Review: Ben Catley at Ellington Jazz Club

Ben Catley at Ellington Jazz Club
Sunday, October 1, 2023

To bastardise The Beatles:

Ben Catley is a guitar man, north of England way
Now he’s hit the Ellington in good old WA
And if you will go to hear him this is what you’ll see …

A tour de force of contemporary acoustic guitar styles, some songs but mainly instrumentals (this week at least) played with energy, sensitivity, imagination and verve. A virtuoso guitarist, Ben Catley writes dynamic music that shifts seamlessly from the intricate and delicate to the wild and fractious.

A twelve-year resident of Perth, Catley has recently returned from a tour of England. He was grateful to be ‘home.’ As he said, “although it’s always tough to make a living as a musician, it’s much tougher in the UK. The Perth music scene is easier."

His set the other night ran for eighty minutes straight. By the end everyone was pumped. Excitedly, people bonded around the experience. As a Polish guy put it, “that was a biggie." He wasn’t wrong.

Catley lists as his influences contemporary guitarists, Jon Gomm and Eric Mongrain, past masters Joe Satriani and Ben Harper, pianist Ludivico Einaudi, as well as the Delta Blues of Son House and Robert Johnson and his first love, heavy metal. That’s a diverse range for a completely self-taught musician. Clearly, he listens closely and learns.

His specialty style is what he calls ‘over-the-neck finger-tapping,’ where his right hand often reaches over his left to play the lower end of the neck. His is also a master of the capo, utilising an open bass E string that allows for high-open tuned chords underpinned by deep bass progressions. Effective and stylish, it’s a clever way to extend the harmonic range of his music and introduce a drone element.

The piano influence is also key. It shifts his style away from chord-centric tunes to a more classical style of bass lines and treble runs, peppered with finger tapping.

His only, much-loved guitar is a classic Australian Maton that he subtly enhances through a variety of effects pedals. His simple vocal trick is to occasionally sing into the sound hole of his guitar, bouncing his voice off the strings to create a superb echoing reverb.

He began with two instrumentals, the first unnamed, the second Slightly Splendid – a gentle way to edge the packed house into the show. He followed with a wild song, The Place That I Left. With foot percussion, the tempo picked up and his hands began to fly up and down the frets. Written about Newcastle in the UK where Catley grew up, he seemed to use this song to excise a slight homesickness.

Next was a short untitled instrumental—delicate and glorious, like sunlight dancing across a wind-rippled lake—that he followed with a punchy blues track Running, that ended with a classic AC/DC riff.

Of late Catley has been experimenting with his home studio. His idea is to capture the instrumentals as he is composing them to give them a fresh spontaneity. Cloud Cabins, the title track from his recent EP, was a case in point. The delicate finger picking jumped midway to a wild plectrum-strummed orgasm.

For easy access, he keeps his plectrum blue-tacked to his guitar then holds it in his teeth between breaks. The switches are so swift you could easily miss them.

The highlight of the night was a didge duo jam with Si Mullumby from the band Wild Marmalade. It began with a deep didge drone over which Catley played a Ben Harper melody. The two then began to fire off each other, trading riffs in a true jazz tradition. It was electrifying.

His next tune was Cheeky Little Bastard which he advised could be said in his native Geordie accent as, either endearment (emphasis on ‘cheeky’), or disdain (emphasis on ‘bastard’). An instrumental that was once a song, this was the first time he tried this funky, nuclear fusion of a piece on an audience. At the end he thanked us for letting him play it. “Thank you for playing it," someone shouted back.

The show moved into its denouement with Catley’s oldest composition, 2014’s Move Fast. This began with solo voice but two minutes in he shook his head to let down his John Butler-bun, released his inner Jimmy Page and broke into a medley of heavy metal riffs. Led Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix were referenced one after the other in a dazzling array before the song quietened down to end again with solo voice, this time sung into the sound-hole.

He ended the show with The Edge of the Earth, his lock-down song in gratitude for spending it here, and Once More Round the Reservation, a gentle and haunting instrumental he wrote for his grandmother.

The crowd went crazy when he finished. The Polish guy was right: it was a biggie.

The support act was Catley’s good mate, acoustic-guitarist/songwriter, Duncan Saige. A fine song-writer, he delivered a set of seven originals and one classic cover Teardrops. For the older members in the audience, his style was reminiscent of John Martyn, David Crosby’s solo work, Bert Jansch, as well as father and son Tim and Jeff Buckley. This was somewhat ironic though as most of these artists were beyond Saige’s age and direct influence. They must have been passed onto him by musical osmosis. A warm presence, Saige delivered an emotional show that was the perfect intro for his old mate Benny.

All up it made for a fantastic Sunday night at the Ellington. Bring on more of the same.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Alan Holbrook