Scott Cook – The Bunker: Feb. 27, 2023: Concert Review

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Scott Cook entertained the Folkies and the Folkie-Hags who packed out the Devonport Bunker on a rare Auckland summer evening free of rain, flash floods and cyclones.

Cook is a genuine travelling minstrel songster. He will emulate the early Bob Dylan talkin’ blues balladeer. When the man worshipped and tried to be Woody Guthrie’s soul and spirit. Other souls are channeled. Harmonica Frank Floyd and Uncle Dave Macon with a nod to Phil Ochs and All The News That’s Fit To Sing.

Troubadourly Yours is all that, as it starts of with a blues lick on his acoustic guitar. He has a large, warm baritone voice. Immediately rich and comfortable like Tom Waits, who he could easily be mistaken for as his younger doppelganger.

A socialist talking blues as he drops the line, I believe I’ll dust my broom. He hails from Alberta, Canada and he also has the muttonchop side burns of Neil Young. But the last thing he would sound like is a warbling old woman.

Scott was born in West Virginia before his family moved to Canuck country. That is the key that puts everything in its place. He’s like Levon Helm playing with a bunch of Canadians. Solo tonight, but he does play with a band variously called the She’ll Be Rights and the Second Chances.

Further On Down The Line is full-blown Woody Guthrie, with many of the familiar lyrics and phrases stitched in to the tapestry of song. He has the cadences of William Bloke Billy Bragg here, another inheritor of the social consciousness musical style. The ribbon of highway becomes the ribbon of song.

Those Guthrie lines appear throughout many of his songs. But Woody also borrowed from many sources, especially the Original Carter Family. In the original oral tradition of music and troubadours, this also served as broadsheets. The social media of the time.

Leave A Light emphasises the folk Americana nature of his songs. Easy to hear the influence of a Springsteen or a Mellencamp in the phrasing.

Hard Times places itself squarely inside the classic Bruce Springsteen album, Nebraska. Adapted from the Stephen Foster old time ballad Hard Times Come Again No More. Stark and haunting and Tom Joad makes an appearance.

Say Can You See is best described as a Rust Belt ballad. He sings of the billionaires bail-out of the 2008 global financial crisis and the trillions in arms and defense. Then explores themes of loyalty and the people of the heartland. The centre of Trump support base, if you will.

He can do a fast folk roots rap like The Kid With The Comic, written by Trevor Mills. A Christian song where he saw an ad in a comic book for an intelligent planet.

 Many songs are downbeat, with the air of resignation. But I still love this country he sings on Pass It Along. He echoes the naivety of Jonathan Richman but with a baritone timbre.

Steady For You is dedicated to his partner, Pamela. Starts with the familiar folk blues melody of Mississippi John Hurt’s Candy Man.

There Is a River has the warmth and observational lyrics of a Tom T. Hall tune. Singing of rivers shining in the sun and in dreams. I like the accent used at times. Ev’ry crick in the farm had fish.

Another fast comedy country rap is Enough. A barn dance as he calls out grits, okra, turnip greens. The first will be last and the last will be first. The Bible and The Times They Are A-Changin’.  

Might as well finish with the end times and some sly minstrel humour on Talking Anthropocalypse Blues. This world’s gonna end/ Make a new one my friend. Switch it off and switch it on again.

The Folkies demand another one. You can’t leave it like that!

So, Scott Cook plugs in again his acoustic guitar with a pedal. Quiet and spectral. Just gotta go while the party’s still goin’. He constantly travels and sings so he will be back.

Rev Orange Peel     

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