Emerald soul: Durand Jones & The Indications keep cool in Limerick, Lives
The Indianapolis soul revue rolls into County Limerick. By David Hutcheon.
Durand Jones & The Indications Dolans, Limerick
IT’S A TALE Of two gigs for MOJO. Eight days previously, the Indications played Nile Rodgers’ Meltdown Festival to their largest British audience to date… but also their most sedate, reluctant to abandon the Southbank Centre’s armchairs. Let’s be frank: if you visit your local soul vendor looking for Live At The Harlem Square Club, you don’t buy Live At The Copa, do you? Some bands deserve more inspirational surroundings. So do we.
Meanwhile, in Limerick’s dockland, Dolans has a status that belies first impressions. Bands who enjoy smelling their fans eschew bigger auditoria for the 300-capacity venue – go past the fiddler and banjo player entertaining folkies in the bar, up the stairs and enter a heaving room so compact the drummer could pull pints while on-stage and never miss a beat.
Like London, some of the crowd are seated, but there the similarity ends – they’re willing to be taken to church, and the buzz infects the musicians. Tonight, the ballads come laced with funk, guitarist Blake Rhein is in an Eddie Hazel mood for Morning In America, and drummer Aaron Frazer’s falsetto has the full body of Eddie Holman on Is It Any
Wonder? Lead singer Jones, meanwhile, dances manically whenever the spotlight is off him.
In the States, the Indications’ wildest audiences are the Chicano lowriders, fans of slow numbers; here, Northern soul dictates. Tonight there is a foot in both camps: midway through the show, the tempo increases for an assault on East Of Underground’s take on Curtis Mayfield’s If There’s A Hell Below, then Groovy Babe builds to a breathless finale, a showstopper that leaves the second half of the set resembling a gloriously deserved encore.
With the crowd now putty in their hands, the band stop playing in the middle of Can’t Keep My Cool. A few in the crowd take the opportunity to make themselves heard. “It’s a John Cage moment,” explains Frazer afterwards. “The silence is different every time.” They start up again then stop once more. This time there’s a battle of wills to see whether band or audience can be the more silent. The actual encore, an impassioned sing-along to The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down, brings everyone to their feet, arms around strangers’ shoulders.
To these ears, it’s their determination not to have every note approved by some committee of ’60s soul overlords that has the Indications on this roll. This was their fourth European tour in two years, they’ll be back in October. You’ll regret not catching them before they get huge.
In the aftermath, some auld heads are heard wondering if this is “the first authentic soul band” to play Limerick. Well, there was Ian Richards And The Soul Masters who “came up from Cork” in the 1990s. A moment’s consideration. Everybody laughs.
As MOJO leaves, the fiddler and banjo player are still hammering away…
“Ballads come laced with funk… Northern soul dictates.”