Damian Lewis
A memorable evening on so many counts.
Actors wanting to be singers – there have been more than a few of those over the years. I still remember the likes of David Soul, Jimmy Nail, and even Clive Dunn, queuing up to appear on Top of The Pops and promote their latest singles. Alright, there have also been those that have done it with a bit of rock-and-roll credibility – I am thinking here of Keanu Reeves' Dogstar, and Juliette Lewis' Juliette and The Licks, but, by and large, actors trespass into music at their own risk, and deserve whatever flak they get.
Which is why I was curious to learn that Homelands' Damian Lewis was writing songs, and would be performing with a full band at Norwich's Epic Studios. Now, Lewis, in spite of his privileged background, did, to his credit, spend time as a busker before turning to acting in a big way, and with starring roles in Band of Brothers and Homeland. And now, with his debut album, Mission Creep, and another due out later this year, he has proved his ability not just to sing and play guitar, but also to write.
And he bravely starts his Norwich set with one of these brand new, as yet unreleased, songs, the rocking 'She's Making Me Change The Way That I Feel'. His band of brothers tonight consists of Dave Archer (guitar), Jamie Stafford (piano), Will Cleasby (drums), Phil Donnelly (bass), together with Kitty Liv on guitar, harmonica and backing vocals.
(Many will have recognised Kitty Liv as the drummer and multi-instrumentalist from Camden R'n'B trio Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, and it was Kitty that opened the evening with her own eight-song set, many of which were lifted from her upcoming debut album, 'Easy Tiger', due out on July 26th.)
The next three songs are all lifted from 'Mission Creep' – 'Hole In My Roof'' (slower and with a touch of Springsteen); 'Down On The Bowry' (moody and soulful, and written in New York); and the poignant and beautiful 'My Little One' (dedicated to 'a very special little woman'). 'Soho Tango' is perhaps slightly less interesting, but allegedly inspired by a true story about unsuccessfully chatting up a woman in a London bar.
Another new song, 'Love Bomb' is much more forthright and edgier, whilst the strangely entitled 'Never Judge A Man By His Umbrella' was named after a book written by MI6 intelligence officer Nicholas Elliott about his friend, the spy Kim Philby.
'Makin' Plans' is one of a number of songs that seems to allude to Lewis' own personal loss – appearing at first to be a rocking blues number, it is introduced as being about 'when plans go to shit'. It is a theme that returns later with the sad, but oh so beautiful 'Wanna Grow Old In Paris', and also in 'She Comes', the final song of the main set, where thoughts of spirits, ghosts and reincarnation are beautifully expressed in the heartfelt lines “She comes as a blackbird, she comes as a fox, she sits at the window, she sings from a rock”.
As the evening proceeds, I gently warm to the man. What I see on the stage is no longer an A-list actor with a singing itch to scratch, but a man taking a career break to exorcise his own demons and grief through songwriting and performing within the camaraderie of a band. And whilst some of his songs have a touch of Bowie here, and a touch of Pink Floyd there, 'Traffic Jam', and its wry list of things to get pissed off about, is sheer genius, a song that Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson would be proud of (even if there are a couple of lines that could have been lifted straight off 'Space Oddity').
Returning to the stage, Lewis reminisces about seeing Coldplay perform a Beatles medley as an encore in Los Angeles, at a time when they only had one album and a total of ten songs to perform. Lewis, however, with the assurity of a man confident of his own abilities, returns with an encore of another three brand new songs. The first is an ode to 'beginning to forget shit', and has another whiff of Roger Waters about it (I believe it was called 'Grey At The Temple'). It is followed by a rock-out to a song about an Italian man in New York who can get you absolutely anything ('A Man Named Sal'), and a final, rocking blues number called 'Naughty, Naughty, Naughty'. Now wasn't that a line from Keith Allen's Fat Les in their follow up to 'Vindaloo'?
A night when all my preconceptions flew straight out the window, an evening where the humanity of an A-list actor outweighed any obvious signs of ego, and an evening where the entire audience seemed to be totally on-board with the man's own personal loss and his own chosen path to dealing with grief.
A memorable evening on so many counts.
