Billy Jenkins
When the Crowds Have Gone
BDV 2450
Tracklisting:
In My Bones
I Like Rain
Get The Poison Out mp3
If I Where A Lollipop Man
The Tide Is Out
Blues Is Calling Me
When Money's Really Tight
Come Round And See Me
Sitting On The Dock Of Ebay
Trouble In Mind mp3
Everything's Too Fast mp3
This Room
Cry Your Eyes Till They're Red.
"If, like me, you were disappointed with Tom Waits's Real Gone, I suggest you flog it on eBay and buy When the Crowds Have Gone instead." - John L. Walters (The Guardian)
"A strong set inspired by personal misfortune..." TheTimes, 9 Jan 2004. /Observer CD of the Week
Read review: Blues Matters
Order here
all originals by BJ produced and engineered by Peter Bennett Recorded at Simpletone Studios London SE22.
After an absence of five years from the Babel Label, the inimitable Billy Jenkins returns with his most intense release yet. Armed with a handmade Lucas Parlour acoustic guitar, rack, and blues harp, he simply sings how he feels. What you get is a set of thirteen deeply personal originals about heartache, cultural and social alienation yet filtered through a uniquely witty perspective. A description by critic Trevor Hodgett of Billy as an 'apparent radical whose lyrics suggest he is actually an old-fashioned moralist, appalled at the selfishness and shallowness of the modern world' is no more relevant than on this new recording 'When the Crowds Have Gone'. The album is alternatively summed up by the Bromley bard himself as a veritable blubfest from a bandleader without any bookings for his wonderful musicians. One minute washed up, the next one drowning. Isolation offset by the intensity of commercial intrusion. It's a world in which musicians are forced to trade in their mystique and magic tricks in order to earn a crust through education - and in the bargain often being supplanted by the commercial expediency of self-operative technology. Recorded (with valuable contributions from bassist Steve Watts and violinist Dylan Bates on three tracks) during the hot summer of 2003, the complexity of new UK public performance laws hangs heavy in the air, making it a bleak period for the practicing musician. The future looks even more uncertain. On this CD Billy seriously contemplates the stark reality of possibly seeking a non-musical subsistence. Yet "the blues is calling, calling me to sing" wails Billy on track 5. Throughout his uncompromising career and own recording ventures, that include eight CDs recorded for Babel since 1994, the blues has been a veritable lifeline. "Blues is the new Jazz!" - cries Billy in a mantra that resonated throughout his charismatic performance with the Fun Horns of Berlin at this year's Berlin jazz festival. Like some kind of perverse cross between John Lee Hooker and Mike Skinner, Billy, with gruff sensitivity, sets a despairing interior world against his background of kitchen sink reality, whether equating the 'jazz life' with the empty-hearted leisure plethora sanctified by reality TV on 'When Money's Really Tight' ("when money's really tight, dinner is a cook show on TV"), the desperately numbing solitude on 'Come Round and See Me' (…cause I'm a sad B.A.S.T.A.R.D"), or targeting rising urban noise levels and the contemporary quick-fix on 'Everything's too Fast' ("…at least I know my cruising speed. Not too slow for honesty, not too fast for greed.") Then Billy closes the set poignantly with the candid logic of 'Cry your eyes till they're red…' Yet in spite of its bleak subject material, 'When the Crowds Have Gone' stops short of portraying a doomsday scenario. Ultimately, the warm vibrations of steel string and bitter sweet vocal chord, captured with fine sensitivity and spontaneity by producer Pete Bennett leave the listener bathed in a reflective puddle of optimism and survival.Press reviews/quotes
REVIEW FROM THE TIMES by John Bungey
January 08, 2005
Billy Jenkins has enjoyed/endured one of those intriguing careers — in pop, comedy, jazz and now the blues — in which he has managed to delight the critics and a lot of live audiences without ever remotely troubling the chart compilers. When the Crowds Have Gone will doubtless maintain this proud cult status. Switching from electric to acoustic guitar, Jenkins unveils a set based loosely on country blues. It suits his agitated, virtuosic playing and the fierce growl of his vocals. “I wear my grandad’s clothes cos he’s dead,” he hollers in a Tom Waits-style roar on the opening track, In My Bones, before launching into his darkest record yet, with many of the lyrics dealing with the break-up of his marriage. “My life is grey and overcast, everyone else got blue skies,” he laments on Come Round and See Me. Get the Poison Out and Trouble in Mind reinforce a mood of middle-age melancholia. The sound is spare, with only Dylan Bates on violin and Steve Watts on double bass adding intermittent support. The odd moment of humour and the inimitable guitar playing (notably Sitting on the Dock of eBay) leaven the message. Jenkins is generally best appreciated live, but in the great tradition of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, this is a strong set inspired by personal misfortune. And, who knows? With Tom Waits only visiting once every 17 years, maybe there’s a career opening for a gruff, veteran surrealist.
"Billy Jenkins startles the pensioners by bellowing the unaccompanied My Bones…His back-porch acoustic trio, with Dylan Bates (violin) and Steve Watts (bass), plays blues from the Lewisham delta.... Jenkins's voice is grittier and grainier than ever. John L Walters (the Guardian London Jazz Festival November 2004)
"…Pure genius" City Life
"Blues is the new Jazz!" Billy Jenkins at Berlin jazz fest, Nov 2004
other Press quotes
'Only one in 20,000 English bluesmen inhabits a recognisable reality. Step forward Billy Jenkins, anarcho guitarmeister and arch-demythologiser.
"Iconoclastic" Richard Williams, Independent on Sunday
'American readers will be baffled by him; but he is, along with the Princess Royal and Walthamstow dog stadium, one of our national treasures.' Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD [5th ed]
'His humour surely springs from a deeply moralistic, even puritanical stance, and surely the adjectives normally applied to Jenkins - such as 'zany' and 'quirky' - actually diminish what in reality constitutes a serious and savagely satirical attack on commercialism and consumerism.' Trevor Hodgett Jazzwise
'Billy Jenkins has the priceless ability to merge serious music-making with absolute lunacy, and make the one feed off the creative energy of the other'. Kenny Mathieson The Scotsman
"A joyous talent" David Lands, Jazz Journal International.
"Guitarist Billy Jenkins carries on breaking all the rules." Ronald Atkins, Guardian
"Jenkins is he a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, does he play jazz, is he real? YES is the answer to all these questions." Philippe Renaud, Notes (France)
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