Rich Hall
The clue is in the title, but nonetheless it was something of revelation to learn that Rich Hall’s Hoedown was going to feature an actual hoedown – with a band, and songs and whatnot. Dunderhead that I am, this had never occurred to me, presuming it to be merely the peg on which he was hanging a couple of hours of mordant humour and transatlantic jibes. I knew about Hall’s alter-ego, Otis Lee Crenshaw, but presumed that both kinds of music, Country and Western, were safely ring-fenced for the evenings when he performed under that name. Given a personal antipathy towards the hillbilly oeuvre matched only by going to the dentist, first sight of instruments set up on stage filled me with something not far short of horror.
It was, therefore, a relief to learn that he intended to present a full, unaccompanied comedy set beforehand, going so far as to joke that the interval would give sceptics a chance to run for cover before the music started. Hall has made a career out of being more at home here than in his country of birth. He is not so much an anglophile – just a misanthrope as miserable and pessimistic as we are. He’s happy to remind us that we can be stupid too – a passing reference to Brexit being a case in point – but suggests we are simply no match for his dreadful and stupid countryman, with a dismantling of Trump’s worldview that was inevitable, but also very funny. Surprisingly insightful too, once you got past the one-liners, with a brutal analysis of the US’s (lack of) gun control and woeful healthcare system as effective as any of Michael Moore’s polemical documentaries. Such is Hall’s splenetic rage at the idiocy, as he sees it, consuming his own country that he seems to have little bad to say about his adopted home. Which is rather sweet in its way, even if the consequential emphasis on portions in US restaurants and grocery store gun sales, did make some of the material feel a little remote, however expertly delivered. We Brits like nothing more than having the mickey taken out of us, and frankly there wasn’t enough of it.
After the break, it was time for the Hoedown, with Hall returned alongside guitarist/bassist Rob Childs and drummer Mark Hewitt – the best, we were told, in their price range. I needn’t have fretted so – while they did play a series of songs that were notionally country this was largely to provide a backdrop to highlight jokes that rhyme. There were a few sharp anecdotes along the way, with a merciless ridiculing of Bob Dylan a set highlight, but the main business of the night was making up songs about people in the audience. The premise was simple, but very artfully done. Hall asked an audience member for their trade, and then built a song around it. The humour, of course, derives from the collision between the jangly, hopeful guitars of the Deep South and the parochial life of us East Anglicans. In all honesty, Norwich was not at its best in that regard, with a number of diffident exchanges swiftly falling flat. Hall can only work with what he is given, and the folk of the front row weren’t giving much. That said, when a woman from Lowestoft declared herself a horror make-up artist Hall swiftly, and disappointingly, moved on, so perhaps no one was exactly firing on all cylinders.
There was still much good natured fun to be had, though, with Gary, who delivers cars, sent down to Hades to drop one off to Satan. A young couple’s early trysts in a Skoda were transposed onto a romantic road song, and best of all was poor Sean, handed a mike and pretty much forced against his will to add backing vocals to a song about a greyhound in his dotage. The agonising way in which the refrain of “Fur on a stick” was dragged from Sean, was both cringe worthy and hilarious. Sean might not have stolen the show, as Hall rather generously suggested, but his out of time and out of tune contribution was embraced by a generous hearted audience determined to have a good time.
Generosity of spirit was, indeed, the key to the whole evening. For all his grumpiness there is an undeniable humanity that shines through Hall’s comedic dourness. He may not be the catalyst for repeated guffawing, but he certainly won hearty and frequent chuckles in an evening that zipped by inconsequentially, but very pleasantly. His initial affirmation that “most Country music is shit” was hardly confounded by the stocking filler selection he presented on the night, but you’d have to be a humourless soul to not be won over by his warmth and insouciant charm.
And he’s certainly right about one thing – all the way home, I found myself singing “Fur on a stick, fur on a stick, fur on a stick, fur on a stick.” I bet Sean did too.
