In these times of financial, religious, and geopolitical unrest, it's comforting to know the world is still ticking over well enough to allow Steve Martin to play the banjo at the Royal Festival Hall. Seeing him on stage with his gorgeous 1927 Gibson Florentine, standing ten feet from where Vladimir Jurowski conducts the LPO was a very weird, but entirely wonderful sight, and sadly one that's unlikely ever to reappear. But let's not submit to melancholy, particularly in light of the facts that the playing was great, the jokes were just what you might have hoped for, and we even got to hear a slightly bluegrassified version of King Tut as an encore.
Surprisingly, the most striking feature of the concert, at least for me, came courtesy of Mr. Martin's band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, which I'd assumed was a collection of Nashville studio ringers, but which was in fact a local band from Pig's Knuckle, North Carolina that Martin heard play at a friend's party. Can you imagine that? One day you're toiling away in relative bluegrass obscurity somewhere in NC, and the next you've been plucked up by Banjo Pickin' Steve and trundled onto stages across the United States. And as if that weren't enough to amuse the grandkids, you're then given the chance to go to London and play suited and booted at the Royal Festival Hall. I might have been reading too much into this, but it seemed like they were having a ball up there. Mike Guggino, the group's mandolin player, was grinning for all he was worth, and I noticed him squinting into the bright lights a couple of times, hoping to get a better look at the audience. It's rare to come across a performer (or in this case, performers) who's not only good at what he does, but also lets on to how much fun he's having doing it. It's a delight when it happens, and in this case really flavoured the entire evening, which I have to say was one of the more charming I've had during my time in London.
