By Dylan Barton
There aren’t that many younger musicians these days that could have been as at home in the 16th century, as the early 70s, as 2024, and in my humble opinion, Johnny Flynn is definitely one of them! More on him later.
Holly Holden started proceedings and drew me in straight away, with her Spanish-language songs and something of Audrey Hepburn in her demure stage presence.
At just four songs though, the set was far shorter than expected. A support set with KT Tunstall beckons, perhaps?…
Next up was The David Tattersall Group, whose most obvious influence seems to be The Band, of whom I’m a big fan, and they did do a faithful cover of Dead Flowers, but the singing was below average, and many of the songs fell into ‘staring-at-yer-shoes’ territory.
By the end, there was, however, a Doors-esque cover of the swaggering Jonathan Richman tune Pablo Picasso, which I must say I hadn’t heard till that night, and which cracked me up! I mean only Jonathan Richman could get away with rhyming ‘Picasso’ with ‘***hole’!
Now down to the main business at hand. Johnny’s voice was at times reminiscent of rough-edged troubadours like Tom Waits and the Dubliners’ legendary flame-haired frontman Luke Kelly, especially on Bonedigger, and his performance of The River took me straight back to my first time hearing him.
However, as lovely as Robert Macfarlane’s poetry was - and believe me, I was led by the arm all the way, so to speak - the set seemed to drag on a bit to the point that I was rather anxious to leave by the end.
He also didn’t play the theme to Detectorists, but then as my brother said when we were leaving, “You can’t have everything, can you?”
As someone once said, after all where would you put it? Still, with a performer as talented as Johnny Flynn, the good definitely outweighed the average.
He is someone I definitely recommend you go and see before he becomes too famous.
For more information on Johnny Flynn, visit johnny-flynn.com.
