Chester’s bandstand is on the banks of the River Dee; its backdrop is dotted with the trees that stand as sentinels to the old buildings behind. Pleasure cruisers amble up and down the river, passing with a gentle chug the pedalos that bob over their wake. It is an idyllic setting. People stroll past with ice cream dribbling down their fingers and children cry over spilt fizzy drinks and liberated balloons as they drift off into the skies (the balloons!). Today, there are many folk lingering more than usual on the benches as they come across Jimmy Rae and the Firewalkers and join the audience that came to see them.
Jimmy returned to music a year or two back after a long absence. He was a member of The Check and later left with singer Colin Free to form The Reverb Brothers. The Reverbs were fine entertainment, Jimmy and Colin flanked a 1960’s juke box that belted out their backing tracks as the bequiffed pair charmed audiences with their impertinently memorable songs. Jimmy will often tell anyone who will listen that the old juke box was the best looking thing about the band. He’s wrong, of course, for a start, they wore the most handsome bootlace ties and tab collared shirts. They released two singles on RCA to follow the one they brought out independently, before reaching the end of their own personal Route 66. They reformed a few years ago and play parties for fun.
On this occasion, backing singer Catherine Howard was missing, but the rest of the splendid Firewalkers were present as they breeze through a mixture of songs from their cd “Deliverance”, some new songs and a diverse selection of covers. Before opening with “Just a Matter of Time” Jimmy announces that the cd will be knocked out for a knock down price. By the end of the first song there are already takers! It’s hardly surprising, the songs have an infectious immediacy that is difficult to resist. “Tomorrow Night” is a perfect example of this. A tale of travelling home to a loved one that has a chorus that could charm the spines of a stickleback.
Then there is the old Reverb Brothers song “Ain’t So Sorry” with in attitude that sneers “Stuff you, I’m gonna rock!” There is also the beautifully sweet “Eddie’s Guitar” which tells the story of Eddie Cochran’s mother showing her son’s guitar to curious fans. The guitar was retrieved from the wreckage of the 1960 crash in Bath that killed Cochran and injured Gene Vincent, by Dave Dee, who was a police cadet in the area. Dee held on to the guitar until he was able to return it to Cochran’s mother Alice. It’s a bewitching, if heart rending tribute.
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The crowd pleasing cover versions tumble from the stage, and if some of them don’t quite hit the spot musically, it’s because Rae’s own songs are strong enough to carry the day. He introduces a medley of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” and Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line” by explaining that these songs best encapsulate the derivation of the band’s name. The others covers are, I suspect, a tour of Jimmy’s record collection, “Stand By Me”, “Walking After Midnight”, “Twenty Flight Rock” of course, the song Cochran sang so memorably in the film “The Girl Can’t Help It”, “Suspicious Minds”....you get the general idea.
Yet, amongst the frolicking country rockers, Rae has a devastating emotional coup de grace up his sleeve for the penultimate song of the set’s first half. “Devil In His Hands” is a chillingly prescient song, particularly in the light of a recent visitor to our shores. Rae says that it took him forty years to write the song, the bitter memories of his experience being painfully intoned.
After a break, he probably needed one after that, the mood is rekindled with terrific songs such as “Already One” a nostalgic love paean and the single “Under The Mersey Moon “a eulogy to his home town which in less skilful hands may have lapsed into mawkish sentimentality
By the end of the first set, the cds have sold out and Jimmy is left rueing not bringing some extra copies. Many people, some of whom had never heard of Jimmy Rae and the Firewalkers an hour or two prviously, leave clutching a souvenir of an almost perfect afternoon. I doubt if their number contained the young lad who hurtled by with his fists clamped into his ears. Everyone’s a critic.
“Deliverance” is available from Jimmy Rae online where you can also buy “Under The Mersey Moon” two thirds of the proceeds from the single will be donated to Liverpool Unites and Wirral Autistic Society.
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