Live Review
Stick In The Wheel
The Railway, Winchester
27 March 2025
‘The Only Folk Band That Matter’ said Ged Babey reviewing Stick In The Wheel’s A Thousand Pokes album, parodying the famous Clash epithet, clickbait style. This annoyed some people. After seeing them live he stands by the statement but adds ‘…To Me’.
You see, your trials and tribulations mean nothing to others.
It’s your words and deeds that matter.
And let me tell you.
They speak volumes
Tired of Punk Karaoke and Anniversary Britpop tours? How about another music from a different tradition?
Why must they be the “only ones that matter”? What’s with the hyperbole? Because I can assure you that Lankum and ØXN matter. (Moaned Timothy)
The only folk band Ged knows anything about it should read. (Chided Philip)
Fuck you very much, but I love Stick In The Wheel and I wanna evangelize. They matter to me in my ongoing search for authenticity in music, meaning in art and purpose in my life.
The Folk tradition and influence goes in and out of fashion through ‘mainstream’ pop culture over the decades, from Dylan to the Pogues and Stick In The Wheel are one of the latest progenitors to grab me and a lot of others judging by the turn-out at the Railway. Of course there are others, but taste and musical obsession is a very personal thing.
There’s always an entry-point or hook that attracts me to a band and it was the video of Bows of London live at the Green Note (which Phil repeatedly insisted I watch) and the fact that singer Nicola Kearey is compulsive viewing. She has such a great face. A face which reads ‘I do not suffer fools’. A ‘born punk’ face. (Like Jordan,, Mark E Smith, Malcolm MacDowell, my mate Rooster, Shane MacGowan…) She is at least twenty years too young to be anything to do with punk – but it’s the attitude, with a bit of help from bone-structure, piercing eyes, a curl of the lip and jut of the chin. It’s a face made for stage and screen, for performance…
I said ‘hello’ outside the Railway and her face said: Who is this prick? Although she was perfectly polite.
Her charismatic onstage presence is doused in a sardonic, dry, droll, wit. A ‘fuck any pretence of jollity, this is serious’ kinda way. It’s a kind of Jack Dee style as she doesn’t want to obviously curry-favour, it’s about the songs, the music, the art. The History. The Tradition And the present. Gallows humour and stories from the working classes.
Stick In The Wheel are great live. The audience anticipation is palpable and there are barely any camera-phones and no disruptive chatter at all.
Ian Carters guitar playing is astounding. The drummer is brilliant. But it is Nicola who is the focus. The singer always gets the attention in any band and she is so wrapped up in getting the songs, the stories, the content across, eyes closed a lot of the time, so she is magnetic, channelling the essence of everything SITW is about.
Any band lives or dies by its singer/frontperson and SITW are no exception.
The set was mainly taken from the A Thousand Pokes album and it was interesting to see that with the aid of a laptop and pedals the Hard-Tuning of Crystal Tears and Steals The Thief are replicated perfectly live.
Just a great gig all round. Perfect sound, attentive crowd and a band at the top of their game having released their definitive statement in A Thousand Pokes.
It was great to see ‘the Cockney Piaf of the Folk World’ as she has been described in action.
Because I know at least three bands made up of husband & wife/partners: AlterModerns. Snakerattlers and The Jesus Bolt, I half-assumed the same applied to SITW so asked Ian Carter if he and Nicola were a couple. “No!” he said, with a look of surprise, and maybe a flicker of fear.
With an artistic partnership as deep and complex as an archaeological research project there is no time for any of that. Stick In The Wheel are a romantic tradition of their own and Nicola, a Woman You Don’t Meet Every Day.
Catch them live if you can. You won’t regret it.
Remaining Tour Dates
Sun 30 March 2025 – The New Adelphi Club, Hull
Mon 31 March 2025 – The Prince Albert, Stroud
Tues 1 April 2025 – Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield
Wed 2 April 2025 – The Tin Coventry, UK
Thurs 3 April 2025 Junction 2, Cambridge
All words Ged Babey
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exeter.one newsbite last confirmed 3 days ago by Ged Babey
