Willie Nile at The Errigle Inn (Belfast, Ireland – Dec. 5, 2014)

I nearly didn’t write this review. It’s been over two weeks since Willie Nile played The Real Music Club in Belfast with his new album If I Was A River in his back pocket. But, some things need to be said.

He brought bassist Johnny Pisano and a book of words on stage with him, and he started immediately with the craic. (‘Irish word for fun/enjoyment that has been brought into the English language. usu. when mixed with alcohol and/or music’: Urban Dictionary.)

“I’ve a cough drop in my mouth. If it goes flying I apologise.”  Then the pair of them started duetting the first unaccompanied lines of “Seeds Of Revolution” from the Hard Times in America EP. It sounded like stripped-back Springsteen meets Boomtown Rats. They stood side by side on stage for a while in that classic pose and played their guitars

“Rite Of Spring” was dedicated to Ian McLagan and gave us a Bob Dylan sense of ballad with a nice Velvet Underground otherworldliness. Nile’s voice was strong while Pisano reached the higher harmonies. He stepped back, and held up his guitar, and raised his knee while playing. The closing notes had the pair synchronised guitar swinging, before Nile’s final dip at the end of the song. It was magic.

On “Life on Bleecker Street”, Pisano was masterful with that Easybeats rhythm, and his vaguely shouted harmonies seemed to add a late ’70s New York punk vibe to the mix. “Rich and Broken” was a Ray Davies/Kinks-inspired cracker. “Her voice is never too far from her head / cuz she ain’t heard a single word you said.”  The room was quiet enough to hear lyrics like this. I think I know this woman. But she isn’t rich.

For “Cell Phones Ringing (In the Pockets of the Dead)”, Nile explained how he listened to the news of the 2003 train bomb in Madrid. As bodies were recovered from the scene, their phones started to ring in their pockets. There was a raw, angry, feel to this song, with Johnny seemingly shouting the harmonies.  They speeded up the words “Cellphones ringing” on the build up to the end. When Willie whispered the words into the microphone, it was done.

He moved to the keyboards to perform a few tracks, and dedicated “Lost” (from If I Was A River) to John Lennon. He then went on to tell us how he and Lennon had both been recording in separate rooms of the Record Plant Studio in Manhattan on the same night that Lennon met his death. Johnny had left the stage for this, but sitting on the seat at the side of the room, he was mouthing the words of the songs. He was completely present.

For me, the highpoint was “One Guitar”. The Mescaleros and Chuck Prophet could jump on stage as Willie’s backing band for this beauty. The pared-down version Willie and Johnny played in Belfast followed me home. It had me singing the “na, na, na” bits in the car. “But what I got is one guitar / I got this one guitar.” I had just spent the evening with a legend.

Video Credit: Gerry McNally. This review was originally published in Creative voices NI

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