Nashville, South London

The other evening, we went to The Mag pub in our little corner of South London for some live music. It was an event organised by a ukelele band so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. As it turned out, while the ukelele band entertained the crowds in the downstairs part of the pub, we discovered that some guitarists in the upstairs room were playing my favourite kind of music - acoustic folk/ rock! So we ended up spending most of the evening upstairs, toe tapping along to some great country/ folk music and getting a taste of Nashville in South London.

There was Doc King , who played a tiny “parlour” guitar - but the sound he made was amazing - ranging from folk to Irish ballads/ church songs reworked with an Indian sitar flavour and Spanish style melodies. And John Atkinson, who sang ballads with lyrics like “All I got is heartache and a hard-on” (!) and was like a Hank Williams on skid row.

But my favourite were Fran & Mike, a true-blue acoustic rock duo, whose sound was smoky and deep and rich with just two guitars and Fran’s terrific vocals. I have to say, I felt like a such groupie as we stayed for most of the gig and then I went up to them to tell them how much I enjoyed their music and to buy their latest CD The Road That You Believe In. I’ve been rocking away at home ever since!

You can listen to some of the songs from the CD on their MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/franandmike