The Filtnib’s Progress

Chris Bathgate is a singer-songwriter from the Michigan town of Ann Arbor. On Friday I went to hear him play at the rather lovely Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell.

Bathgate’s sound is folk dosed with a kind of experimental post-classical grandeur; glued together with scholarly, poetic lyrics it’s a beguiling and often transcendent mix.

Have a listen to Yes I’m Cold on The Tripwire.

Great, yes? Well, what with publicizing his album, A Cork Tale Wake, and a whistlestop tour that has included Rome, Paris, Oxford, SXSW, Ithaca, and New York (April 21st), Mr. Bathgate is a busy fellow. But he’s also a gentleman, and so after his set, he kindly agreed to let me grill him on some matters of pressing urgency:

Q: What’s the best thing about touring in Britain?

A: The food. It’s remarkably fresh. Far better than we have in Michigan. In particular, your service station food is a lot better.

Q: So you eat a lot of service station food?

A: We try not to but it’s inevitable.

Q: Is it true you missed your plane today?

A: It’s most definitely true. We were on the road in Rome this morning at 8.45am but the traffic was terrible and we missed our check-in time by 5 minutes. So we got a later flight at 4.30, took the Stansted Express and at Liverpool St we jumped straight in a cab to get here.

Q: Who are you listening to at the moment?

A: I like David Thomas Broughton quite a bit.

Q: Who inspires you?

A: Richard Butler… Traditional folk music… I play the fiddle so lots of fiddle toons.

Q: What’s your favourite food?

A: Fresh pineapple. It’s like eating electricity.

…Meanwhile back at the Slaughtered Lamb’s downstairs gig space, another band, Captive State, had taken the stage. Tom Bootle and Joseph Kennedy, the band’s frontmen and songwriters, are obviously very talented boys aswell as very sweet.

With an 8-strong band complete with trombones, trumpet, decks, keyboard, bass and accordion, they’re also a lot of fun to see live, and the sheer scale of that much musical talent in one space is kind of exhilarating. Admittedly their sound isn’t really to my tastes – on their website they self-define as “groove based hip hop fusion”, and later, “off kilter contemporary pop”; to me they sounded a bit like a soft-rock cross between Sting and Wet Wet Wet.

But they got people dancing superfast and transmitted an electric buzz of excitement direct from stage to audience toes. Which is definitely a good thing.

Finally, just a note to say many thanks to photographer Juliet Murphy, who I also met on Friday, and who took the very nice photos of the gig which you see here. Thanks for sharing JM!