MUSIC

Julian Owen doffs his cap to Bristol’s howlin’ aristocrat of one-horse-town country.

“I don’t ever feeling like I’m forcing anything,” says Howlin’ Lord, inadvertently cutting straight to the heart of his work’s appeal. Country music may have steadily risen in popularity of late, but few are the practitioners who sound born and raised in the stuff. Howlin’ Lord – aka Mark Legassick – is different. There’s a reason for that. “I grew up on caravan sites and that was the first music I heard. My dad worked the Plymouth dockyard, and his mates would be there with banjos, ukuleles and guitars, all singing late at night. A lot of Lonnie Donegan, but also Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, old country songs.”

A musician himself from the age of eight, growing up he “played in punk bands; it seemed more relevant. As I got older, I realised it’s one of the most conservative forms of music you’ll ever find, got over the weird notion that someone from my generation shouldn’t be playing country.”

Thus the performer we know today who, long of hair and laconic of charm, could wander into shot on seminal Texas-country-scene-in-the-mid-70s doc ‘Heartworn Highways’ (featuring the likes of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, a teenage Steve Earle) without an eyelid batted. The break wasn’t going to come on the south coast, though. “Plymouth’s quite a working-class town, and no one ever gives you the impression that you might be able to do music as anything other than a hobby. So I knocked it on the head, moved to Bristol, did a load of straight jobs, the whole get a house, mortgage...”

It took a longer journey to re-set the musical path. “I was working in India, borrowed a guitar and entertained the people I was living and working with. First time I’d played for anyone in years, knocking out old Johnny Cash songs. ‘Perhaps I could go back to doing that...’.” Not knowing musicians on his return to Bristol, he initially set up as a brilliantly rambunctious one-man band. “I went pretty far, going up to London to compete in one-man band competitions. I was the only person not playing a loop station, and lost heart – dragging drum kits on a Megabus, and some fake blues singer from Shoreditch would turn up with a loop station and a washboard.”

Thus, another fork in the road, this one negotiated by a Breeze. “Emily took me aside and said: ‘If you write some proper songs, I’ll be your drummer.’” He did, she was. That November 2008 favour has since been returned, with the fluid membership of acts centred on Blackheart Studios also seeing him play with the John E Vistic Experience. The line-up for the band featured on launched-this-week debut long player ‘Gold Fury’ comprises Mark Lectic (also formerly of JEVE) on bass, Tom ‘Gonga’ Elgie on drums, with vocal contributions from Toyface and proper-job local star, Beth Rowley.

It’s a fine album. Plenty of rollicking straight-up country, of course, but plenty more besides, like “a big Morricone influence. I could listen to that forever: the orchestra and twangy guitars, big backing vocals, lots of reverb on everything – that’s our MO, really.”

A classic country theme, today’s economic climate “is in the peripheral vision of what comes out in the songs, with leanings towards a dustbowl mentality; it gets a bit Woody Guthrie in places.” From the get-go, in fact. ‘Once Proud Town’ might be one of the rollickers, but it’s good-time music for bad-time times. “Money talks and mine just walks/Ten paces ahead of my own tired feet,” he sings in that voice always sounding on the edge of breaking into yelps or whoops or tears, but yet determinedly pressing on in wind-blown fashion. ‘Wade Right In’ is laconically behind the beat, carved out of a hunk of Dylan’s ‘Blood on the Tracks’; ‘From My Seat At The Bar’ is the bluest moment on the album, a beauteous duet with Rowley over tenderly warm Fender Rhodes piano; ‘Glass Eyes’ rolls drums like ‘Wipe Out’, bedding down beneath classic cowboy film whammy bar twang; elsewhere, the blend of cut-and-thrust country-style guitar solo and warmly burbling pedal steel kicks off cravings for a one-horse town where they sling you a pitcher along the bar top.

All told, a studio album mirroring Mark’s thoughts on live performance. “You might be an artist, but also a performer and entertainer. When people are paying to see you, you’ve got a responsibility to give them something to go away with.” It’s a similar attitude he brings to his Monday night open mic hosting at Mother’s Ruin. “Play in the bar, no mics, no PAs. At open mics, if you crank it up, it’s almost a licence to talk over it. It’s pretty casual – wherever you happen to be sat, that’s generally where you play from. So informal it’s almost ridiculous, and you never know what you’re going to get. Better than one of the established open mic nights, some girl doing bloody ‘Summertime’ again...”

 HOWLIN’ LORD HOSTS OPEN MIC AT MOTHER'S RUIN EVERY MONDAY. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HOWLINLORD
FOR REVIEWS OF HOWLIN' LORD LIVE AND ON CD CLICK HERE AND HERE

Copyright Julian Owen 2011

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