The Jess Davies Band in Southsea

The Jess Davies Band, Aurora Cafe Bar, Southsea, March 10th.

 It's still a band if there are two of them. Medicine Head were and so were Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are sometimes three of the Jess Davies Band in its current version but even with three they would have been easily outnumbered by the audience in the Aurora whose main business is probably afternoon coffee and posh snacks in the bohemian quarter of Southsea's Albert Road.
There might only have been a hundred at the first Sex Pistols gig and the first Velvet Underground album only sold a few thousand but by now everybody claims to have been at the Pistols gig and it is said that everybody who bought the Velvet's album went back and formed a band themselves so who is to say that this might not have been an early chance to hear future classics like My First Whiskey and Someone Somewhere that might become staple playlist material for Radio 2 and any number of FM Country stations before one has had time to cash one's first royalty cheque.
Or it might just have been a nice evening that presented the tender voice of Jessica accompanied by the expert acoustic guitar of Duncan O'Neill who was most impressive on the technically demanding cover Burning House.
The difference between 'enchanting' and 'entrancing' is too fine a point to make so I'll go for 'entrancing' which includes the way the guitar and voice work so well together when one is able to concentrate on what is going on without the usual obligatory distraction of bass and drums. When it is the songs that are of interest rather than beats per minute or dance potential (and I write as a big fan of Chic), the rhythm section can be much appreciated by their absence and if I do have stacks of vinyl featuring the masters, Sly n Robbie, then I am more completist than most in my collection of The Magnetic Fields, who use no percussion at all in live performance, and it can be a welcome relief.
If the covers, like Jolene, are guaranteed crowd-pleasers, it will be Jess's own songwriting, whether she uses anything I provide or not, that will be of most interest as the project develops. It is a genre and her voice already sounds right for it or has adapted very well. For me, it's not the medium but the message and if I don't happen to feel entirely at home in Country, I can hear it as soul if I want.
There will, I'm sure, be You Tube clips to follow but, for now, it was a very successful trial run for bigger things and an evening that got better as their confidence grew and, yes, as I arrived at the end of a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.