Some but not all of these songs from Jon Regen are familiar to me. And I’ll fess up that I have a soft spot for the characterful American singer-songwriter and pianist whose voice is a cross between Billy Joel and Randy Newman.
Just released Live in London was recorded last year at what is now called Pizza Express Live in Soho. Regen, 56, has played there off and on down the years. I haven’t seen him at this legendary spot. But I have at Crazy Coqs near Piccadilly Circus when he was joined by Harry Shearer’s singer wife Judith Owen for a memorable unannounced turn on a few numbers.
Years ago before he started leading with vocals he was Jimmy Scott’s pianist and that was when I first became acquainted with Regen’s Kenny Barron piano influenced sound. That was at Ronnie Scott’s. Jimmy. What a voice.
New York state of mind over in London l-r: PJ Phillips, Jon Regen, Paul Booth, John Miller
Jon Regen’s own style is very different to Jimmy’s. His voice is a lot lower, much raspier and throatier and the style rather than torch song is more attuned to pop and rock balladeering garnished with jazz chords although Jimmy too tackled pop material sometimes notably a jaw dropping version of the Elton John and Bernie Taupin Blue Moves 1976 classic ‘Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.’
A standout of Live in London is ‘Eye of the Hurricane’. With JR are Paul Booth on tenor saxophone, PJ Phillips on bass guitar and John Miller on drums at the Pizza on 23 November last year recorded during that year’s EFG London Jazz Festival.
Regen began in a singer-songwriter direction with 2004’s Almost Home and his strike rate ratio of killer to filler has improved lots as the years have ticked by. He has become more comfortable in his own skin – you can easily discern – adjusting to the demands of the spotlight as time has gone by. Stop Time issued more than a decade ago is my favourite of his albums and the Professor Longhair-esque New Orleans flavour to the title track of that album is one of the pieces here. So that endeared me to this latest offering most. This live album is also among his best and comes over as authentic. There isn’t any fakery. You either cut it live or you don’t – and he does. He thumps the keys of the club’s Steinway so hard you’d think he’d need to put them in a bucket of ice afterwards for some kind of relief.
The piano playing is very crisply captured sonically. Regen isn’t a shy kind of person and you get a strong sort of personality coming through.
The words have a pithiness to them like top quality ad copywriting lines, sort of slogans and pen pictures that turn into a thing. He distils the emotion. But just as crucially he can sell it to you and persuade your cold, cynical heart to let these shards of feeling and teased out piano man cadences in.
So like a Billy Joel song you can see the people in front of you, the flickering citizens of the night or the lost and the lonely whether a blown up version of Jon himself and the people around him or just as conceivably these people could be you and me, ordinary people – losers that may even turn out to be the real winners.
The presence of saxophonist Paul Booth is a plus. Years ago I was blown away hearing the north-east of England ace in Steve Winwood’s band at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival and in more recent times jamming at the Riverside Hotel in Sligo. He doesn’t disappoint and comes over a bit like an even more heated up version of Dave O’Higgins. I’ll put the brakes on the review. Before skidding to a halt I’d just say Regen is an artist best heard live. If you can’t do that any time soon, this release is a stand in far better than creating your own cardboard cut out of him from a cornflake packet. Corny – however – it’s not.
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