Ash Naylor – The Rhino Room Saturday 14 April 2018.
Words Geoff Jenke
Ash Naylor, guitarist/vocalist for the band Even, guitarist with the Rockwiz Orchestra, guitarist for hire (Paul Kelly plus many other) made a rare solo trip to Adelaide to display his talent, playing the small intimate Rhino Room. Such is the talent of Ash that he should be playing much larger venues. Rock and roll is littered with such travesty’s. However, for us, the fans, it means we get to see him in a nice intimate setting.
Ash commenced the show on acoustic guitar with Sunshine Comes from Even’s album Come Again and soon after followed it with another Even song, Shining Star from 2001. But this was a solo gig and the songs we wanted to hear were his own solo songs.
Ash has made two superb albums with Sherry Rich, released under the name The Grapes and tonight we got The Boy Who Could Not Sleep, written about his son. “Of course,” added Ash after the song “if you write a song about one child you have to write one for the other child”. So, he then played Lily Darling also from the Grapes Western Sun album.
The beauty of a solo gig is Ash takes time to explain how songs come about and to explain meanings. The song Gordon Lightfoot is not about the singer songwriter by that name, but rather so called because it sounded like a Lightfoot song.
Even have a new album coming out in May, their first since In Another Time from 2011 and tonight we got a preview of 3 tracks off the album, Victoria, Merimbula and Stardust. I am now hanging out to see how Stardust sounds with a band behind it as it sounded magnificent solo.
As he moved towards doing more Even songs, Ash changed from acoustic to electric guitar to fill out the sound. Crowd favourite Black Umbrella rolled out to great applause.
It was great to hear the “hidden song” from their debut album Less Is More get an airing. Whilst not named, it is generally known as Too Dark and is a song he said he could see Bruce Springsteen doing justice to. While The Purple Nazz is always the highlight of an Even set, as a solo song it fell a little flat. The same applied to Life Gets in the Way, but we forgive him.
The two cover songs he did were interesting choices. Linda Ronstadt’s Your No Good was played almost blues like and Chris Bailey’s Ghost Ship was a highlight of the evening.
Thank you, Ash Naylor, for coming to Adelaide to give us fans a wonderful evening of great music. Hopefully see you soon with Even.
Earlier in the day Ash played a free gig at The Urban Cow Studio as part of Ian Bell’s rock photography display. It was a lose but excellent 30-minute set in which he played Gene Simmons song Mr Make Believe and the La’s song There She Goes amongst Even classics.
Ash Naylor, one of the humblest and nicest guys in rock n roll.
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