Martin Harley's Money Don't Matter (2005) was the soundtrack to my first relationship. I was worried this personal experience of his music could colour my review of this evening. However I found Harley and his double bass accompanist Daniel Kimbro and what they played so enriched with musical history and a nostalgia for a long lost America, that my own sentimentality for a forgotten past sat well.

This is the fourth time I have seen Harley play live and in an eight year gap, his music seems to have matured and sombered as much as I haven't. In fact, in the words of Kimbro, their collaborative music is 'very slow and sad as shit.' The Martin Harley of yesteryear was more upbeat, more action and less drinking himself to oblivion in an empty southern bar. This is something perhaps reflected in his prevalence back then on the UK festival circuit. Although I do also wonder if perhaps my perception of this is in part due to the me of yesteryear being more full of cider and drugs. Regardless of the style of music, it was obvious that the pair are more suited to playing in a tent. The seated venue felt somewhat cold, picked up on by the pair who continued to joke about the good behaviour of the audience throughout the gig. This comedy between the two highlighted their great dynamic. Didcot was the last stop on this tour, and both musicians seemed afflicted with a kind of end of tour weary hysteria.

Harley and Kimbro largely played songs from their collaborative album Static in the Wires (2017). Harley is surely one of the best blue guitarists around at the moment. Coupled with Daniel Kimbro on the double bass, the pair create a folky blues charged with visual description and complete technical mastery. Harley swaps between a standard guitar and a Weissenborn, a kind of lap slide guitar (the Hawaiin style of guitar playing) manufactured by Hermann Weissenborn in LA in the 1920s. Kimbro swapped from his double bass to guitar to play a couple of his own songs midway through the gig. A surprise appearance from musician and Nashville local Sam Lewis was a highlight, and saw the trio interrupting each other with anecdotes of their first meeting.

To conclude, buy the album, or at least listen to it, and see them, together or alone. But make sure to see them in a tent.