Showcase – The Man In Washington

Despite the never-ending toll of cold and flu victims, a respectable twenty five turned out for our Showcase Evening with “The Man In Washington” Chris Yeoh.

Our club was the first stop of the tour to promote his new album Sea Green, two days before it’s official launch on Saturday.

Through Chris’s songs, the album relates the true story about a man who lost his mind and lost his love and went to sea alone in search of god.

During the evening we heard a selection of songs from the album, one or two that he reprised from an earlier visit to us last November, and a couple of nice covers too.

Of those on the album, “Fire and Clay”, “Starstruck Battlelines” and “Mercy” are the songs that stuck the most in my mind. Story telling songs in true contemporary folk fashion.

Of his covers, the stand-out song was an a cappella version of “The Grey Funnel Line”.  This ended up with the massed choir of the AllStyles audience joining in on the chorus lines.

Between Chris’s two sets, we heard from regulars Tom, Lynda, Richard, Joe, Alex, two Colins, and Myself, and we each contributed up to three songs.

Colin Masterson gave us his usual helping of Beatles goodness plus a great version of the O’Jays classic, “Love Train”. Meanwhile Colin Campbell served up a fine trio of Dylan songs: “Forever Young”, “Make you Feel My Love” and “Workingman’s Blues”.

Alex sang Elton’s “Your Song” and the Garth Brooks/Kent Blazy song,** popularised by Ronan Keating, “Tomorrow Never Comes”, both beautifully finger-picked. Joe’s set included “Blue Songs on a Red Guitar” and Lynda took us for a “Walk in the Irish Rain”.

Richard joined in and played “The Games People Play” plus “City of New Orleans” and Tom turned out a couple of instrumentals on mandolin and dobro.

Then it was back to Chris Yeoh for the finale spot, which included the song everyone was taking about at the end of the evening, my own personal favourite, “The River”.  This is an absolutely beautiful song written only recently in honour of Chris’s grandfather who passed away over Christmas. And we were privileged to have witnessed it’s first ever public performance.

It was nice to see several copies of The Man In Washington’s CDs changing hands before he disappeared into the night to embark on the three hour drive back to Somerset to prepare for his album launch event at ArtSpace in Bath on Saturday.  If you missed out on getting the CD, there will be a link here on the website shortly to purchase or download a copy.  Or you can check it out on Chris’s Website.