You could forgive Jason Charles Miller for being a little discombobulated. The former Godhead man has landed in England only this afternoon, straight off a plane, straight into the first night of the tour. If that wasn’t chaotic enough, his clothes have gone AWOL somewhere between airports. He jokes about it, shrugs it off, and presses on – because that’s who he is. Nothing in his demeanour tonight suggests frustration, only the determination to play, connect and tell stories.
And that’s what Miller does best. Whether he’s showcasing his ability to write real, classic heartland songs like the angry “No Bridge Left Unburned,” or digging into the new album for the excellent “Digging In The Dust,” he’s a natural storyteller. There’s even a nod to the Godhead days with their most famous song, before he throws in their Beatles cover of “Eleanor Rigby” – which he jokes is “a cover of that cover.”
He has, quite simply, got a real storyteller’s spirit. “Natural Born Killer” – the title track of one of his albums – underlines it perfectly. He laughs that it’s difficult to sing tonight and thanks his voice for holding up given the circumstances.
And then there’s the one about southern vampires – “Get What You Pay For.” “To Kill The Pain” could sit quite happily on any modern country record, while the heartbreak continues through “100 Pound Hammer.” He closes with a new one, “Knives In The Dark,” which reinforces what the whole set has already made obvious: Jason Charles Miller is the living, breathing embodiment of the idea that a great song can translate into any format. Tonight he proves that theory again.
Hannah Aldridge, who has at least been in England a day longer than Miller, arrives for her headline set with “Black And White.” It comes from her debut album, which she recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of. Talking about the song makes her emotional – she says herself how amazing it is that songs change meaning as they evolve. For her, it now conjures this summer, when she sent her son off to college while her dad is in a hospice. It is also another testament to her extraordinary writing.
Anyone who has seen Hannah over the last decade on her frequent visits to the Midlands will marvel at that voice. With “Aftermath,” one of the first songs I ever heard from her, she slips effortlessly into that familiar, aching intensity, before delivering “Portrait Of The Artist As A Middle-Aged Man,” Lachlan Bryan’s song she’s rewritten so that the character dies. That’s Hannah: drawn to the bleak, the dark, the vampiric – but always with a tender streak running beneath.
“Beautiful Oblivion” is introduced as something she wrote after speaking to a friend with depression. “You Ain’t Worth The Fight” feels stoic, heartfelt, and aimed squarely at the man it was written for. “Razor Wire,” from that debut record, she says she wrote when she was “very young,” essentially as a message to her younger self that she’ll have a cool life.
She dips into more recent work too, including “Dorero,” inspired by a podcast she listened to about the Black Dahlia murder. Audience requests are welcomed, and she even dusts off “Parchman” for the first time in a year. She struggles with the words, laughs about it, but gets there in the end – and nothing diminishes the power of the song.
There’s a brilliant, off-kilter cover of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” which she says she plays partly because she likes to celebrate Halloween all year. And there’s the glorious “Yankee Bank.” At this point, it’s hard to quantify how many superb songs she’s written. Then, as ever, comes “Burning Down Birmingham,” which always seems to appear whenever she’s in the Second City.
Finally she invites Jason Charles Miller back to the stage, and the two reprise their version of “Sinking,” from the joint EP they recorded a few years back. They explain that this tour was meant to happen before the pandemic, and it didn’t – but we can all be grateful it finally has.
During the set, Hannah jokes about the fact that a metal label in Sweden puts her records out, before saying something that really sticks. Because, she says, all we can hope for as humans is to be remembered – hopefully in a positive way. And the truth is, her music does just that. Playing in an acoustic setting to people who just want to listen might not be the most lucrative existence, but for an artist like Hannah Aldridge, it must be one of the most rewarding.
