Malojian (aka Stevie Scullion) kicked off his 5 week run of Sunday afternoon gigs in The American Bar by playing his debut album, THE DEER’S CRY, in full. He has handpicked a different opening act for each show, and today we were treated to a short set from Mandy Bingham. Accompanied as always by her partner Graham, Mandy admitted to being nervous since it was her first gig since lockdown. She needn’t have worried, however, as she quickly settled in, no doubt partly due to the warm reception she received from the sold out crowd. Graham’s atmospheric lap steel (and occasionally electric bass) is the perfect foil for her delicate vocals and finger picked guitar, and we were treated to mostly new songs Mandy had written during lockdown. Firebomb was particularly impressive, and it will be available soon as a single, produced by Malojian.
Then we were transported back in time to ten years ago when Malojian released his debut album into the world. Solo, he played the songs in the order in which they were listed on the album (which was a diy effort in a simple brown cardboard cd sleeve, hand stamped on his kitchen table, the original run long sold out). Accompanying himself either on his acoustic Alvarez or his classic electric Rickenbacker, we were off on an odyssey through the whimsical world of the mind of Stevie Scullion! The Deer’s Cry was the alternative name for the St Patrick’s Breastplate prayer, Stevie explained, and that gave us some insight into ‘where his head was at’ when the album was being written and recorded. A few of these songs were in existence during his time with his former band, Cat Malojian, which he had formed with banjoist Johnny Toman, but by now that band had imploded and THE DEER’S CRY was created in the aftermath. ‘I’m never gonna live my life with my back against the wall’ in The Deer’s Cry is reiterated again in Checkmate ‘I don’t want to be a pawn in no-one’s game’. True to those aspirations, Stevie has ploughed his own furrow successfully as an independent artist, to the extent that he is in charge of his own record label and is starting to attract other artists into his Style Records stable. Recorded on a shoestring in various places, with his core band of Mikey Mormecha and Joe McGurgan, to whom he dedicated the last song, The Glue, he explained that it was somewhat of a miracle that this album ever saw the light of day.
Not exactly known for his easy stage banter, unusually Stevie was in a (relatively) talkative mood and we heard some hilarious anecdotes about the inspirations for some of the material, and about some of the escapades the band got up to at that time. The Old Timer, accompanied by the Rickenbacker today, gets me every time and the unlikely inspiration for Do You Believe was quite a surprise to this reviewer.
All the gigs sold out very quickly but the audio-visual team of Chris McCorry and Colm Laverty are expertly live streaming the gigs via Stage Left, so you can experience them for yourself even if you weren’t lucky enough to grab a ticket.
Review by Eilís Boland