to start around 9.30pm but it was heading towards midnight by the time they got to the shop.

Gigs take place on a small stage in the back room of the shop. A small bar around the corner serves cheap beer and wine. Guest sit in arm chairs, or on the floor, or simply lean against the shelves of books, while the band plays on the dimly-lit stage. Dave and pals were suitably drunk as they stumbled into the shop and onto the stage. A soundcheck and a quick tune-up blurred straight into the main set, with Dave and Darrell strumming magnificently through the Jacobite back-catalogue. Old favourites such as Shame For The Angels, Pin Your Heart and Over & Over, plus more recent songs by Nikki including Looking For A Friend, Stay Bruised and High And Lonesome (all from Treasure Island). Played and sung with great affection (in a suitably road-weary kind of way), Nikki, I'm sure, would have approved. You half-expect him to come strolling into the room. (He played this place earlier in the year). Gone but not forgotten - indeed, the whole tour was in celebration of the former Swell Maps and Jacobites singer/guitarist, and to mark the release of his final album, The Truth Doesn't Matter.  

Old blues songs (many sung by Darrell, who also plays great slide guitar), rest alongside country, rock'n'roll, and glam. They are, of course, great music fans themselves, grown up on a diet of Rolling Stones, Faces, New York Dolls, Cockney Rebel, Alex Harvey Band, Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt. Dave, in particular, dresses the part (silk scarves, velvet jacket, etc), but that's really him, that's all part of the fun. And that was Nikki too. Someone who had grown up in the early 70's knowing that's what they are going to do with their lives. (I mean, can you imagine these guys getting suits and going for office jobs? No way!). Nikki, really, was following in that tradition of old masters of the blues and country. It might have taken the punk explosion to get it noticed but he understood this line of inheritance. And now he's gone, leaving Dave and Darrell (and hundreds of other fellow-musician friends all over the world, no doubt) to keep those songs alive. What a nice idea - touring to promote your recently departed pal's new album! And what a way to do it! (There was something typically Nikki about the fact so few people had turned up to be here. Okay, it's a Monday night and, yeah, it's raining! Nikki often played small acoustic gigs in Berlin. Maybe you just take it all for granted after a while. Another Nikki gig! He'll be playing somewhere again next week, we'll go then. And suddenly - it's too late!).

Beautifully-paced (and suitably trashy) versions of Dead Flowers, Like A Rolling Stone, Not Fade Away, plus an excellent cover of Ronnie Lane's Debris (with Darrell again singing lead vocal) fit perfectly into the set-list. I was never a huge fan of the song Where Do You Go To My Lovely, but Dave makes it his own and it becomes a classic of sorts. (Hear a band version on Kusworth's recent studio album Silver Blades, where it actually comes over as a lost cousin of All The Young Dudes). Talking of Dudes, Darrell takes lead again to sing a verse from this Mott (okay, Bowie) hit, which prompts me to request some T-Rex. They oblige with a rousing medley of New York City / Hot Love. The gig feels like a real one-off and, at one point, Dave says it's like playing to friends (which is certainly what it feels like at the end of the night). There's time for a version of Johnny Thunder's You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, and that's more or less it. There were bigger gigs along the way. But none, I imagine, could have been quite like this one. For other artists, this would have been an anti-climax, ending the tour with so few people in attendance (three of us were left by the time the gig ended around 3am). It was like a private party in someone's living room.  Again, very Nikki Sudden. And, no question, one of the best gigs of the year!     

 - Clive 

Popular Bits

Scaffold Article
The Punk Gardener
Online Art Gallery

with PayPal