Luke Morley With Hillbilly Vegas – Cathouse, Glasgow 26th January 2024 Gig Review

28th January 2024 0 By Kevin McCallum

Always a great place to watch live music, Scotland’s legendary Cathouse in Glasgow. Tonight Thunder guitar player Luke Morley hits town with his band as part of a short winter tour.

Opening up the proceedings capably are Oklahoma rock band Hillbilly Vegas, and opening up capably they certainly did!

Their 10-strong track set went down extremely well with the knowledgeable Glasgow crowd. A set that included tracks from their recently released ‘Let it Roll’ album, mixed in with material from 2022 release ‘The Great Southern Hustle’, airing a brand new yet unrecorded track ‘Let it Ride’ and sharing their version of the Frankie Miller classic ‘Down at the Honky Tonk’, it showcased that these guys are quality musicians. Its hard-edged rock music with just a hint of southern US vibe, but make no mistake they are predominantly a hard-rocking band.

Night favourites for me were ‘Long Way Back’, ‘Oklahoma 3.2’, ’ Hell to Pay’ and ‘Shake it like a Hillbilly’. Good crowd interaction between frontman Steve Harris and the Cathouse crowd meant good banter and a few laughs along the way in this 50-minute set. Great also to see Bad Co/Paul Rodgers’ Todd Ronning carrying out Bass duties on this tour. Make sure that you catch these guys either on the remaining dates of this tour or when hopefully they hit Glasgow again. Check out Hillbilly Vegas HERE

So to the headliners, Luke Morley and his band.

Opening up with three tracks from the album ‘Songs from the Blue Room’ released last year ‘I Wanna See The Light’, ‘Damage’ and ‘Killed By Cobain’ Luke and the guys hit the ground running. For me, the tracks from this album are a bit less rockier than his 2014 release ‘El Gringo Retro’ but are equally pleasing to the ear.

So who does Luke have in the band here at the Catty? His long-time partner from Thunder on Bass, is Chris Childs. On Drums, we have Jack Taylor of Tax The Heat /Fighting Hearts. Sam Tanner on keyboards and former T’Pau/Ian Gillan/Cats in Space, Dean Howard on Guitar. All top-notch guys.

The sound quality is exceptional tonight, kudos to the sound engineers. Luke talks frequently of the progress of Danny Bowes and thanks the crowd for the support and good wishes on helping Danny get onto the road to recovery and the objective to get Thunder back out there again.

‘This World ‘ from ‘El Gringo…’ is next, it’s a real Tom Petty-type track, as good live as the first time I heard it on the album. Magical keys from Sam on this one.

‘Errol Flynn’ was released as the latest single from ‘Songs from…’, is a right good track live and has an old-fashioned murky saloon bar vibe to it. The great vocal range that Luke has, is more than evident in ‘Quiet Life’. Some of the great guitar work between Dean and Luke that was on show all night, is pushed harder during ‘The First Day’, just quality hearing and seeing these two guys bounce off each other live.

The 8th track of the night is ‘I’m The One You Want’ which was also the first single released from the latest album, it’s my favourite track of the night for this attentive Glasgow crowd. It has a feel-good song vibe to it. ‘Nobody Cares’ brings down the mood and slows the pace right down as well. Think Marianne Faithfull and her sojourn with Metallica and you’ll get what I mean.

‘Lying to Myself’ and ‘Watch The Sun Go Down’ bring an end to the set with some pretty neat Harmonica playing from Luke thrown in for good measure.

There was no doubt that there was some more quality music to come. Luke talks about the hard battles for his Thunder brothers Danny Bowes and Ben Matthews and dedicates ‘Better Man’ from Thunder’s 1992 album ‘ Laughing On Judgement Day’, totally hits the nail on the head and is exceptional, captures the mood of the night for this busy Glasgow crowd.

‘Go With The Flow’ brings us the last Luke Morley penned track of the night, after an impromptu senior moment, Luke gets back on stage and the band closes this set with a great version of The Kinks classic ‘Lola’.

So, yes, that brings an end to a great night in Glasgow with two exceptional bands, a great crowd and a quality sound.