Concert Review: Delaney Davidson – Ponsonby Social Club November 24, 2020

The Magus in Black, Delaney Davidson, invokes the wild spirit Gods and Demons with candles and smoke, a whiff of Sulphur and brimstone. The Shaman two-step, wild eyes and Little John the Conqueroo. The dim stage of the Ponsonby Social Club resonates to Southern Swamp Blues.

“We can’t see your face”, someone says. “I can’t either, so we’re even,” says Delaney.

A large cult following over the last ten years in New Zealand. Produces other artists, a songwriting collaborator and a musician’s musician. Or a Magician.

Tonight, we are transported to the bar in Deadwood. Wild Bill Lee and the Place of Dead Roads.

 First song conjures the Sun Recording Studio about the time the Rockabilly’s found their way there. The train rhythm of Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. Tremolo guitar twang mutating to Surf.

The sound all-encompassing and terrific. Thanks again Ponsonby Social Club.

Second song jumps to Detroit late Forties and a John Lee Hooker stomp beat. Electrified diddley bow. Actually, the sound of the Country Blues moving from the Juke Joints to the city. Elemental buzzsaw guitar. With his battered suitcase and array of effects pedals in front of him he looks like a busker on stage.

The Six Year Olds Dream (not its actual title) is a centrepiece of recent shows. Dream movie as envisioned by Rob Zombie but probably closer to David Lynch at his most unsettling and disturbing. A long tracking shot from your bed to the backdoor into the yard. Your favourite sandwich mis-directs you. Demented smile as you row down a river. Moon River plays full of twang and reverb. The Demon croaks and summons the whiskey-drinking Dark Preacher of Son House. Cloaked in a black shawl he prowls through the room. Then the guitar brings it back with Latin styled Rockabilly. Great theatre.

At times Delaney sings with the nasal tenor of Willie Nelson. Like Don’t Walk Away From Love. Country in atmosphere, a song of lonely nights and regret.

The next song starts with a simple rhythm stomp. Delta Blues with some Hank Williams Country accents threaded in there somewhere. The singing is Muddy Waters moving from the plantation to the Chicago bars. Duane Eddy riffs around the locked-in beat. I can hear drums somewhere in those loops.

That was Dance and it brings out two black-clad witches to shake and shimmy.

Another Rockabilly song and if at first the demented singer sounds like Charlie Feathers, he then gets funky and sly like Harmonica Frank Floyd. Dirty fuzztone guitar and voodoo chants. Tribal incantatory conjuring music.

He follows that with a Folk tune as he says. Actually, a slow Country lament but Cramps style.

It never lets up the whole set. A stunning verson of an ancient classic, In the Pines. The longest train I ever did see…With a dark wailing guitar and the ghost of electricity howling through the bones of a face. (Thank you Bob).

Delaney tells us he would like to open the portal to a new and better future.  That’s what a great artist does.  Then he closes with some nasty Surf Rockabilly guitar with a drumbeat. Electric hypnotic drone dancing to the cadences of Suicide.

A superb show. Off-kilter, outside the mainstream and utterly compelling.

Rev Orange Peel