Beans on Toast - Serves up a cracking performance

****

A balanced meal of great music and stories .

Beans on Toast is the moniker of Jay McAllister brining his visions of the world via his Folk tunes, which tonight he is treating Bristol and the floating venue of the Thekla too. He has a tradition of releasing a new album every year on his birthday and 2018 gave us ‘Bird in Hand’ and the first track was taken from it ‘Another Year’ about the recent birth of his daughter. Another new arrival is his band, last time in Bristol he was solo, but this year the support acts are back on as the backing band, efficient use of transport and a great use of very talented musicians.

Next up is a song about who you would like to go for a drink with, someone famous or being ultimately honest it is your mates. We also learn that Wetherspoon has been banned on this tour as the owner is a ‘prick’ which has crushed his early dream of a Beans on Toast tour of ‘spoons’. Most of the songs are stories too which engages the mostly chilled crowd including one about how he wrote a song criticising people playing with backing tracks before finding he couldn’t sync to his own, there is true humour, honesty and self-depreciation and it makes him all the more likeable. In fact he seems a good chap to go for a drink with.

I say the crowd is mostly chilled, we only had one moment where a couple of punters right by the stage were told to “shut the f**k up”, which they obliged with. Even here it was dealt with in an endearing way by Jay. A crowd favourite of ‘War on War’ about the crusades against drugs and gangs etc., but what about just trying to stop war itself, hard to argue against. In fact there was another one called ‘Smells Like Bullshit’ and these are the themes the songs really pick up, ultimately when you look at politics and generally what’s going on there is an awful lot of rubbish to wade through which is succinctly put into song by Beans on Toast.

‘Bamboo Toothbrush’ is up next, including a crowd singalong directed by the band about the problems of mountains of plastic, but you can combat it in true eco warrior style with a toothbrush. He played Boomtown and they asked for a song, probably not the one they expected but it was ‘Take your sh*t home with You’ as he despaired at the problems all festivals have of discarded tents and crap.

All too soon it was coming to the end of the gig and by know you have probably gathered that Beans on Toast likes to do things his way and the encore is no different, he did not even leave the stage. In fact I like that about him and it seems to sum him more, why bother with facades and pretend rubbish, just get on with life, we know they go and stand behind the curtain for 30 seconds so no need really.

One more song of note to mention, and I am sure I have missed a few, is 'Alexa'. He tells the story of how he added “Alexa, play Beans on Toast” at the start to get everybody’s machines at home activated, but there is no consistency, which means the machines are thinking about what to do. If the machines are thinking, basically we are all fucked. Well in the meantime, before welcoming our robot overloads, I hope there is plenty more time to enjoy some great music and stories from Beans on Toast.

Review by Jon Cooper and photo's by Steve Owen (Icarus Photography)

Check Out! the Video for 'Alexa' Below...