Nº 44: Lloyd Bolton
The post-Americana performer recs London's only honky-tonk, an open mic night in Peckham, and Liz Phair's lesser-known album.
We’re back with Lloyd Bolton. Read on to find out what he’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for secret recommendations once a week.
Lloyd Bolton, raised on Red Milk, performing self-proclaimed post-Americana as Frank Lloyd Wleft, usually with his own ersatz Orchestra. Think country songs for driverless trucks. Catch a set of me singing songs and reading poems on a small stage near you!
☞ ALBUM/ALBUM COVER: Jean Shephard, A Real Good Woman. It’s not that you can judge country albums by their covers, it’s just that at £2.99 in the bargain bin, you know a glorious cover will at least look well on your wall, even if the songs are rubbish. In this spirit I brought home Jean Shepard’s ‘Real Good Woman’ for its outstanding flower collage background and her insanely tall hairdo. Turns out it is actually full of bangers. I’m a real sucker for country songs that seem totally stupid on first listen and gradually get under your skin in spite of themselves. ‘Promises, Promises’ is a work of pop genius.
☞ DIME STORE RADIO: Excellent Instagram account featuring old footage of American country/folk/bluegrass etc. performances. Recent joys include Wendy Holcombe performing ‘Steel Guitar Rag’ and the classic clip of the Uncle Dave Macon playing ‘Take Me Back to My Old Carolina Home’ between spinning his banjo round his head/pretending to shoot it like a gun/putting it down and dancing round it. Follow for rhinestone suits and amazing clips. I have to stop myself from sharing every one to my story.
☞ NIGHT: Windmill Country Christmas, 18th December. Hey, I got my moment in the spotlight, I’ve gotta use it to direct you to this show we’re doing. Even if I wasn’t playing I’d be telling everyone to go to this. The original night back in 2019 was one of my favourite windmill lineups ever, capped by a country covers set from Hank Midi. This year is pretty stacked as well. I’m thrilled to be playing alongside Windmill legend and ex-Country Teaser, The Rebel. I am also incredibly excited to catch one of the first live outings of Wildwood Daddy, whose country folk tune ‘Daddy Likes to Drink’ has been on repeat for me lately.
☞ LOVE ON THE LEFT BANK: by Ed van der Elsken. Famous collection of devastatingly beautiful photographs of Paris’ beat generation, starring Vali Myers as chief muse. It speaks of a whole way of life that I aspire to: cafés, drinking, dancing, kissing, conscious expressions youth and free-spiritedness. I channel my love for the collection by stealing its images for my gig posters.
☞ ARTICLE: Philip Lahm, ‘Holding the World Cup in Qatar has damaged football and I will not be going’. Don’t get me started on the World Cup. I mean do because there are so many interesting and depressing and complicated discussions to be had around the appropriacy of the tournament being held in Qatar. This piece by the former Germany captain captures the nuances of the situation really well, appreciates that the West has no right to straightforwardly declaim Qatar, holds FIFA responsible for the problems this tournament has created, and always keeps the experience of the regular fan in view.
☞ BLUE SHOUT POETRY OPEN MIC NIGHT: I’m a songwriter but every now and then I find a couple of poems on my hands that don’t really translate musically. When I’m not ruining the momentum of our gigs reading these between songs, I take them to this monthly poetry open mic night at Copeland Social in Peckham. A really wonderful community has formed around these nights and the quality is always surprisingly impressive, without being intimidating. It is also a great source of inspiration, offering as it does such a massive cross-section of people are thinking about.
☞ THE DUKES INN, HIGHGATE: I can’t decide if I love or hate this place, so I might as well love it. Styled as ‘London’s only Honky Tonk’, it is a fun little slice of Americana, complete with bourbons, old pinball machines and a great playlist. Get down for their monthly ‘Kentucky Fried Country’ night for some two-stepping with Shazam constantly open as DJ Ryan Ray delivers the goods.
♪ LISTENING TO: Liz Phair, Whip-Smart. I’ve been in a big Liz Phair hole these past few months. She’s the best. I love that her songs often have this unfinished, rough quality, that she makes a virtue of being wilfully lazy. (Check out ‘Headache’, where she didn’t bother to write a second verse so just goes da-da- da.) I thought she only had Exile and Guyville and Whitechocolatespaceegg before her infamously crap pop sellout albums. Turns out there was a whole record in between and nobody told me! Been listening to it all week, it’s great, especially ‘Chopsticks’ and ‘Nashville’.
☠︎ HATES: I’m a real hater about a lot of things and should really be more positive in my outlook. That said, I stand by my position on The Old Blue Last, though, I’m convinced that place is a hellmouth. Not entirely the venue’s fault, but something bad always seems to happen when I go there. It is on them that they oversell free events so you can’t go out for air between bands without having to queue up interminably to be let back in. Also fix the men’s room upstairs please, it has been over a year. The other top hate right now is FIFA, that does not need so much qualification.
TY Lloyd! Follow Lloyd here. Buy tickets to Lloyd’s night at The Windmill here. Read Hard of Hearing magazine here.