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The Liverpool Olympia, host of tonight’s hotly anticipated Seasick Steve gig, has a distinctly kitsch Phoenix Nights vibe about it. The bar’s serving wine in half-pints of plastic party cups, packs of women in their 60’s secure seats around them with bits of scarves, hats, gloves and hankies (following on from that awfully British tradition of securing sunbeds at 6am with towels emblazoned with the Union Jack. Go’ead Nanas), and packs of middle aged men tear through the place like a stag weekend in a brothel.
I’m politely informed that I’m ticketed for seating on the upper balcony, which is essentially the poverty-seating – the gig equivalent of being shuffled to steerage on the bloody Titanic. Great.
The audience – a mangled, bizarre cross-breed of football crowds, music enthusiasts, students and blokes most comfortable with a bottle of Stella in one hand and a thuggish right hook in the other down Concert Square, fill the theatre up quickly.
There’s an odd atmosphere mostly perpetuated by the free-flowing booze and the telepathically-communicated-testosterone which seems to make a lot of the men in here caterwaul “Come’ead Steve Lad!” every minute or so, as if expecting Seasick to trundle onto the stage skillfully dribbling a ball before lobbing it at someone’s head.
Which, somewhat unfortunately because it would have made for a surreal and culturally adulatory entrance, Seasick doesn’t do. Instead he bounces gleefully onto the stage, nodding humbly at the raucous audience (now chanting a deep, manly ‘Steve-o’ chant which sounds more like a heckle than a pep) and kicks into ‘Man From Another Time.’
His foot stomps spiritedly and the audience sashays and hollers like extras in ‘Hee-Haw.’
The first half of the set is interesting to say the least – rather than filling time in with just support acts, he turns the entire gig into a sort of a country-blues variety show, showcasing the talents of ‘special guests’ Amy Lavere (incredible) and Paul Martin (so middle of the road, even the auld biddies who’ve left their hearing aids at home use his music spots as an excuse to refresh their drinks or queue up for the ladies).
There’s a fantastic attempt at a bluegrass skiffle number, replete with double bass and washboard, and some sublimely girlish skin-tingling vocals provided by Lavere which draw both awe and mockery from the audience. Which is fair enough considering she does sound a bit like a pre-smack Macaulay Culkin when she’s talking (or a whiskey soaked Minnie Mouse, depending on which interpretation you’re more comfortable with).
Seasick leaves the stage on a number of occasions, allowing Paul Martin to take temporary helm of the set (which he does with about as much control as a toddler steering a speedboat), leaving the audience bored and restless, and reaching for another drink. Sounding like a supermarket value version of an out of practice Conor Oberst, Martin takes all the zeal, charisma and hoe-down-party atmosphere of Seasick’s stage-craft and mushes it into a wallowing, country dirge of wrist-slitting proportions.
Thankfully, the upper-balcony has terrible acoustics (who’d have thought it?) and everyone around can barely hear him. It also means that when Seasick does bound back onto the stage, his apparently hilarious anecdotes (the standing crowd have a bloody great laugh on more than one occasion) are lost into a thunderous, wordless drawl in which certain phrases like ‘gaffa tape dress’ and ‘Everton v Chelsea’ spring out teasingly, making the whole experience reminiscent of The Fast Shows’ Rowley Birkin drunkenly retelling a tale with an indecipherable drawl.
The second half of the set fares much better (sneaking into the standing area during the interval helps matters. Have THAT Liverpool Olympia!), with Seasick taking a more prominent role in proceedings.
The song ‘Started Out With Nothing‘ inspires a sweet hum of sing-a-long activity in the audience, which also sees a great number of power fists shoot into the air in the way of ‘I hear you man! I still got most of my nothing left too!‘, and several songs get so rambunctious that Seasick nearly falls off his chair on more than one occasion.
There’s an incredibly relaxed tone to his set which does make you feel as if you’re just sat off in his ramshackle living room – the stage is even set up to resemble a twinkly-lit lawn party – and his between songs banter with the audience is humble and endearingly giddy.
Particular kudos go out to drummer Dan Magnussum (with whom seasick shares a bottle of wine, swigging it straight from the neck like a teenager on a park bench) who provides some hard-hitting, uber-enthusiastic percussion, beating at the skins like there was a pile of gold at the bottom of them. His limbs flail about discordantly resembling the actions of a bizarre drunken kung-fu swimmer.
When Seasick brings out his DIY one-sting blues-boomstick ‘Diddley-Bo’, men everywhere delightedly howl ‘Diddleeeey-Boooo!!’ at him like children reunited with their favourite toy. He kicks into an aggressively passionate stomping rendition of the song, err, ‘Diddley-Bo’ (didn’t see that coming, did you?) with a howling slide guitar that inspires a buzz of activity in the audience like a scene out of True Blood.
Old or young, the audience has turned into horny, pissed up hillbillies with ambitions of supping moonshine out of boots and brawling with their neighbour. One man threatens to put my friend’s face ‘under’ his ‘boot’ for keeping him from tripping over, whatever the hell that means, while another threatens me because his girlfriend is ‘fucking pregnant’ and she can’t fit past me to get to the bar. Yee-haw!.
The set halts to a moving and surprisingly beautiful end, with Seasick joining forces with Amy Lavere once more to duet on the devastating Hank Williams song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ which is too emotional for the alcohol soaked crowd to handle right now, as well as a solo and pensive version of ‘The Banjo Song’ which tips the scales completely – there’s suddenly a lot of love in the room to the soundtrack of Seasick’s fingerpicked, dejected blues.
Ending on ‘Dog House Boogie‘ (if there’s one thing Scousers know about, it’s being in ‘the doghouse’), Seasick orchestrates the audience to waggle jazz hands at him whilst chanting the song’s refrain, followed by a howl (which, curiously, makes him sound like a redneck ‘She-Wolf’ era Shakira) – the song bleeds into a stomping whirlwind of mutual joy. The audience are positively buzzing, and Seasick is smiling so wide his long, shaggy beard is pulled a good few inches shorter.
He grabs his drummer and special guests and takes a bow. The crowd goes batshit and whoops up a storm – you half expect someone to pull out a gun and start shooting it into the air.
There’s a realisation, walking out amongst the brawling couples, men stumbling towards the doors with vomit-smeared plaid shirts and people eating in-house prepared burgers that resemble road-kill, that hillbillies – and Scousers – truly do get bloody everywhere. Seasick Steve, you bloody champion – come back soon now, y’hear?