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GROVE INN : Sat 4 June 2005 : ROB SIMPSON QUITS CROSSCUT SAW An era ended at the Grove just before midnight on Saturday 4 June 2005 - don't panic! Leeds's original wonderful music pub is still there, unchanged and still cresting the waves of mutability all around it. And Crosscut Saw - immeasurably the best electric blues band in this area or anywhere near - are still with us, but from now on it's without Rob Simpson's tremendous work on second guitar. After eleven years Rob received a tireless and emotional farewell from his fellow players, and a stunned one from the audience, who by Sunday must having been telling their friends they woke up this morning, couldn't believe those things last night. One of the best features of the situation is also one of its ironies. When only a few weeks ago, the normally easy-going Simpson broke up his guitar on stage in a nerve-racking prefigurement of his departure, it was goodbye to a hollow-body Epiphone that had seen him through at least ten of his years with Crosscut Saw. That made way for tonight's Telecaster, looking like such a handsome vintage model that it could have been borrowed from Richard Green of hypercool Leeds trio The Somatics, who have been known to employ Simpson's talent as guitar tech. No irony so far : that comes with the fact that in all those years on the Epiphone, there were times when Rob looked as if he was fighting the instrument rather than cooperating with it, and his brilliant inventive solos had people on the edge of their seats over whether he got the strings down in time for the next chord as he piled it on. In contrast, to see him with the Telecaster was to watch a man with an instrument that seems to have been perfectly trained to anticipate its user's needs. So that's just a few lines to let everyone know it's worth looking out for Rob Simpson in whatever form he next emerges. When asked by an over eager camera-and-notebook-toting enquirer immediately after the gig, how he felt about the big step, he briefly turned away from the tendernesses of old friends surrounding him, to give a short emotion-swamped reply in which only the words "iconoclastic" and "anthropomorphic" were distinct, possibly a clue that his mind was on guitars past and present. Finally, let's not overlook the good night's music happening round all these goings-on. Crosscut Saw gave their stunning versions of Buddy Guy's "Smell a Rat" and Magic Sam's "Easy Baby". A recent addition to the repertoire is a funkier Buddy Guy sound "Ain't No Midnight Train" which thoroughly suits the band and like everything they take on is likely to grow with them. The same is true of their own compositions, which continue to advance in worth as new depths are found in them, a current favourite being their up-tempo "Little by Little", which eluded the 2003 Album In Debt? You Bet! but is a prime candidate for the next one. A memorable "Should I Call You" from the CD brought a fitting tone to the second set, and showed Rob still exploring new ways in familiar material to the very end. As the evening moved on there was a nostalgic moment from lead player and singer Alex Eden ( who also has master skills on harmonica) when he directed some Sonny Boy Williamson words at Rob : "When I first met you I was just twenty one"; and the number that closed the show was Rob's choice of Buddy Guy's "First Time I Met The Blues". That next Crosscut Saw CD could be the work of a three-piece band. Simpson's departure doesn't leave a vacancy for rhythm guitar : it leaves a gap that has to close up. A confident future for the band owes something to the arrival earlier this year of capable and hard-working bass player Tim Crawley whose reliability means that Alex Eden on vocals/lead guitar and Richard Ferdinando on drums, both founder-members, can concentrate on a task for which their virtuoso quality and immense creativity equip them well - so well, in fact, that long-term fans of Crosscut Saw can look forward with intrigued anticipation rather than nervousness. JOHN HEPWORTH 5 JUNE 2005 |