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A simple enough premise: a musician who has experienced the highs and lows, and the highs again, of the music business, talking about the music business. Or as the man himself puts it:
“Here I talk about new music, very old music, the music industry, and what’s going in the world of rock and roll in general. We’re doing this together, and I love it.”
But even Justin Hawkins could not have predicted just how well-loved, and ultimately, talked about, his “Justin Hawkins Rides Again” YouTube channel would be when he launched it 4 years ago (currently sitting at 649K subscribers, and literally millions of views). Hence, Hawkins finds himself back on the road, again, again, to bring the format to life in front of a live audience, and judging by how well the shows have been selling, the razor-sharp, witty frontman of The Darkness has struck oil.
Opening with a video montage of old interview footage from over the years of Justin Hawkins being, well, Justin Hawkins, the intro is interspersed with clips of more recent moments like the online “spat” with childhood actor Corey Feldman, who called Hawkins “…an English dude who sits there with a guitar and talks crap about people…” after some jaw-dropping footage of Feldman performing live music appeared online and Hawkins discussed it on his channel. There is also footage of the car-crash interview from BBC Breakfast, where both Justin and his brother, Dan Hawkins, were “interviewed” by a pair of poorly researched presenters, leading the brothers to opt for winding them up. It makes for essential viewing, especially when Justin points out that he is wearing complimentary slippers, which he stole from his hotel.
One of the many threads running through the nearly 2-hour show is that a few years ago at a gig in Glasgow, he was noodling on his guitar (as he does throughout tonight’s show) and burst into Tina Turner’s ‘Simply The Best’…“I was doing a gig, and I thought I’d just bust out an 80’s cover, and the first thing that occurred to me was that one…the next day it was in the newspapers, and some Celtic enthusiasts wanted to glass me!” Why is all this relevant? ‘Simply The Best’ is sung by Rangers fans at each football match, and tonight’s show is in a hall that is part of Ibrox Stadium, home to Rangers FC. To keep it fair, Hawkins does ask the crowd if there is a Celtic equivalent, and Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ is the response, hence he picks out a few bars of that over the course of the evening, every time he utters “I call you when I need you, my heart’s on fire.” That, plus he is doodling on a green acoustic guitar.
Another recurring thread through the night is autobiographies. In particular, that of Gary Barlow. While reading other autobiographies as research for potentially his own, Hawkins stumbled across Barlow’s and uses it to great effect by reading out select passages from it. Mostly involving Barlow using the word “sick”, and not in the way fellow kids use it to describe something that is good. Hawkins has a fantastic oratorical style of delivery, and when he is reading from the book, his facial expressions and tone are spot-on.
Thankfully, it’s not some sort of redemption-fuelled evening, pushing some stereotypical booze or drug-filled bio, because, let’s be honest, most of them are bullshit. How many out there remember everything that happened on a lost weekend well enough to write a book about it? And most of these bios (cough, Nikki Sixx, cough) took place decades before everybody had a camera in their pocket to document everything. No chance of Hawkins turning into Del Preston from Wayne’s World 2; instead, he is more like legendary raconteur Peter Ustinov: it’s the accent. The show involves Hawkins and his mate Softy breaking down songs, how Country Music came up with “Three chords and the truth” and how easy it is to spot it. This leads to an exchange with a punter in the crowd about chord structure, and after a few moments of this, another punter loudly exclaims: “Who cares?” Even the hecklers at a Justin Hawkins gig are polite.
The second half of the show sees Hawkins bring out a local act to talk about their music, in much the same way that he does on his channel (a great champion of up-and-coming talent), and tonight it’s the turn of Glaswegian alt-rockers Dead Pony. The 4-piece joins Hawkins to talk about their new single set to land very soon, and it’s great watching Hawkins bobbing his head as he gets into the music. It’s all very natural and unforced as they discuss chords, etc, and how vocalist Anna Shields uses harsh vocals. The chat turns to the use of TikTok to promote music, and how one TikTok moment can see everyone in the crowd filming that particular moment, and ignoring the rest. This leads to the use of phones at gigs, and Hawkins recalls an incident in Luxembourg where he decided to go for a crowd surf and all the crowd were watching through their phones, so they dropped him…“At that point, I really started to get a bee in my bonnet about it…because health and safety…”
The band stays onstage for the Cerebral Connections game, which sees Hawkins performing 2 songs from different artists, with a connection. The audience are encouraged to shout out the answer if they know it, and the lucky winner gets…a pair of slippers from Hawkins’ hotel room. Great stuff.
Warm, funny, engaging, without any pretences, and informative for even a layman in terms of guitars and chords, etc, this is a great night out, and one where you might just discover your new favourite band.
Remaining tour dates:
27th – Buxton Opera House
28th – Crewe Lyceum
29th – Cheltenham Town Hall
31st – Watford Colosseum
FEBRUARY
1st – Southend Palace Theatre
3rd – Bury St Edmunds Apex
4th – Wimborne Tivoli
6th – Milton Keynes Stables
7th – London Cadogan Hall
Ticket info, HERE
Review – Dave
All images supplied by Wilful and Sullivan Publicity
