The Paperboys have come highly recommended via various friends, and the Black Box is at capacity on a damp and dreary Tuesday evening. The Real Music Club has come up trumps again to fuel the musical thirst of what looks like its party faithful out in force.
The support act is Randalstown singer-songwriter Simon Murphy, who thaws us out with songs of subtle, understated substance. A fine lyricist, his new album ‘Let It Be’ (currently Cherry McIlwaine’s Album of the Week on her late night Radio Ulster show) will be released on August 8th and launched next month at the Black Box (August 27th). He’s been busy collaborating with Kaz Hawkins, Anthony Toner and Linley Hamilton for ‘Let It Be’ but tonight it’s a solo acoustic set, soothing on the ear and rounding off with ‘My Baby’, a soft lullaby for his pregnant wife. There’s something about Simon reminds me of his namesake Paul Simon, ironically.
The Paperboys kick off with a lively instrumental – ‘The Monarch Set’, from their latest album, ‘At Peace With One’s Ghost’. That sets the tone for a lively set which flows through themes and vibes that’s hard to pin down. Perhaps that’s precisely the intention – for The Paperboys defy any possible conventional label. Their website suggests “Mexican Son Jarocho mixed with Irish jigs and reels, with a good dose of country and bluegrass” – that’s just for starters. Main course offers what they call a “multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-lingual, multi-instrumental, genre blend” – whatever, it’s just lashings and lashings of multi-textured, multi-layered, musical alchemy with a twist of mid-week magic. It works. They have that confident, competent patter of people who are comfortable and content with each other. They inject humour and anecdote into the mix. They entertain in that gifted, seamless manner whereby it comes to the end of the set, and you barely noted the time pass. Nice.
They intersperse their latest material with old crowd pleasers. The opening track of ‘At Peace with One’s Ghost’ – ‘Back to You’ – has a memorable, melodic quality yet it is the definitive, country rock sound of ‘California‘ and its catchy chorus from the 2006 album ‘The Road to Ellenside‘ that really brings us in from the cold.
Now for something completely bluegrass. Front man, and founding member Tom Landa wants more audience participation and we’re up for it. A quick tutorial on the singalong chorus for ‘Country Life’, from their 2009 album ‘Callithump’. A bit of banter about the title – they couldn’t believe it when they found out it’s the title of a brand of butter here, and to add insult to injury, the reviewer on a Vancouver newspaper was called Kerry Gold.
The Paperboys versatility extends far beyond their musicianship and into creative tributes. I’d heard about their version of Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower‘ but tonight our treat is a nod to John Martyn with ‘Don’t Want to Know‘. Later, they share their version of Sting’s ‘Fragile‘ from his 1987 album ‘Nothing Like the Sun‘ which takes it on another level when sung in Spanish with a Mexican twist.
The Mexican influences and the Son Jarocho sound from the new album abound like sun flares, mixed with the Celtic energy of Geoffrey Kelly’s magic flute and Kalissa Hernandez’ fiddle unleased. Now the Black Box is bouncing. Landa clearly is hufely influenced in his creative output by a sense of place. He grew up in Mexico City before moving to Vancouver. His parents were Mexican and Irish-Canadian. That mix of musical influence and the power of place is in The Paperboys DNA – from English folk, to Irish trad, to the Mexican East coast where slavery brought in sounds from the African continent, to the North-West Pacific and the influence of immigration, as observed in ‘America, ‘ also from ‘Callithump’.
The mood moves from the up-tempo, up-beat to the more mellow and reflective. ‘Better than the Last’– from the new album is a Robbie Burns echo, to bid farewell to a bad year and a welcome in for the new. We’re quick learners for there’s another chorus to blast
Let’s raise a glass to the midnight fireworks blast hoping this year’s better than the last.
Enough of that maudlin’ stuff, there’s a sense that this troupe don’t take themselves too seriously. Requests are invited up from the floor. Anything by your fellow country man Justin Bieber asks one; something by The Waterboys asks another. The joker in the pack appears to be the man with the wooden flute and whistle, Geoffrey Kelly, also famed for his own band ‘Spirit of the West’ and clearly a fan of the black stuff. In fact, they have described their own sound as “Guinness with a tequila chaser while listening to an Americana jukebox”.
That just about sums it up – The Paperboys and Real Music Club come up trumps again, let’s hope they bring the Vancouver sun back with them on their next trip.