Billy Kelly at St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool. August 2014.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There aren’t too many towns and cities in the U.K. that are as close physically, geographically and tangibly as Bootle and Liverpool. Many are the people that don’t know much about the town on the Mersey, just over three miles north from the Capital of music culture and the struggles it faces on a daily basis. There are those that even think that Bootle is just another off-shoot, an estate, within the borders of Liverpool. Yet despite a certain lack of understanding that resides in the minds of many, Bootle shares a common thread with its younger but much bigger sister, its ability to turn out musicians who adhere to the way of social conscious and who aren’t afraid to say so. One such musician opened up the substantial afternoon of acoustic music at St Luke’s Church, Bootle’s own Billy Kelly.
Having released the tremendous album Everyone’s A TV Star Tonight in the quite recent past, Billy Kelly took the guitar and audience who had made their way to revel in the beauty and history of St. Luke’s Church on a journey through thoughts that lingered on the reasons why at times it would be easier for Liverpool/Bootle/Merseyside to follow Scotland’s lead and divorce Westminster. For it takes somebody from these areas, such as the likes of Ian Prowse, Ian McNabb and whole host of others to understand the problems, issues and deprivation felt in what surely should now be labelled the first (and hopefully only) great Depression of the 21st Century.
To produce a song which tells the grim reality of Bootle, a town so heavily bombed during the Second World War that the message wouldn’t have been lost on the ghosts that reside in the Bombed Out Church of St. Luke’s, a track called By The Time I Get To Bootle, and give it the type of upbeat feel which only a true wordsmith can do, was a real thrill.
Music is there to not just comfort the afflicted but to mock and torment those doing the aggrieving. Billy Kelly certainly has that ability in his lyrical language and in songs such as Find A Place For Us, the haunting Deaf, Dumb and Blind and the gorgeous Blue Skies, Blue Eyes his voice seemed to soar above the confines of St. Luke’s past, high above the city and stand out as a huge reminder to the powers that be that you can only push a set of people so far before the dissention and anger grows. Billy Kelly certainly has that great power and it should be valued.
As lazy Saturday afternoons go, to sit in a place of rememberance and listen to a stunning opening act in a day of acoustic music is about as great as you can ever ask for.
Ian D. Hall