Rod Branigan @ The Bedwardine, Worcester. Dec. 11th
Where do I start with this talent from Texas, a sort of one man band only better. Rod has an exceptional, seemingly easy ad relaxed style to his excellent acoustic guitar play. Added to that he ‘fingers’ a Conga snare drum, occasionally adding a uke slung over his back, for a bit of infill, underneath his right boot is a tambourine. An interesting timbre is added to the little drum, by the addition of two small mint tins, suitably loaded with mints, and perhaps a few nuts? Now you would think that would all come at the expense of his guitar fingering, but no, busy hands indeed, because he plays beautifully, everything from some superb blues to guitar solos with more ‘Spanish’ roots. Though Rod plays a fair slice of his gig acoustically, he does switch on the vocals, no problem there, delivering some very good strong lyrics. He sort of reminds me of Wille Edwards from Wille And The Bandits, a similar expressive voice, giving us songs questioning our modern world.
I picked up 2 albums, a 2012 ‘Sketches’ and the new release ‘Nothing Better To Do’. Both turn out to be fine albums, ‘Sketches’ is dipped into extensively for his gig, and is a broad range of music that is hard to fault. The later 2013 album is decidedly more blues in its content, though Rod seemed slightly apologetic about this, I found it very easy to play through and like. He played ‘Champagne And Reefer’, a Muddy Waters song, which features in the later album. Putting his empty beer glass to the fret, he gave his self penned ‘Brady Bunch’, great fun. A nice version of Beasty Boys ‘Sabotage’ was slotted in to some more of his own work.
Throughout the session, we were kept entertained with his humour and comfortable rapport with a moderate audience, in what is a new music venue. Moderate but very appreciative that Mr. Brannigan had come to our city to astound us with his abilities. On to the party piece closure, where Rod takes up two guitars, for his ‘flip trick’, and plays them simultaneously. At first stood up with the two acoustics almost double decked, and then the flip to a seated position with one slung across his knee and the other sat vertically to his left; working the fret on the left side as he fingered the guitar across his knee. It was an amazing sight and sound as ‘Slot Machine’ merged into ‘The Clean Up’, both from the completely self penned ‘Sketches’. A brilliant acoustic finish to an extraordinary evening of exceptional musicianship. I hope I have the good fortune to see him perform again in the near future, a first class US import.
Words & photos By Graham Munn