Sam Lewis took ot the stage of the Honky Tonk and proceeded to wow the crowd with his wit and songwriting skills in a charming laid back performance. Starting with "Reinventing The Blues", a gentle blues he and his 2 piece band borrowed from Martin Harley put on a great show despite minimal rehearsal time.
There was something effortlessly easy about Sam's performing style, "Down To The Wire" was just pure singer songwriting at its best and the set just continued in that vein, and the good mood vibe just kept on going with "Great Ideas" from his album "Loversity".
The origins if "Never Again" were revealed with the comment "Don't fall in love with short haired Australian women"! It started with just Sam on acoustic guitar and was a sad tender ballad delivered with great pathos. Sam was great company and he was willing to share great insights about his songs, "Virginia Avenue" being a great example, "the people are real" he said before explaining this was the from the view of a 13 year old. it was choc full little observations that anchored the song in reality. His song written in honour of John Prine "Take a Little TIme" came with the memorable quote "Hope he never hears it!"
He cheekily observed at one point that he was running out of songs "We've done all the good ones" he said but that was being a little disingenuous as the next song "Talk About It" which was delivered in a style of John Mayer meeting Aaron Neville - which was no bad thing. It was followed with "i'm A River" which was once again classic songwriting.
Things closed in a slightly faster fashion with "In My Dreams" with the classic line "If you don't want you in my dreams then you stay out of mine". Our 30 minutes or so with Sam was great fun, he was excellent if somewhat irreverent company and he certainly sent me scouring his back catalogue after the festival where there are lots of gems to be found.