A review of The Hot Seats at the Eden Court One Touch Theatre on Sunday 21st July 2013.
In the middle of the first heat-wave in quite a few years The Hot Seats pitch up at Eden Court’s One Touch Theatre, form a circle with their instruments and a few chairs, face the front and without any fuss or unnecessary frills, treat the audience to a mighty fine set.
The One Touch Theatre is an impressive space with a contemporary feel; an arena with multi-use potential it is tonight set up along traditional theatre lines with a comfortably seated audience who have plenty of room to tap their feet – although I can’t help thinking that under other circumstances some dancing might have broken out. The sound quality was excellent and complimented the bands style perfectly; the lighting for this evening is simple but effective. Initially the idea of the band setting up stage left with the remaining half of the stage unlit and empty unsettled me but there is a very watchable mellow intensity about The Hot Seats that catches your attention and pretty soon any aesthetic concerns I had evaporated.
So, take one good sized piñata, fire in some bluegrass, honky-tonk and vaudeville (amongst other things); add an array of quality instruments (banjo, double bass, fiddle, mandolin, washboard and drums for example); a couple of beards and five charming and handsome young men. Give the piñata a damned good thrashing and if The Hot Seats don’t fall out you’ll have something that’s only ever going to be second-best. They are multi-instrumentalists who produce an extremely tight performance featuring pitch perfect harmonies and fabulous instrumental and vocal solos.
The show kicks off with an old time bluegrass classic from Flatt and Scruggs – a.k.a The Foggy Mountain Boys – and I can relax, because that’s pretty damned close to my shorthand system for tonight which amounted to Soggy (as in The Soggy Bottom Boys) or for jazz, blues and honky-tonk Leon (as in Leon Redbone). Actually I had no need to fret – The Hot Seats take their craft and their inspiration seriously and there is a real educational feel to the night.
Almost all of the songs come with information whether it be about a couple of old time classics such as ‘Bonaparte Crossing the Alps’ or The Tater Patch’; or whether it be about their own songs such as the bawdy(ish), entendre laden, vaudevillian ‘Peaches’ or ‘Hard Working Man’, inspired by a traumatic job interview.
To be absolutely clear this is no novelty act or faux-folk act in the style of say Mumford & Sons; this is an authentic and virtuoso performance throughout. In their own compositions The Hot Seats offer a contemporary perspective on the classic themes of love, death, divorce, prisons, alcohol, rivers and trains that compliments their sources perfectly. They play ‘old time’ and as Josh Bearman put it that means that they ‘play one song over and over again until you can see through time’.
Their own songs sit seamlessly within a set that draws heavily on a classic lineage, a set that is emphatically intricate yet familiar and utterly authentic. They are in essence traditional and in their own compositions they ensure that that traditional source, will never run dry.
The Hot Seats are Josh Bearman, Ben Belcher, Graham DeZarn, Ed Brogan and Jake Sellars. They are on tour – go see them, be prepared to whoop, holler and generally appreciate the quality, tonight’s audience certainly did.
