Sunday 14/05/06 Willy Mason @ The Barfly, Liverpool

Enter the Barfly at the all but night bug friendly hour of 5 o' clock entrance: matinee time! Welcome to Willy (Mason) World (or smaller independent country). Where the lumberjack shirts, spot smattered youths and youth curious thirty-something-close year olds can come together without fear or pain of not being understood. We, some of us, sup on beer, everything in moderation, and wait patiently for our young man Mason to arrive. This short reviewer took a rather slow blink as our supposed young fellow, but actual old boy, started to sing '21st Century Boy' in a voice of a most mature nature. It's a 'Hard Hand to Hold' where the 'wonder if you're stoned' line gets a couple of takes by the audience and a smirk from the innocent singer himself. Willy gives us these solo satisfactions - bar choral assistance from the audience - before inviting his very good friends on stage to assist in the instrument play that he himself often attempts in his own recordings, and to keep him company of course.

'Where The Humans Eat' brings us all together when we don't usually belong... The younger lad Mason invites on the stage to play drums, may or may not be his younger brother Sam. The dreaded almond-eyed brunette on violin and vocals may be a youthful Joan Baez, in her own imaginings at least. And in our minds these two are relations of these two. There's some kind of magic in the air. There's some thought transpiring that we should all be swaying under the wonder of Woodstock. The girl that might be Joan convinces us that "we can be strong", and stuck on these sticky wooden floors we are leaning, without fear of falling, to believe her. We of Liverpool location are personally congratulated for Saturday's football effort, that's victory from penalties, well done us. Pat on the back for our efforts from Willy Mason. The same Willy Mason who likes to tell stories while he plucks at his guitar about a van he had, left and when he returned it was without an engine. $1,500 was also thought to be lost. And no mechanic to be sniffed out. Are these the careless daydreams or realities of a twenty nothing from Massachusetts? Yes, apparently one and the other. And onto a little sound his Dad learnt from Hank Williams and passed down to Junior. 'Love Sick Blues' begins with a pursed lipless whistle emanating from surrounding speakers. Like the cool breeze itself, only in a hot club, and more melodic. 'So Long' seems like a good song to end with, but is naturally penultimate to 'Oxygen': the song he thinks, and rightly so, introduced him to us. Ah, how we all join in, not one of us excluded. And how we encore, nay demand as needy people do, that he returns to sing us a little more. He does. We are satisfied. We are drunk with the theory of it.