Salut! Live

It may well be that he felt at home. He is a Seaham lad, and that is practically a suburb of Sunderland. He knew the organisers well and talked fondly of playing alongside them at the Green Dragon and the Chesters in Sunderland.

He is a fine musician and singer. His playing is delicate and intricate and his voice has a warmth and a lilt about it. He has a good routine in which he fully explains the songs that he is about to sing and he has a good mixture of traditional and modern.

It was the set you have come to expect from Bob. He speaks fondly of his early recordings with Stu Luckley and sang some of the old favourites from those days – Bonny Gateshead Lass and Sally Wheatley are great songs and he relates well to them.

He has a knack for picking good songs by good writers. His version of Ralph McTell’s Peppers and Tomatoes was outstanding – a powerful song about conflict within disparate communities, based on what happened in Yugoslavia, while Child of Mine, written by two Sunderland brothers reminds him of his own children and now his grandchildren.

Chorus/refrain songs play a large part in his repertoire and give a clear picture of his musical upbringing in the back rooms of pubs. He knows how to work an audience as well, with humour and pathos. From The Tailor of Whitby, a charming song about a man who decides to expose his genitalia to all and sundry one New Year's Eve, to a rousing version of Galway Shawl which closed his set, he had us eating out of his hands.

The only blot on the set was the inclusion of a couple of songs about Newcastle. Bob, we don’t want them, even if your rendition of Jimmy Nail’s piece of doggerel, Big River, is far, far superior to his. Let’s have more about Jack Crawford, the Sunlan’ lad who nailed his colours to the mast.

The great Jez Lowe song, Taking on Men, from the contemporary Radio Ballads could apply to Wearside as well as Tyneside, while he showed how well he can interpret Ewan MacColl, with Keeping Them Rolling.

A great night out in the company of a man who should be a Wearside legend and who makes music of the highest quality. Thanks to Bob (and Richard Dunne) for a most enjoyable and entertaining Saturday.