There are, one assumes, easier ways to win over Wolverhampton than walking onstage in a Wolves shirt and immediately pointing out: “It was 20 quid. You can tell you’ve been relegated.”
Still, Colin Andrew clearly knows his way around a room. Better yet, he knows his way around a song.
Any suggestion that he was here merely to make up the numbers disappeared pretty quickly. First, though, there was “Cum On Feel The Noize”, offered with the line that he was “struggling to think of talented people from this area”. Again, if he was trying to ingratiate himself with the good people of the Black Country, there are less risky routes.
Yet that was part of the charm. Andrew gives the impression of a man not terribly interested in taking anything too seriously, least of all himself. Even “Corfu”, a ballad, arrived with the explanation that the woman it was about would leave him if the audience didn’t buy a T-shirt.
Underneath all that, though, there was proper songwriting class. “Keep On Breaking” had the feel of something lived-in rather than merely written, while “Jurassic” — “it’s about dinosaurs, if you’re in love with a dinosaur” — proved that the gag was never the whole point. By the time the superb “Still Waiting” brought things to a close, Andrew’s first trip to Wolverhampton could only be described as a success.
Kiefer Sutherland, meanwhile, came on as if he had absolutely nothing to prove and everything to give.
That matters, because there will always be some who look at the name on the poster and arrive with the lazy assumption that this is an actor playing at music. It isn’t. Not even close. This is a man deep in the stuff, surrounded by a band that is as sharp, soulful and serious as any you will see.
“Down Below” set the tone: darker, moodier, helped by low lighting and driven by sensational lead guitar. Sutherland, plainly, loves this. You can see it in the way he sings, the way he steps back into the band, the way he lets the songs breathe.
And then came “Only Happy When It Rains”. Let’s be fair, you didn’t have that on your bingo card. A Garbage cover in what was ostensibly an Americana set? Yet it worked, because this band has that rare ability to make everything sound like it belongs in their world.
“Goodbye California” was framed as a fond farewell to the place Sutherland called home for 35 years, and “Something You Love” perhaps unlocked the entire evening. “I’m not one to give advice,” he said, “but if I did it’d be this: life’s too short not to do something you love.” There it was, really. The key to the night.
That sense of commitment ran through everything. “Come Back Down”, one of his favourites from the new album, proved it takes bottle to play this much new material and still hold a room. Chris Hillman’s pedal steel added colour and class, while “Can’t You See” found Sutherland paying homage to his favourites with a Marshall Tucker Band cover that felt entirely natural.
“Ole’ Lonely Life” wasn’t too far away from Replacements-style college rock, and “Chasing The Rain” was introduced as his love letter to being on the road, with Roger Innis’ bass giving it real weight. “American Farmer”, written from the perspective of Sutherland now owning land, had a neat line in Allman Brothers guitar, while “Simpler Time” reflected on how lucky he felt to have grown up without phones and computers running everything.
There was regret, too. “See You On The Other Side”, the Ozzy Osbourne song, was reworked here as Americana tinged with loss, and “Love Will Bring You Home” — a brand-new song, not even on an album yet, written with guitarist Ashley Wilson — suggested the well is nowhere near dry.
“Two Stepping In Time” was what might happen if Bryan Adams wrote Americana-tinged rock ’n’ roll, and “This Is How It’s Done” asked if Wolverhampton was ready for a honky-tonk boogie. It was. Obviously.
“Down In A Hole” had a proper nose for trouble, especially when it let itself go at the end, while “Friday Night” was as classic-rock as grooves get. Sutherland ditching the guitar for that one gave him a real edge as a frontman, suddenly looser and sharper. “Agave” added a Tex-Mex flavour before “In The Air Tonight” did something genuinely difficult: it found a different slant on one of the most famous songs of all time.
Then came “Starlight”, as vast as the stars themselves, except here the starlight is a bar, and you imagine these songs are hewn from places just like that. It was almost overshadowed by a stunning solo, although “overshadowed” is the right word for the night as a whole.
Because yes, Kiefer Sutherland’s name is on the poster. But he is merely part of this brilliant band, and that is the highest compliment. This was never ego. It was never vanity. It was a shared thing, a proper rock ’n’ roll thing.
His last words as he left were: “And I am forever in your debt.” They summed it up perfectly.
Kiefer Sutherland has always seemed like a man looking for the next thing, the next road, the next way to find some peace.
At KK’s Steel Mill, it felt very much like he’d found it.
