Even though this is their first “rocked up” (their words) show in the UK, having only performed acoustic previously, let’s be honest, you don’t need to reach too far to work out what a band called Hillbilly Vegas sounds like. And the Oklahoma mob live up to that, and if originality is never going to be their strongest suit then none of that matters. It doesn’t matter for the simple reason that they’re extremely good at it. They’ve got songs about moonshine, “Oaklahoma 3.2” does that job, and they’ve got songs about their roots “Shake It Like A Hillbilly” – before which the chief Hillbilly Steve Harris (not that one) explains that for all the bad rap the name brings, where they’re from it represents the working class, the salt of the earth, and there’s plenty of that in their music. Current single “Hell To Pay” has been playlisted on Planet Rock and things seem set fair for them, the “southern rock” boom shows no sign of abating, and you can expect to see Hillbilly Vegas a lot more over here in the coming years.
As Luke Morley and the lads appear on stage here, Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” plays.
The more you think about it, the more it becomes the perfect summation of what Morley is trying to do with this tour.
Last year, in the summer, he released the wonderful “Songs From The Blue Room” record. A superbly diverse collection that was a world away from what he’d done previously, primarily in his band The Union with Pete Shoulder…..
No, of course, let’s get it said Morley is the guitarist and songwriter in one of my (and you suspect many of the crowd’s) favourite bands, Thunder, it’s just that “…..Room” sounded nothing like them, and somewhat pleasingly, neither does the gig.
Opening with the record’s first song “I Wanna See The Light”, this is a celebration of Luke Morley’s solo career, taking in “Damage” and the autobiographical “Killed By Cobain” from the new stuff, but also – and this was sort of unexpected- work from his “El Gringo Retro” album from years back. It’s a genuine treat to hear him play songs like “This World”, dedicated to the “bitter ex-musicians” who didn’t make it out of the London pub scene (especially poignant as in the band is one who did, Dean Howard ex of T’Pau and currently of Cats In Space), “Quiet Life” and “The First Day”.
The fact that the Blue Room was evidently full of experimentation is underlined by the acoustic “Errol Flynn”, the funky “I’m The One You Want”, the almost Latin “Nobody Cares” – which hides its vitriol in a summery vibe, and the country “Lying To Myself”.
To pull this off you need skill and a proper band. He’s got one. Joining Howard is Tax The Heat’s Jack Taylor, the superb Sam Tanner and Thunder man Chris Childs. But it’s Morley himself that carries this in his understated way (“I’m not gonna get you to keep clapping like Mr. Bowes”) and his playing throughout is excellent, arguably never better than on the Americana-tinged “Watch The Sun Go Down”.
That harmonica-drenched thing gets us to the encore and after a moving speech about Danny Bowes’ recovery, there’s the one Thunder moment. “Better Man” is perfect too. He covers “Lola” after, but as if to prove this is a Luke Morley show, there’s no “Dirty Love” or anything like it, instead “Go With The Flow” ends things.
In truth, a proper rocker from the day job wouldn’t have fitted the vibe, this was too laid-back for that. As the man behind the songs, Morley could have gone down the obvious road, but here, he didn’t need Thunder to make a brilliant rumble of his own.
