(Click on the image above to go to original article and gallery at FATEA magazine)



Reg Meuross. 09 March 2025




Without a doubt, multi-award winning singer-songwriter, Reg Meuross, is one of the outstanding talents of his generation, regardless of whether he's writing standalone songs or entire song cycles. Fortunately his appearance at BFC Presents Trinity Hall in Ringwood, will allow a knowledgeable audience to hear both.

First set of the evening is Reg's most recent song cycle, "Fire & Dust" a biography in song and words of the man that famously inspired Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, amongst many others and even if he didn't invent political songwriting certainly incorporated it into social norms, I am talking, of course, about Woody Guthrie.

As with most geniuses, Guthrie was a flawed man, at times focused more on goals than family, something that was greatly at odds with the wider compassion that fuelled his need for social justice and to be surrounding by like minded people to share the journey. As Reg sings the songs and reads the linking narratives, you feel that but for being born too late, he would have been over in the US being a part pf that scene.

It's more noticeable in the songs, it's something we, as an audience, feel more, as Reg loses himself in the pieces, which can't help, but make the spoken word sections feel more stilted. Reg is a raconteur, as the second half more than proves, but, whilst informative, the links don't quite reach the heart in the sameway, the words and music do. The set starts on an Appalachian dulcimer, Reg's being a custom built one that has accompanied him for many years and you can feel the respect and interaction between man and instrument, one that really sets up the evening.

The thing I really like about Reg's opening set is how it includes Woody Guthrie in the set, not just through the use of his songs, but the adaption of other tunes, like used to happen with traditional and before publishers started grinding income out of every last note, with songs that are fully Reg.

Following a short interval, the latter was very much on show during the second half, far more of a greater hits package, where it was also obvious that Reg was for more settled when telling his own stories, rather than being tied into a path.

Naturally he also drew on others of his song cycles, "12 Silk Hankerchiefs" and "Stolen From God", powerful songs, but the excerpts being told with the freedom a free choice brings with it, but did include a personal favourite, "Good Morning Mr Colston", a song that shows why the world isn't and can't be defined as black and white, with an infinite range of shades between them.

It's also a half that's defined by social interaction, it's more than the imaginary meetings between people in Reg's songs, it's in the banter, constant references to people that he's shared time with as well as remembered one off events. That's what makes Reg a great performer, what makes him a great writer and that's why on the night we could all go home thoroughly entertained.

Words And Pictures - Neil King