
Jason McNiff
Tonight We Ride
Tombola Records
2022
For an artist to release an album of songs from songwriters who have influenced and inspired them is a legitimate, tried and tested enterprise. With his latest release, Tonight We Ride, Jason McNiff offers up a collection of covers along with a couple of his own compositions. Whilst the inclusion of tracks from the pens of Bob Dylan, Bert Jansch and Townes Van Zandt will not be a surprise, other selections may be a little unexpected, albeit very much in a revelatory way.
The coastal town of Hastings has long had a fine reputation for its thriving music scene, including, for example, his friends Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou with their Lantern Society. When he moved down from London with his family in 2018, Jason instigated regular early evening Sundowner sessions at the Jenny Lind in the High Street. Whilst the former club extinguished its flames in 2019 due to the imminent arrival of a new baby; it was the Pandemic that precipitated a move for the Sundowner gigs to weekly online sessions. The positive response from the fans who supported the venture took Jason aback somewhat, as he says, “I loved playing for people in this new format – who could’ve guessed it would feel so live and intimate! I sometimes played for 2 hours, all the covers I could think of, and learned many new songs to keep the shows fresh and different”. From this background, the album grew, although it is acknowledged that Jason is certainly no stranger to recording covers, for example, the epic Bella Ciao on In My Time.
When FRUK reviewed Jason’s 2018 release Joy and Independence, his first for At The Helm Records, Mike Davies wrote, “… and again underscores the strong Dylan influence that runs through his work”. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that two Dylan songs make the cut here. The first of these, One Too Many Mornings, a gentle, melancholic ballad when recorded for 1964’s The Times They Are A Changin’, was later given the full-on electric band treatment on his legendary 1966 concert tour. The version presented here is compelling, eschewing harmonica and featuring Hammond organ, it was previously released as a single, and in an interview with editor Alex Gallacher, Jason revealed its significance, “I love pretty much everything Dylan ever did sand does, but this one is a bit special for me as it comes from the first record I ever bought with my own money”. Whilst a quick search suggests that there have been around 70 recorded English versions of this song, Jason’s sympathetically warm version of Precious Angel, from Dylan’s 1979 Slow Train Coming, appears to have been covered only once previously.
As I have written previously, whilst Jason’s fingerstyle playing technique was predicated upon absorbing the work of such luminaries as Davey Graham and Wizz Jones whilst studying at Nottingham University, his greatest apprenticeship was undertaken once he had moved to London on his weekly visits, over a six-month period, to the 12 Bar Club, in order to learn from Bert Jansch. Homage to the master is represented here by his interpretation of two Jansch compositions, opening track Running From Home from Bert’s 1965 eponymous debut Transatlantic Records LP and Open Road, both of which display Jason’s outstanding dexterous acuity on acoustic guitar.
Jason’s admiration for Townes Van Zandt is reflected not only by his choice of the latter’s My Proud Mountains but also by a quote by the great man on the back of the CD insert. He also takes from the repertoire of another TVZ admirer, Tom Russell, for this album’s title song. Jason’s version of Tonight We Ride, the opening cut on Russell’s 2004 release, Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs, has the distinction of having been chosen by members of the Western Writers of America as one of the top 100 Western songs of all time, more than does justice to the original.
Jason’s interpretation of The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows, quoted by John Lennon in 1972 as “This was my first psychedelic song”, which appeared on Revolver Reloaded, a Mojo Magazine Cover CD from 2006, is gentle and homely rather than trippy, whilst the inclusion of the Dire Straits classic Tunnel Of Love, as with the version by Show Of Hands & Miranda Sykes, makes for a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable listen.
The oldest song on the album is Hard Times, a parlour song written by the famous American composer Stephen Foster, was first published in 1854, the first recording of which was made in 1905 on wax cylinder. The song, which asks the fortunate to consider the plight of the less fortunate,
Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard times come again no more
is also known in the Roud Folk Song Index as Hard Times Come Again No More, and the performance here was, I believe, recorded live in London.
The video accompanying Jason’s stunning take on the immense Waterboys’ song Fisherman’s Blues premiered here on Folk Radio. With lyrics partly inspired by The Night Mail, W.H. Auden’s celebrated poem, Jason revealed in the above interview, “I feel like it could’ve been written by Woody Guthrie in a box car across America”, and his raw, unadorned, almost minimalist, interpretation not only showcases the wonderful National steel guitar sounds, but also his wonderfully distinctive vocal style.
The two self-composed tracks give further evidence that he is no slouch himself when it comes to songwriting. The Shadow Ships Of Deptford, which can also be found on the Deptford Days project CD, is a beautiful song which he playfully admits owes some debt to the poem Ghosts in Deptford by Cicely Fox Smith, who died some 200 odd years ago. Equally impressive is I Remember You. Released on Nobody’s Son in 2003 and then again as a single in 2017, the version here sounds different to these ears; the inclusion of some very tasteful electric guitar, along with female backing vocals, provides a much fuller sound.
The album closes with Moving On, a track off Leonard Cohen’s JUNO Award-nominated posthumous release from 2019, Thanks For The Dance. The absence of a mandolin which appears in the original evokes less of a feeling of Greece, but Jason’s starkly evocative Spanish guitar and vocals give the song a more universal sensitivity as the lyrics address a former lover who “broke the heart and made it new”.
The baker’s dozen tracks on this album not only represent a soundtrack to the last 25 years or so of Jason’s life but also a gateway, should one be needed, to some of music’s finest songwriters. For those expecting slavish, note-for-note Xeroxed copies of the originals, look elsewhere. Imbibed with Jason’s own personal takes, nuances and shades, Tonight We Ride is a resounding success; get in the saddle, or indeed on-board, for a very productive musical journey.
Release date: 24th June 2021