Live Review - Willy Mason - Oran Mor, Glasgow

Sometimes it’s the smallest acts of rebellion that are the most satisfying way of sticking it to the man: staying on the train to as far as Queen Street when my ticket says Bellgrove; scoring two bags of Golden Wonder with a single fifty pence piece from the office vending machine and not owning up; turning up to work on a Thursday morning having not shaved since Monday…  and I trace this mellow mutineering back to one record that really resonated just as I stepped into the murky world of full-time employment in ‘05 – Willy Mason’s Where The Humans Eat.

Here was a collection of songs written by a young man from the East coast of the USA that felt at home in the ears of a young man from the West coast of Scotland.  Big selling single Oxygen was a favourite and for good reason – a sing-a-long tune paired with lyrics that inspired and stirred in equal measure:

‘I wanna hold up my head with dignity;

Proud of a life where to give means more than to take.

I wanna live beyond the modern mentality;

Where paper is all that you’re really taught to create.’

When you are working in the back office of a bank for £4.21/hour with £18k of student debt and no holiday entitlement, it’s reassuring to hear that there are bigger, better and more important things out there…. 

….and so, 8 years and 2 brilliant albums later, I’m in Oran Mor (on a school night of course) with the man himself.  I’m actually a bit nervous; I’m minded of the idiom ‘never meet your heroes’.  Mr Mason renders it nonsense within minutes though.  Full of easy going charm and playful banter with the crowd (shouts of “GLASGOW LOVES WILLY” raise a smile), this is a setlist that supports my theory that this is one of the most underrated artists of the last decade.

New material sits easily alongside more established stuff – there were no ‘difficult’ second or third albums for Willy Mason and his consistency is demonstrated with song after song after song of brilliance.  Oxygen is saved for a rousing encore and then the lights come on; I’ve got work tomorrow but I’ve got a spring in my step – I’m going to be five minutes late.