Chris Wood — the singing one.

I say “the singing one” because I do know one in a cyc­ling and pub-crawling con­text. It’s not him, though a pub and drink were involved.  Chris Wood plays gui­tar and fiddle, used to tour as a duet with Andy Cut­ting, but turned up at the Black Swan as a solo act.  He’s big, bluff, assert­ively South­ern (Kent) per­former, hid­ing behind a very fine Lon­don area accent, com­plete with the occa­sional glot­tal stop.  The slightly rough stage per­sona is belied by some of his songs, how­ever — the exquis­itely sen­ti­mental and tender “One in a Mil­lion”, and a song for the vic­tim of the Stock­well tube police murder.  He didn’t sing one of my favour­ites “Hares on the Moun­tain” which is a lovely little num­ber about the yearn­ings of boys for the girls who seem so inac­cess­ible.  He also star­ted the even­ing with an obvi­ously new song about the credit crunch and the bankers.  He’s good, though the length of his intro­duc­tions and ram­bling diver­sions mean that I felt slightly short-changed in terms of num­ber of songs.