Henry Goes A-Hunting With Live Ronnie’s Lockdown Sessions

The conventions of lockdown gigging continue to develop apace with this, the first in what we hope will become a regular series of performances (gigs? recitals?) live streamed from an empty Ronnie's to whoever has sufficient bandwidth to receive it. As is rapidly becoming the norm, the event starts with some unscheduled candid footage of the musicians fiddling nervously with the tech: however, this is an official Ronnie’s affair not a bedroom broadcast, so there’s an MC to give Ashley Henry and co a rather rueful big-up (“They were due to play three sold-out shows!”) and due attention has been paid to lighting and camera angles – there’s a three-camera set-up to provide a sense of space and motion to proceedings.

The set focuses on material from Henry’s recent Sony-released album Beautiful Vinyl Hunter, and starts with a bang with a turbo-charged piece of contemporary jazz-rock, with a tumbling repetitive series of chords over which the pianist executes some fleet Hancock-isms. Nathan Shingler’s drums are hot and heavy in the mix, and Fergus Ireland’s bass initially struggles to make its presence felt, though this is swiftly corrected in time for him to lead off with a plangent solo statement that builds into the powerful riff for ‘The World Is Yours’ – a tribute to Henry’s very au courant twin inspirations Nas and Ahmad Jamal, from the debut EP that attracted Sony’s attention. There’s a real excitement in Henry’s interplay with Shingler’s restlessly energetic drumming: they go from mellow to volcanic in seconds, then mellow down again for an outro that gives Henry space to demonstrate his classical chops, then back into a fat backbeat which Shingler can’t resist leavening with all sorts of fancy tuplets. ‘Dark Honey’ is similarly energetically paced, with a darkly thunderous Afro-influenced triplet groove. 

Henry tries manfully to overcome the sheer weirdness of performing to an invisible audience in an empty club with some between-song chat, explaining how Solange’s publishers initially refused and then relented over permission to cover her modern classic ‘Cranes’ once they’d heard the Henry version. The original’s spacious melancholy is given short shrift by Shingler as his powerhouse drumming turns it into a supercharged exhibition lap – his energy is seemingly boundless, and while on ‘Pressure’ the churning polyrhythms inspire Henry to ride above the maelstrom into the best solo of the night, on ’Moving Forward’ Ireland’s fast-fingered bass solo is just about audible over the forest of chattering rim clicks and hi-hat polyrhythms with which Shingle chooses to accompany him as a concession to sensitivity. In fairness to the drummer, his solo feature on the same tune is pretty jaw-dropping, all the more so when Henry announces mock-conspiratorially that Shingler wouldn’t normally be allowed in the club as he’s still only 17 years old. The enthusiasm of youth is irrepressible and, while the band do dial things down for the mellifluent ‘Colors’, where Henry’s debut as a rapper more than compensates in sincerity what it lacks in flow, the energy levels remain incredibly high all the way through to the playback-enhanced ‘The Mighty’ and the end of the show.

Streaming from Ronnie's doesn’t seem to allow fullscreen, but the quality is good and from the Facebook figures there seem to be nearly 800 people tuning in (many more than the actual club can hold). There’s a brief Q&A session as well, where Henry answers on-screen questions and gets the opportunity to namecheck some of his heroes like Wynton Kelly – because... well, why not? This is the new frontier of online gigs and any extra content is worth a shot. This superb trio were well chosen to lead the charge: Henry’s contemporary take on the music, his affability as a host and the band’s limitless fund of chops and the energy to execute them all come across loud and clear on the tiny screen.