The Fabulous Red Diesel

THE FABULOUS RED DIESEL, THE MUSE

Kat Lee-Ryan – lead vocals, keyboards, flute, percussion, Simon Dobell – trumpet, guitar, backing vocals, Beatrice Gullick –double bass,  trumpet, tuba, backing vocals, Wil Lee-Ryan – drums

This year’s late night ‘party slot’ at The Muse featured The Fabulous Red Diesel, a quartet from Hastings / St. Leonards, Sussex, fronted by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kat Lee-Ryan, aka Ms. Kitty, who also writes the group’s material.

The band members are experienced multi-instrumentalists who have all been on the music scene in their individual capacities for years. Since coming together in Hastings they have attracted a cult following for their quirky songwriting and their colourful,  high energy and highly irreverent live performances. The eccentrically attired quartet engage with their audiences constantly and any TFRD performance is equal parts serious gig and party.

Summing up the quartet’s performance immediately after the show Chris Jones of BJF’s planning committee described the group as variously being “quirky, flamboyant and utterly bonkers”. After what we had just witnessed it was impossible to disagree with him.

Formed in 2016 TFRD have already managed to release eight albums, although, admittedly, some of these are live recordings.

Arriving late after after the Frater-Taylor gig overran I stumbled in to the venue just in time to hear “Plastic Ginger”, a song about an inflatable doll! TFRD’s sometimes humorous songs address a broad and eclectic range of subject matter,  often written from a feminist standpoint, but the band do have a serious side as well, but more on that later.

Ms. Kitty is a surprisingly soulful vocalist and an accomplished keyboard player, She also plays Roland Kirk / Jethro Tull style flute and shakes and rattles various items of percussion. Situated centre stage she was very much the focus of attention, but that’s not to say that the rest of the band didn’t have their moments.

Beatrice Gullick, whom Kitty has dubbed ‘Miss Bea Have’ is also a multi-instrumentalist, handling the bass parts on both double and tuba as well as adding a dash of trumpet and backing vocals.

Simon Dobell is equally proficient on trumpet and guitar and spent the evening switching between the two as the music required, whilst also adding a smattering of backing vocals.

Drummer Wil Lee-Ryan, Kitty’s husband, was happy to quietly sit at the back and lay down the beat, variously driving and anchoring the band in an effective but unostentatious manner.

Much of the material performed was sourced from the band’s latest album “Goddess The Seahorse” and included the breezy “Summer End” with its FX pedal generated wah wah trumpet solo, a sound that Dobell was to deploy on numerous occasions, including on the following “Apple Tree”.

Elsewhere we were to enjoy a trumpet duet featuring Dobell and Gullick on “Innocence”, a song from the album “The Queensbury House Sessions”.

This was quirky pop with a jazz flavour, a music that was eminently danceable, as evidenced by the title of “Grooving Around”, just one of the many songs that tempted a number of dancers onto their feet to groove around in the space at the back of the venue close to the bar. Among those spotted ‘throwing shapes’ were BJF’s Lynne Gornall and Ruth Gibbs from The Muse.

The rollicking “Put That Woman Down” introduced a New Orleans flavour to the proceedings, something that continued on “Timelord” with its refrain “if I was a Timelord I would save you”. This was a song that featured Gullick’s rumbustious tuba playing, something that cropped up on numerous occasions during the set, with Kitty requesting the audience to shout “Tuba!” in the style of a football chant to indicate if they wanted the bass line on a song to be carried by the brass behemoth rather than the double bass. Inevitably Gullick’s tuba excursions were a big feature of this energetic, wilfully eccentric performance.

But there’s also a serious side to TFRD. “Timelord” is a song from the album “Sparkly Bird”,  the soundtrack to a musical theatre production that deals with suicide and mental health issues and which is based on a true story. Inevitably many of the other songs on this album are more serious in tone, but wouldn’t have been quite so suitable for this ‘Last Night of the Festival’ party.

Rather more in keeping with occasion was the raucous “Fur Coat, No Underwear” with its Latin-esque flourishes, jaunty flute solo and saucy pay off line, “Ermine round your shoulders, no pants upon your arse, get a little bolder, you’ll make yourself some brass”.

Now you can see where Chris Jones was coming from with that description as he thanked the band, the Festival organisers and others, before inviting TFRD to remain on stage for a deserved encore.

From “Goddess The Seahorse” this was “Beggars Would Ride”, a hard driving song featuring a soulful vocal and a lyric based on an old proverb.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable live event that saw the band establishing a terrific rapport with their audience. It was a great occasion and a good, light hearted way to round off the Main Weekend of an excellent Festival.