Americana Road Trip

"This next song is about guns, yeah!" hollers Paul Lyall, lead singer of Americana-tribute band Flagstaff. Stetsons and cowboy shirts are on display; the accordionist is sporting a giant US flag. There is much denim. But despite the fact that the singer’s enthusiasm is laced with irony, the song ('Devil’s Right Hand') is catchy and rock-pulsed and, as with most of the tunes played over the 90-minute gig, it’s pretty nigh on impossible to stop your feet from getting sub-contracted into tapping along.  

You don’t need to be an expert in Americana to enjoy Americana Road Trip, mainly because the six musicians that make up Flagstaff are. Classic artists are chosen—Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams—but it’s not the crowd-pleasing singalong hits they play, instead going for tracks whose style and beat are recognisable, but which you may not yet have heard of (and which had me scurrying to YouTube the next morning to look up).

Lyall’s vocals are passionate, the easy loping gait of the music infectious and nostalgic. The band have nicknames like "Lousy" Lyall and "the Methadone Metronome", and clearly love with every bone of them the music they are playing. In a way it is kind of a niche genre (and I did actually scribble "Dad rock" in my notebook), but by the end I was wishing there was just a tiny bit of dance floor space left in the cellar bar to set up an impromptu hoedown.