As the last song of his first set this evening Dean Owens plays “Boxing Shorts”. He doesn’t usually play it, he reckons. Tonight, you can be grateful that he did. The tale, a reflective thing that came from finding his old fighting regalia in a cupboard and taking in heroin addiction and so much more, is the perfect example of what makes Owens one of the finest folk singers of his generation.
He began the show with a simple phrase: “I like to start melancholy a move into pure misery” he joked with the audience, before playing “Sometime”, and moving into “Virginia Street”, played as a request.
Without his usual band of Sinners here, save for trumpet player Philip ‘The Meerkat’ Cardwell – who is both a haunting and excellent presence – Owens is free to pepper his songs with the stories behind them (“I know I talk too much,” he smiles “but I can’t do this when I have a band!) And the relaxed, intimate environment for the show this evening really lends itself to that format. He can really delve into his work like “Sinners Shrine” from where he plays the wonderful “The Hopeless Ghosts”.
There is plenty about his family as well, starting with “Dora” for his Grandmother, and taking in his Italian heritage.
He doesn’t write many of what you might call conventional “love songs”, but one he does do, “Pure Magic,” lives up to its title.
He’s ready with a new album, too – and it’s one which you suspect is very important to him, certainly, the first single from it “My Beloved Hills” – out on Friday – suggests that like all his stuff it is from the very top draw.
On a personal level, there is only one thing I do not like about Owens. Call it jealousy, dear reader, if you must. But I have never been able to whistle. Owens not only can, but he dedicates a whole song to it, and moreover “The Rain That Never Ends” is incredibly evocative, despite my inner seething.
Joking aside, Dean Owens, is just an incredible artist, with a collection of incredible songs like “Strangers Again”, which he originally recorded with Karine Polwart, and wrote for Willie Nelson (“I’m told he’s working through a big pile of tracks….” Says the Scot).
The last quartet that he plays this evening, is sort of everything about Dean Owens in microcosm. The more up-tempo “The Night Johnny Cash Played San Quentin” belies a story about the death of one of his best friends, “Raining In Glasgow”, the night’s one singalong, melancholy and reflective about life on the road, the western style “Land Of The Hummingbird” – another of the songs he recorded with Calexico are all there, and all show a slightly different side to the class of the artist.
But it’s the last one, the one that won Americana Song of the Year, “Southern Wind” – recorded with Will Kimbrough – that takes the award for the highlight of the night.
To continue with the personal, I have waited a long time to see Dean Owens. And, sitting as close as I was to the stage this evening, he kindly asked me if there was anything I would like to hear.
My answer was not meant to be glib: “No Dean,” I replied. “Play whatever you like mate, and I’ll enjoy it.”
Is it possible not to enjoy him once you have heard him, surely? And this his first jaunt to the Midlands, may not have been the biggest crowd he’s ever played to (“I didn’t think anyone would be here!” he had said) but for those who were there, they saw someone with a genuinely rare talent and one who can lay a fairly robust claim to be the very best at what he does.
