Gig review: SLIM CHANCE- Cabbage Patch, Twickenham, 17 February 2022

When Ronnie Lane quit the Faces, he got away from it all and retreated to the country, as many rock stars did in the seventies. However he took things a stage further when, with his band Slim Chance, he conjured a matching musical style of rustic-sounding folk rock, conjuring up images of a merry band of neckerchief and waistcoat clad ragamuffins hanging out of a gypsy wagon, heading down a country lane with various animals in tow.

Winding forward to the 2010s, three band members- Steve Simpson, Steve Bingham and Charlie Hart- have reunited the band, adding some musicians of a similar generation with a pedigree of their own, and playing a mix of old songs and new material to pay homage to their band leader’s legacy.

Despite, or perhaps because of, being outside the Eel Pie Club’s usual blues and RnB based diet, the upstairs room of the Cabbage Patch was as packed as I can ever remember it, and compere Warren had to give his usual introductory speech from the bar rather than the stage. The stage was just as cramped with seven band members, with sax player Frank Mead now added from the last time I saw them here.

It is noticeable they are a real old-fashioned collective, epitomised by the fact that each of the first five songs featured a different vocalist, the most arresting of all being the extraordinary fruity and lived-in tones of pianist Geraint Watkins, who sounded like an ancient back porch blues man, none more so than on one of their modern-day compositions ‘Mr Jones’.

They conjured up some interesting sounds with less common instruments, notably the accordion playing of the towering Charlie Hart, and Steve Simpson playing mandolin as often as he did guitar, which reached a peak as the two of them traded beautiful melodies on a pair of fiddles on ‘The Poacher’ and ‘Anniversary’.

The set mixed a few recent compositions including ‘Flossie Lane’ (sic), ‘Lie to Me’ and the rollicking ‘One for the Road’, boasting some great harmony vocals, with old Ronnie Lane favourites, of which his hit ‘How Come’, with a trio of them sharing out the vocals, was naturally the best received.

Billy Nicholls, a former musical director for the Who, chipped in with the multimillion selling hit he wrote for Leo Sayer in ‘Can’t Stop Loving You’: style-wise it was at odds with the rest of the set but a combination of his heartfelt singing and a breathtaking sax solo from Frank justified it.

The Who connection continued with a version of ‘Squeeze Box’ which should have been perfect for their style, yet was a rare let down with a distinctly Quo-like chugging rhythm. In contrasting style Geraint’s rich voice- not to mention his own piano playing and more sax work- enlivened what many think of as the quintessential Lane song from his Faces years in ‘Debris’. The cheeky humour the band showed throughout was epitomised by a joke around the British versus American pronunciation of ‘depot’.

They ended with a couple more Faces favourites in ‘You’re So Rude’, again with the sax and honky tonk-style piano combining very effectively, and (naturally) ‘Ooh La La’, featuring a crowd sing-along and the accordion and piano playing off other in distinctive fashion.

The sole encore came from an altogether earlier age in their mentor’s favourite ‘Goodnight Irene’: it was not my own cup of tea, but, as Steve Bingham said closing the night, ‘God bless Ronnie Lane’. This skilled band of veteran musicians do his legacy proud and I would recommend catching them for something distinctively different from the norm.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

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