From the Rio Grande to Pocklington

Pock­ling­ton used to be a byword for sleepy.  But no more.  In fact for some years now the Pock­ling­ton Arts Centre has been put­ting on a great vari­ety of events, includ­ing some big acts.  I’ve been very late in wak­ing up to this — partly out of nervous­ness about catch­ing the last bus home, partly because I’ve been able to pick up the acts elswhere.  But I’d been miss­ing a treat — quite a small aud­it­or­ium — nice bar, and the other night — TOM RUSSELL.  Actu­ally, he’s been another gap in my edu­ca­tion.  A few years ago, I heard a won­der­ful song called St Olav’s Gate on the radio, and mis­re­membered it as being by Tom Waits. I spent ages look­ing at the playl­ists on Tom Waits albums, won­der­ing why he hadn’t recor­ded this song. Finally the penny dropped — i looked on the Tom Rus­sell web­site — and blow me — POCKLINGTON!  And it was a superb even­ing. Tom was accom­pan­ied by Michael Mar­tin, demon gui­tar and man­dolin player, and they went through many of Tom’s best known songs, plus a few new ones.  St Olav’s Gate of course, and my cur­rent favour­ite song about how stu­pid gov­ern­ments are — Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall ?  We could maybe have done with a few fewer remind­ers from the stage that we were in Pock­ling­ton but maybe he was as bemused by it as I was.  Good to see an Amer­ican legend, even if he’s only been legendary to me for a couple of months.