Proficiency is not to be sniffed at. Years of individual and band practice, playing in front of people in increasingly less dirty venues, tweaking the transitions between the numbers and getting heard by the right people all lead to a band headlining their first show on a different continent across an ocean.
49 Winchester opened for Luke Combs on his jaunt around Europe, playing 13 countries and entertaining hundreds of thousands of people. They will – and I don’t know if they were allowed to say this – be back in London at the end of May 2024 playing KOKO, just down the road from the Lafayette. Judging by the packed house where even a sardine would complain of having too little room, they will have no trouble filling the many-levelled venue which in January will see Melanie C celebrate her 50th birthday.
How many of the fans buying ticket for their current and future show were turned on to them by Luke himself when he posed in a 49 Winchester shirt? Isaac Gibson returned the favour in London by wearing a Luke Combs t-shirt. The big numbers were dispatched with panache, including Russell County Line, Damn Darlin’ and the title track to their brilliant album Fortune Favors the Bold.
From their third album III, which came out deep in the pandemic, came Chemistry, Everlasting Lover, Hays Kansas and It’s a Shame. For those fans who saw them supporting Luke earlier in the week, they added the extraordinary All I Need, whose opening riff is the answer to the question: Has Southern rock run out of new riffs?
The band from a small town in Virginia brought the sound of American bars to Kings Cross, and also covered a Waylon Jennings song called I’ve Been a Long Time Leaving (But I’ll Be a Long Time Gone). Their main set ended with the closing track Last Call, before which they played I Think I Should Have Stayed in Tulsa, which will be on their next album.
As I listened to one finely crafted barroom rock’n’roll song after another, I had two realisations. One: after playing the O2 Arena this week, it must be nice to see the back of the room and the whites of each other’s eyes. And two: once people invented Southern rock, it’s very hard to improve on it, like the solution to a mathematical problem or the Bible. Except you can dance to 49 Winchester.
I would have liked more solos from pedal steel player Noah Patrick, but the crowd got their money’s worth from Bus Shelton’s guitar solos, some of which were put through a slushy wah-wah pedal. To the left of Bus and Isaac, the real star of the show emerged. Tim Hall had perpendicular keyboards set up and sometimes stood up to play his parts, whamming his hand across the keys.
If the whole room hadn’t already been standing up, they would have done so too. This music, and the proficient way in which it is performed, is too good to be heard sitting down.
A Country Way of Life 