John Etheridge & Chris Garrick at The Shrewsbury Coffeehouse, Shrewsbury.

The Shrewsbury Coffeehouse is a welcome new addition to the live music circuit in Shrewsbury, a town with a burgeoning artistic scene. The Coffeehouse offers a regular series of artistic events including live jazz and folk from some of the leading names in their respective fields plus theatre, comedy and literary events.

I received my invitation to review this show from Shrewsbury based guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Chris Quinn, one half of the popular Hickman and Quinn duo whose work has been reviewed elsewhere on this site. Chris is part of the Coffeehouse team and it’s partly thanks to his status as a musician that the Coffeehouse has been able to attract artists of the quality of guitarist John Etheridge and violinist Chris Garrick to play this new and very intimate venue.

Yes, the Coffeehouse is tiny and on Saturday it was absolutely rammed as around seventy of us squeezed in to witness a hugely entertaining set from two of the UK’s leading jazz musicians. The combination of guitar and violin in jazz dates back to the days of Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti and most famously Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli but Etheridge and Garrick take the instruments to a whole new level, acknowledging the past, and Reinhardt in particular, whilst simultaneously adding a thoroughly contemporary edge through their choice of material and use of modern music technology.

Etheridge and Garrick are frequent collaborators, both as a duo and as members of Etheridge’s Sweet Chorus Quartet in which the pair examine and extend the Reinhardt legacy in the company of rhythm guitarist Dave Kelbie and double bassist Andy Crowdy. Etheridge famously played with Stephane Grappelli himself back in the day but his versatility as a guitarist has also seen him enjoy stints with Soft Machine and the later Soft Machine Legacy Band as well as exploring all stations in between. Garrick is a similarly wide ranging player who has explored jazz, folk and rock, sometimes combining them all together as in his eclectic “Firewire” quartet with pianist David Gordon, Danish bassist Ole Rasmussen and drummer Tom Hooper.

Tonight the pair concentrated on their duo repertoire with many of the featured pieces coming from their excellent 2009 album “Men On Wire”, a title that reflects not only the material used in the manufacture of their instruments but also the nature of the duo as a kind of musical high wire balancing act. It’s also a reference to high wire walker Philipe Petit who once, pre 9/11, famously walked a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.  Etheridge and Garrick are not afraid to take risks, frequently tampering with and radically rearranging their source material. They’re also prepared to wander well off the jazz map adapting songs by rock writers such as Peter Gabriel and Richard Thompson as vehicles for improvisation.

Indeed it was Gabriel’s “Mercy Street” that opened the show with the duo adding a folk feel to the beautiful but melancholy melody. Etheridge revealed that this was a particular favourite
of the duo’s to play.

They followed this with the intricate bebop lines of a Sonny Rollins tune (the title of which remains trapped in my mental recesses) into which they incorporated a lengthy duet between electric guitar and pizzicato violin. Indeed in the context of the duo Garrick sometimes plucks as much as he bows and the guitar/pizzicato combination appeared in several numbers. It’s a reminder of the rhythmic sophistication of the duo, as well as conventional chording Etheridge also deploys a “hammering on” technique, his tapping of the strings intertwining with Garrick’s violin lines, whether bowed or plucked.

The classical canon is also a fertile source of inspiration for the duo. Their version of Sir William Walton’s “Touch Her Sweet Lips And Part” was inspired by a jazz interpretation by saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Peter Erskine. Here the piece opened with a passage for solo violin and ended with solo electric guitar, the crystalline quality of Etheridge’s playing emphasising his feather light touch on the strings.

The duo’s dip into the Reinhardt/Grappelli repertoire, a segue of “Let’s Fall In Love” and “Undecided” sidestepped all the clichés associated with the Hot Club style as the duo broke up the rhythms and combined Etheridge’s acoustic guitar with Garrick’s pizzicato violin.

Their version of the pop tune “Blue Moon” introduced an element of humour with it’s blend drunken, woozy Americana and Garrick’s mischievous “single hair trick”, a technique he learnt from a Romanian folk musician. It’s something that has to be seen to be believed and can be used for either atmospheric or humorous effect. Etheridge’s later solo added something of the blues element suggested by the title.

The first half ended with a richly atmospheric take on Ennio Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso” sourced from the duo’s widely acclaimed 2006 album “At The Dimming Of The Day” with Garrick beginning on solid bodied electric violin before switching to his more usual (but still substantially adapted) acoustic.

An excellent first half then, characterised by some exquisite interplay between the two instruments with two supreme individual technicians combining to produce something even greater than the sum of the two already impressive parts. An eclectic mix of material sourced from various genres had been adapted to fit perfectly into the duo’s highly distinctive musical aesthetic. The second set expanded on this as the pair added the technology of live looping to their armoury. Garrick’s set up included a substantial pedal-board containing an impressive array of electronic effects.

To begin the pair made something fresh out of Pat Metheny’s tune “James” (a dedication to singer songwriter James Taylor) with Etheridge studiously avoiding copying the style of the composer.  “Mean To Me” proved to be a feature for Etheridge’s nimble fretboard work before the duo switched on the machines for a looped and layered and sometimes just plain weird version of Louis Bonfa’s “The Gentle Rain”.

“Msenduza” an Abdullah Ibrahim tune written when the composer was still known as Dollar Brand appears on “Men On Wire” but has also been a staple of Etheridge’s solo shows. It’s an infectious slice of township jazz with a ridiculously joyous and catchy melody.  The bulk of the tune was played here as a duet for guitar and pizzicato violin with Garrick only picking up the bow for the closing stages.

It’s a characteristic of the duo that they can bring something fresh to even the most hackneyed of material. Burt Bacharach’s “Alfie” surely falls into that category but in this brief violin feature Garrick managed to bring a compelling amount of tenderness and emotion to the tune before puncturing the mood with a throwaway reference to Cilla Black. It’s to the duo’s credit that they never take themselves too seriously.

The duo closed with “Nuages”, arguably Django Reinhardt’s most famous tune, with the duo bringing a melancholy to the tune that is rarely explored these days despite the meaning of the title (English translation “Clouds”). A passage of solo violin then provided the link into “Sweet Georgia Brown” which ended the evening on a high note, even with Etheridge and Garrick still tinkering with the form of the song and eschewing the clichés.

A rousing reception from the tightly packed audience ensured that an encore was inevitable and the hemmed in duo responded with a lovely version of the old country song “Tennessee Waltz”. Garrick’s violin emphasised the song’s Celtic origins, sometimes sounding like an Irish air, with the twang of Etheridge’s guitar providing the Americana aspect. This was surprisingly lovely and was to be the end of an excellent evening’s music by two masters of their craft. It was a pleasure to see them at work in such an intimate environment.

Etheridge and Garrick leaven their shows with a humorous line in stage patter and with Etheridge resisting the temptation to talk too much they got things pretty much spot on in this regard. The music was of course splendid throughout and the bumper turnout suggested a good future for the new venue. Things were inevitably a little cramped and after the rather noisy air conditioning was turned off at Garrick’s request after the second number the temperature rose exponentially (although, for me, nothing a couple of bottles of beer couldn’t deal with) but any discomfort was worth it for the quality of the music alone.

Thanks to Chris Quinn for inviting me. It was a great evening and I’ll be back for the visit of saxophonist Peter King and his quartet on October 6th. I’m just wondering how the hell they’re going to fit a drum kit in there! And finally just in case you were wondering, yes the coffee is good. 

   

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