The gig in question here occurred the night after the triumphant return of Sonny George and the Boz Boorer All Stars to the London stage at an absolutely wonderful gig at the Dublin Castle in Camden. The reason that I have decided to review this, second, London date, at the much smaller West Hampstead Arts Club is because, in addition to the full band show, this would also feature Sonny and Boz sitting down and telling stories in the intimate all-seated venue.

The band for this evening consists of Lyn Boorer in double bass, Brian Nevill on drums, Graham Murphy on acoustic guitar, and Andy Kandil on lead guitar, as well of course, as the dynamic duo Sonny George on vocals and Boz Boorer on lead guitar. It is the dynamic Sonny and Boz armed with an acoustic guitar each take to the stage first. 

‘Hello friends’ is the welcoming deep baritone, mightily southern, opening remark from Sonny. ‘My name’s Boz and this is Mr Sonny George from Nashville, Tennessee’ says his English pal. Boz says that he had been trying to work out when they played their first gig. For Boz he was 17 and for Sonny he was 27 working at a mental institution as a recreational therapist, essentially performing Beatles songs for the inpatients. Sonny says that one usually requires a college degree for such a position, but he reckoned that having seen ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest qualified him. He used to smoke a lot of weed back then and so he thought that he’d fit right in. His first performance involved him singing ‘Blackbird’. Boz, interjects ‘And then you went back there.’ It was a few years ago, whilst Sonny was experiencing the ‘darkness of his soul’ that he spent three days at the institution being evaluated. Boz interjects once more ‘but we’ve got you back now Sonny’ to which the crowd cheers. 

Sonny remarks that he ‘had the bright idea of recording a trucking album back in 96/97 and I hired Boz to play guitar on it’ and this was where the two really got to know each other well. Though Sonny says that he had known Boz since 1991 when he had supported Morrissey on the Kill Uncle tour. Boz intervenes again and says that it was at a Ronnie Dawson gig back at the Forum in 89 that the two first met, though Sonny corrects him by pointing out that this gig was in 90.

They launch into ‘Truck Driving Man Number 1.’ Boz embellishes Sonny’s chords delightfully with some outstanding jazzy guitar work.

Sonny points out that he is a bona fide truck driver having first driven back in 69, though more recently he served as a teamster. ‘I guess I’m legit, but now everybody wants to be a truck driver now, Dale Watson recorded two truck driving records and he ain’t no trucker.’

Boz points out that Sonny has retired because he is almost 80 years old. ‘You cantankerous old coot’ comes the reply.

Boz suggests, ‘Let’s do Johnny Cash’, ‘Folsom Prison’

It is quite faithful to the original although the guitar work of Mr Boorer rather eclipses that of Luther Perkins. He is all over the fretboard.

Sonny then tells the story of how he got to meet Johnny Cash. Mr Cash was getting ready to record his American Recording album and he was looking for someone to record demos for him and he hired Sonny. He went to a little studio in Nashville and the guy who was producing the session was on the phone to Johnny Cash.  He said now John doesn’t want you to sing the songs like him, he wants you to do them as you, so he said, ‘well, I think that I can do that.’ Sonny went home and that night the producer called and said ‘John liked what you did, but now he wonders if you could sing them like him? Well, I can do my best, so I went in and did my best Johnny Cash. The producer said, I can pay you now or you can go and see john at the House of Cash, he’d like to meet you. At the House of Cash, before it burned down, there was a museum downstairs and he had his office upstairs. And I thought that if he gets to write me a cheque, I’ll have his signature on it, but I’d been told that he lets his secretary write all of his cheques. So I went up there to meet him all in black figuring that he would be all in black. So I went in there and the guy that produced the session was there and he said that he’s busy right now, but he’ll see you in about ten minutes. So in about ten minutes he called me up and he’s sitting behind a big ol desk, Johhny fucking Cash in a light blue dress shirt and dark blue slacks. I felt like a fucking idiot you know! And he said thank you man you did a good job on those songs. We talked a bit, but I was very scared, he was very imposing and he was dyeing his hair black back then too. So I was very disappointed with the blue shit anyway, as I was leaving he said that he was looking for songs for the album, did I have any? So I said no, the Producer said that he would listen to it too.’

Boz interjects by saying that Sonny had never written a song, which Sonny qualifies by saying that he hadn’t written anything to speak of, and he didn’t want Johnny Cash to turn him down. ‘And then I went home and I thought, you sorry excuse for whatever the fuck you are, Johnny Cash just asked you for a song and you said no. So I went home and I started writing and writing and Paul Kennerley, a friend of ours, the best writer in town, so I thought what would Paul do? And Paul is just like Buddy Holly through and through.’ So as Boz says, ‘this song is called ‘Big Trouble’ and we recorded it for our new record, which features the wonderful accordion playing of Slim who’s here tonight.’ It features licks from I‘m Goin to Tell You How It’s Goin To Be’ replete with ‘Ah, Ah, Ahs’, in the outro. ‘That’s the first song that he ever wrote, it’s pretty good isn’t it? Sonny continues, ‘My mother hated that song. Anyway, I did a demo of that song that got reviewed by Robert k. Altman, he was a big-wig and he said that it was a cross between Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash. And I thought well hell yeah’. 

Boz points out that when they ‘first played as a band, the Sonny George band, we used to play a lot at the 12 Bar Club and towards the end of our run of our gigs there our friend Kirsty Macoll used to come down and she particularly liked Sonny. And, in fact the last time that she performed ‘Fairytale of New York’ she asked you to do Shane’s part.’

Sonny takes up the story: ‘I’ll tell you the truth I’d never heard of Kirsty Macoll, she wasn’t like a big star in America and I’d never heard Fairytale, I’ never heard the song. I’d heard ‘They Don’t Know About Us’ by Tracy Ullman and I loved it. And anyway, Boz and Lyn brought her to a gig and before the gig we had a couple of drinks at the bar and I liked her, I didn’t know who she was. So she started going to all of the gigs along with Spider Stacy and Imelda May and Darrel Higham – great times! 

‘One night she said that she had a big tour coming up, she had a new album out and she asked me to do Fairytale of New York with her at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on the last night of the tour. I told Lyn and she said don’t you know what an honour this is? And I said no. So I called Kirsty and asked her do you want me to do Shane? She said no,  I want you to do you or there’s no point. I said okay, I can do me. She did a computer print-out with the sections marked out Sonny here Kirsty here, I’ve got in framed back home now. Then she wanted to do a rockabilly record with me, a duet kind of thing, So okay I’ll try it. She said it’s got to be commercial though, well that lets me out. So before she had a vacation planned for Mexico she invited me over to her house and she had a title for a song we’re going to do together it’s called ‘Going Home To See My Baby’, I thought ‘oh shit’ I never would have gone for a title like that, mine are all weird and hers were more commercial. So, she called me to go over to her house and I called Boz, we went over together and she had the title and we didn’t write shit we ended up drinking. She said work on it while I’m gone and we’ll finish it when I’m back. I was going to surprise her, I knew that she was going to change something, but she never made it back.

Boz adds,’ so we recorded it for the next record, that we recorded over in Portugal and we should play it now it’s called ‘I’m Going Home to See My Baby’. It’s a cracking rockabilly groover of a song, that will forever be imbued with that extra sense of poignancy.

‘Thank you Kirsty wherever you are’ adds Sonny. Lyn makes a toast to absent friends.

Sonny says to Boz, ‘I first me you in 1991, I opened for Morrissey on the Kill Uncle tour. Do one of the Morrissey songs. He wrote this fucking song!

But Boz pleads, can I do one that I didn’t write?

Boz dispenses a top-drawer rendition of ‘Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?’ from the Vauxhall and I album.

Shall we get the band up? Yeah.

The band plays a song called ‘Trouble Up the Road’ that is a rockabilly peach that features magnificent solos from Boz and Andy Kandil, the relative whippersnapper on telecaster who dispatches solo after solo with effortless splendour. 

‘Let’s do ‘Tennessee Waltz’ this was my favourite song as a kid’ says Sonny. A lovely intro with a terrific fill by drummer Brian Nevil and then we’re up and running with this exquisite stroller, the three guitars working in wonderful harmony with the bottom end provided by Lyn’s fantastic rhythmic playing pulling everyone together.

‘Who’s Been Playing My Guitar When I’m Gone’ is next up and is suitably excellent.

Next Sonny says, we’re ‘gonna do one that the Planet Rockers recorded back in 94 at Toerag Studios with Liam Watson, a song that was originally recorded by Hershel Butts one that me and Eddie recorded’ Lyn chip in, and Brian! ‘Brian was there, Matt Radford.’ A killer rendition of ‘One More Drink’ follows.

Now we’re gonna do one that we recorded at the Tennessee State Prison for women that we recorded back in 1999, it’s just come out for the first time on vinyl. The song is the tremendous ‘Hillbilly Wolfman’ replete with howls and syncopated guitar playing that lends the song a semi-reggae feel, along with at least three positively excoriating guitar solo.

I’m going to let Boz sing a couple now while I take a nap.

To which the polecat maestro retorts, ‘okay, you doddery old fool’.

Cantankerous Lyn says ‘he needs to have a wee-wee’ and asks mischievously ‘did you not put your pads on?’

‘We’ve had a good six weeks haven’t we?’

‘It started off at midnight with a call from Sonny saying that that he couldn’t get on the plane because he didn’t have an ECA form, he didn’t have an email address, he’s got one now! And then I had major eye surgery.’

Boz does ‘Shake Em Up Rock’ and it is a rockabilly masterclass.

Phil Blomberg with whom Boz has been playing in a band since 1977 is summoned to the stage for a song that he wrote entitled ‘Rockabilly Guy’. This was the first song that the band recorded in 1978. It is magnificent with ‘Rock On the Moon’ section added in.

‘Slippin’ In’ with Phil Blomberg is similarly superb at which point Sonny and Lyn return to the stage.

‘Gonna Rock Your Momma All Night Long’ rocks splendidly and ‘Yes I Do’ grooves along superbly.

One that the band used to close the show with Ronnie Dawson ‘Knock Down Drag Out’ is next and is a tremendously raucous work out. Sonny remarks, ‘Boz Boorer – one of a kind.’ At which point drummer Brian causes hilarity when Lyn reveals that he had just remarked ‘it’s gone 10 you know!’ ‘He’s got the coco on’ and ‘have you got your slippers Brian’ are the replies from the Boorers.

One that Sonny did with the Planet Rockers ‘Come On’ is belted out with tremendous slapping by Lyn that gives the song a wonderful bottom end, the song morphs into ‘I Love Women’

It’s been great being back in London, who knows maybe for the last time?’ No! comes the chorus.

Billy Grammer’s ‘Got to Travel On’ is quite delightful.

‘One more?’ Boz inquires. ‘This will save us getting up and down’ adds Lynn.

 ‘This was the one that hooked Kirsty Macoll back at the 12 Bar Club ‘Big Big Man’ and it’s a cracker.

Sonny introduces the last song of the night: Larry Williams, ‘Slow Down’, and explains that they are playing it because they are in London and the Beatles recorded it there, as Boz points out it was recorded just up the Road at Abbey Road.

‘Got to get back and put the hot water bottle on for him, the doddery old fool’ Boz quips. He is pretty damn good for a ‘doddery old fool’ in my book. This has been a memorable night of wonderful musicianship and wonderful stories. I was genuinely privileged to have been in attendance.

Nick Kemp