So, I’m sat on the plane at Schiphol waiting to jet back to Blighty after my weekend in Helldorado, my tits are well and truly on the deck that’s for sure, then for some reason, I look inside my wallet and find one last 20 Euro note. What do I do with it? Why not get a ticket to see Nashville Pussy in Cardiff on the first night of their 5 date UK I thought? Yeah, why fucking not…
I’d last seen Nashville Pussy at Sjock Festival in Belgium back in July 2017, a day when the sun beat relentlessly down on many thousands of righteous heads and the band, whilst very good, were just a little bit too Southern for yours truly. So, what better way to redress the balance than to catch them on a freezing cold evening here in the UK playing to about a 100 or so diehards who have traveled from all over the country to witness Blaine, Ruyter, Bonnie and Ben on their seemingly never-ending road trip to promote studio album number (lucky) 7, the rather splendid ‘Pleased to Eat You’.
The Pussy must think its rather splendid too because tonight we get a total of five cuts from said opus and every one of them easily stands shoulder to shoulder with their already impressive canon of work. Highlights for me are the glamtastic ‘Go Home and Die’ where Blaine plays the role of storyteller to Coop-like proportions whilst on the menacing ‘CCKMP’ the band somehow manage to outclass Steve Earle right in his own backyard. Oh, and let’s not forget the boogie bastard that is ‘She Keeps Me Coming And I Keep Going Back’ a song that can make even the straightest gig goer want to duck walk across the dancefloor, as one or two do right here tonight.
It’s on the boogie train where the Pussy really are at home (and at their best) though as ‘Wrong Side Of A Gun’, ‘Pillbilly Blues’ and ‘I’m So High’ all prove to be some of the best AC/DC songs written in the past 20 years, whilst in ‘First I Look at The Purse’, ‘Piece Of Ass’ and the superb ‘5 Minutes to Live’ the band recently earned the honour of being dubbed the American Motorhead by Classic Rock magazine, something Blaine is very quick, and proud, to point out tonight.
Thinking back to that hot summer afternoon in Belgium this doesn’t really feel like the same band I’m watching here tonight and even the extended version of ‘Go To Hell’ is enthralling stuff plus it has to be said that guitarist Ruyter Suys really is one of the best out there playing this kind of cow-punk-abilly blues stuff she’s an engaging devil on those six strings even when she decides to rip most of them off her trusted SG during the final encore of ‘Wang Dang Sweet Poontang’, a song that perfectly sums up an evening spent in the presence of Nashville Pussy and takes the Ted Nugent influenced artwork of ‘Pleased to Eat You’ to its natural conclusion.
Granted I could have done without two drum solos and starting and ending the set with covers (they opened with AC/DC’s ‘Kicked In The Teeth’) seemed a bit unusual, as did the lack of support band tonight, but otherwise this was the perfect pick me up feelgood night of rock ‘n’ roll music played by one of the last true purveyors of the born to lose, live to win legacy something that had Tim Butcher (Lemmy’s long-term bass roadie) beaming from ear to ear along with the rest of us.
Epic stuff from an epic band and 20 Euros very well spent indeed.
Author: Johnny Hayward
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