Listen my love
As you take my hand
As we walk gently to the town’s fair
I can no longer love you
in the way that you wish
under Wolfs Tone’s marbled stare.
You see my Ma thinks that we have
no future together
and I’m inclined to agree
for I seek a different life sailing the sea
beyond our small life
here in Bantry.
So she said her fond farewells
his face drowned in tears,
and the taste of bitter salt
We play the hand we are dealt but for some there is always a way to seek a journey beyond the deck of possibilities, a chance not yet observed by many to keep performing at the table long after everyone else has cashed in their chips and hailed a taxi to their homes. For some the stimulation they continue to garner, to chase and embrace the fortune and the pot of creative bounty is enough to see the pair of deuces as a winning hand and the straight flush as a moment of beauty, of ignoring the glare and opening the mind to all the permutations possible.
There’s a Black Hole in his road
that soaks up all the rain,
sunshine and warmth that disappears
without a trace
the deeper it goes, killing
all sound, creating only noise, in its journey
to obliterate all that may contain life;
it doesn’t realise that as the once reflected sun
beamed off its water, it too holds now existence,
it is carefree chaos,
the black pitted small hole
in the journey
that has become the architect of destruction.
Inspired by the photography of John Chatterton.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
You don’t always need words to capture a soul’s delight. An image, a photograph that they have taken and shared with the world is more than enough to understand their joy, the resonance framed in a single blink of the eye is enough to sing songs that require no expression of lyrical emphasis. It is a rare feat to be so human, to summarise a feeling in the realm of what you so succinctly in the power of the instrumental; that is simply, enormous.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is a question of illusion, do you listen to music or do you watch it, do you shut your eyes in the crowd and let each note transport you to another place, another realm, or do somehow diminish the sound you are hearing and take in visually as much as possible, letting your eyes be astonished by the speed, the delicate and the insanely beautiful. It is a question of illusion for in John Chatterton, you have to peel back the ears, let the eyes widen in anticipation and just sit there without an animated bone in the body and let life have its way with you, let it entertain and entrance for John Chatterton does things on a guitar that leave you breathless in their simplicity and amazed in their complex belief.
Somewhere in the desert lies a lonely man
the rattling of snakes and the whispering sand
his only escape from the heat,
that shakes his shooting hand.
Death is forever by his side,
as grizzled as a companion can be
with no end to the slaughter
that came at the Battle of Wounded Knee.
The Gunslinger, once the hero in this game,
now kills for money and peace in his brain,
his mind to savagery,
when he thinks of the men he has slain.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
To create poetry without a lyric is perhaps the hardest lesson to master; to place trust in each note without the guiding spectre a hand in which to offer anything like a suggestion, a hint or even a warning of the possible intimate nature of the song, is simply a thrill for the palate and makes the brain work overtime as it concocts its own special melody.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
It is a good thing to let the goose pimples go out for a walk of their own volition sometimes. To let them wander unhindered and unrestrained all over the body and at the same feel the hairs on the back of the neck stiffen and take delight at the thought of a piece of music sounding so exquisitely haunting, that it can barely be contained.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Going down the local was always an occasion. In the late 1960s, Football World Cup winners Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst were seen with their wives advertising the virtues of the local pub. In amongst the celluloid joviality and perhaps forced banter, there was a strong point to be made. The pub was the centre of the community and everything that was to happen, was to take place there. Of course the world has moved on, from having a meal rather than just a packet of salted peanuts, to family friendly options and even the cleaner atmosphere now associated with the smoking ban, the pub has had to change to survive.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
No matter how many times you watch John Chatterton perform in or around Liverpool you constantly feel bowled over by the genuine love that works its way between performer and audience in a constant yoyo effect that never seems capable of stopping.
The set is one that has an un-dilutable power attached to it, a facility to charm despite what many people might think about certain songs, their expressions and thoughts are soon changed as Mr. Chatterton’s guitar takes the crowd past their pre-conceptions and delights and beguiles in broad equal measure.