Tom Russell

Tom Russell continues his career-long quest to distance himself from Nashville (“I ain’t heard a good country song since 1973.”) with a set that begins with a Hank Williams song but has darker, more dangerous places to go.

He might be travelling down that Lost Highway but his devils are chasing him all the way. As the brisk 75 minutes allowed by the venue slips past, there’s no room for old favourites or the faint hearted. Russell wants to ruffle some feathers in his middle age, with those twin towers of most left wing American artists of the 21st century, George W. and Katrina, firmly in his sights.

Biblical imagery seems to have overtaken love and alcohol as his main preoccupation, but he’s not singing about God in any evangelical sense so much as he is about trying to outrun his wrath. This is a man in fear as he approaches sixty and Armageddon is coming one way or the other, either by God’s hand or our own. But for all that he can still belt out some damn good folk rock with just a guitar and a pair of cowboy boots. Just don’t call him country.