Dan Baird and Homemade Sin @Leicester Musician 9/12/11

In the late 80s I was given a Chart Show Rock compilation. On that three tape collection there was a track called “Battleship Chains” by The Georgia Satellites. I couldn’t stop playing it. It sounded fun, it sounded exciting, it sounded magnificent.

The experience led me to investigate the Satellites (I vividly remember dragging my Dad to the library so I could get their album “Open All Night”) then as I got older I discovered Credence Clearwater Revival and Dan Baird’s solo material and it sounded fun, it sounded exciting and magnificent.

And so it is, over twenty years later that RTM finds itself in Leicester watching the former Satellites front man Dan Baird playing a gig with his band Homemade Sin. It is the first time in those two decades of following Dan that I have seen him headline, indeed the only other time I have seen him live was at the much-missed JB’s with The Quireboys a couple of years ago.

Happily the venue itself is exactly the sort of place this type of music needs. Essentially a pub with a stage at one end, The Musician is the sort of place where music matters.

You suspect it matters to Dan and Homemade Sin too, you just know that the group has a decent record collection and do this for the love of it. That’s what you hope anyway.

They definitely are a band that thrives on spontaneity. From my vantage point, I am surprised that there is no setlist. But this, it emerges later, is how thing are done round here. So alongside original material like “Damn Thing To Be Done” and “Julie And Lucky” an impromptu cover of “Honky Tonk Woman” is played just for fun.

It helps that in guitarist Warner E Hodges (of Jason and the Scorchers) Baird has found his perfect foil, a fantastically talented man, Hodges is perhaps the most gregarious of the band, whirling around like some demented Pete Townshend during Satellites classic “Railroad Steel,” which along with “Two For Tuesday” from the most recent album forms sort of the centerpiece of the gig.

Not that Bassist Keith Christopher and drummer Mauro Magellan are slouches either and the band is clearly enjoying each others company as both get their turns in the spotlight.

After a cover of “Tears of a Clown” (Baird telling the crowd “I call the set, I will play it if I want”) its time for “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” and “Shelia, Shelia,” both Satellite staples.

Despite the curfew having long since passed there is time for an encore, and after “Younger Face” the evening closes on, if we are being honest, on its only duff note. A cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless” a fine song in its own right, of course and expertly played, but not the sort of track to close a night such as this.

Dan Baird and Homemade Sin are the sort of band that deserve to be household names, but equally they are the sort of band that you are glad aren’t, so you can see them in a place like this. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what they think too.

This is the sort of evening that makes you remember why you love rock 'n' roll in the first place. Now I can say for sure that Dan Baird is exciting, fun and magnificent.