The best frontman in rock n roll? Possibly. Either way, Ty Taylor and the boys want to cause trouble
There are people who front rock bands that seem to wish they were doing anything else. Maybe they were thrust into the spotlight and didn’t fancy it, maybe it’s an act.
But then, there’s the other group of people, those for whom fronting a rock n roll band is more than the only thing they know how to do, it is what they were born to do.
Vintage Trouble’s Ty Taylor is very much one of that latter section. And whilst it would be unfair not to recognise the stellar contributions of Nalle Colt on guitar, bass player Rick Barrio Dill (who might also be the tallest man in music) drummer Richard Danielson and new keyboard player Brian London, it is entirely fair to say the spotlight is always on Taylor – and what’s more he loves it like that.
Less a singer more a performer who views a crowd as merely a bunch of people it is his duty to entertain, Taylor is standing on the barrier even before the first number “Total Strangers” is done.
The way he does this is as a great soul performer in the classic mould – think the end scene in Blues Brothers and you are somewhere close – interspersed with the evangelical belief of the preacher that anyone can be won over.
It helps, too, that the band has so many great and varied songs, “Doin’ What You’re Doin’” is slinky soul, “while “Love Me Gracefully” is genuinely a gorgeous love song and only bands like Southside Johnny And The Asbury Dukes have melded blues, rock and soul as well as this.
The band have recently been in the Cayman Islands recording a new record and there is a smattering from it “Love Song To The World” (“people think it’s about world peace or whatever, it’s not, it’s about having sex with lots of people from lots of different countries,” jokes Ty) is catchy, while “Crystal Clarity” – which has to have its first verse reprised after Taylor gets the words wrong – is funky (Taylor adds his skills on Trombone too).
There are plenty of old ones though, “Run Baby Run” sees Taylor do his now customary crowd surf from the back of the venue to the front, but these are balanced with more fresh material like “Battles End” (dedicated here to the people at the One Love Concert in Manchester, which is taking place at the same time as this) and the brilliant straight-ahead rocker “Knock Me Out” – the band’s most recent single.
The encore sees them play their breakthrough hit “Blues Hand Me Down” and ending with “Nobody Told Me” is perhaps more poignant than normal given the events of this weekend and last week.
After this they make their exits. Straight through the audience, high-fiving as they go. It is a suitably triumphant end by a band that only knows one way.
The real point to this was contained in something Taylor had said early on: “whatever is going on outside that door for you, and whatever was going on in the dressing room for us doesn’t matter. We are all in here tonight.”
And for both crowd and audience it seemed that for 75 minutes, there was no happier place on earth.
Photos by Syd Wall
