Fuel

Fuel

Red Deer Club - King Street Hobo & The Unfortunates - 9th Sept 2006

The Red Deer Club is housed in a cosy space positioned above the main room of Withington’s Fuel bar, swathed in deep reds and candle light the diminutive space makes for an intimate, close setting for an evening of chilled out acoustic machinations. DJ Dunk Le Chunk sets the scene for the evening, playing a mixture of country and folk tunes which float throughout the small space setting a completely relaxed, lounge-esque foundation for the night’s events.

Funky, prolific soloist King Street Hobo (aka Mike Kelly) heads up the evenings’ live entertainment, managing to create a full, enveloping sound with just himself and his trusty guitar. Mike slapped and twanged his way through each song, each one stood out as notable without a trace of filler and managed to capture the audience’s attention who all seemed rapt in his more than capable talents. Echoes of a stripped down Ben Harper could be heard in his errant acoustic fumblings, and provided an obvious base from where Mike got much of his funky, borderline bluesy style, which can never be seen as a bad thing. Standout tracks of the evening were, “Learning to be Humble”, a soulful, building piece which could easily set new standards for all new up and coming folk acts to follow with its complex rhythm and speeding delivery. In fact his delivery was so speedy to the extent that at one point Mike seemed to get ahead of himself by hurtling through his playlist ahead of schedule and asking how long he had left after just the first 15 minutes… This song, along with the funky toe tapping song, “Red Eye”, the Hobo had a few heads nodding and a number of beards stroked in folky appreciation.

King Street Hobo’s excellent set was followed by the abstractly, but probably more accurately titled musician, ‘The Unfortunates’, possibly due to his unlucky place in performing on the back of such an obvious natural talent. ‘The Unfortunates’, are unfortunately titled as they only appear to contain one member… or at least only one multi-instrumentalist (does that count as a band?). This performer’s tunes were well put together, brilliantly structured songs, but they appeared to lack any real bite after they were strung together. Individually, each track sounded fantastic. Were he to upgrade from ‘Unfortunate’ to ‘Unfortunates’ in a real as well as titular sense, then he may become more interesting, especially as some of his later songs were vaguely reminiscent of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits, as he added some atmospheric organ and various tinkering to the proceedings. However the music lagged without the gravity of the expected gritty vocals and possibly because of the thinness of some of the music itself. His recorded tracks of course, regain the ability to sound fuller and make for a much bigger, satisfying sound, but solo his work, whilst immensely talented, goes slightly awry after extended listening.

As a night as a whole however the Red Deer Club is certainly one of the more interesting things to come out of the suburbs of Manchester and is definitely worth a trip out of the city centre itself just to experience the intimacy of these talented musicians up close and personal; clearly a hidden gem in the otherwise largely barren musical wasteland of South Manchester.
Review by Paul Walters

King Street Hobo
www.myspace.com/kingstreethobo

DJ Dunk Le Chunk
www.myspace.com/reddeerclub

The Unfortunates
www.myspace.com/theunfortunatestheband