Jon Gomm at Holy Trinity

Frank Bearman reviews Leeds’ own Jon Gomm at Holy Trinity …

As a fully-paid up member of the guitar-playing community (well I’ve had five excellent lessons now at Music Nation Leeds), I went to see the supremely gifted Jon Gomm at the Holy Trinity Church in Leeds, for inspiration. I’m fighting the urge to coin such clichés as “Return of the Prodigal Son” and “Local Boy Done Good”, as that would be naff. But being a Loiner by association, he has come from relative obscurity in East End Park to becoming an online Over-Nite Sensation ™ who now plays Jazz festivals around the globe as a bona fide guitar legend. And he was back to play a home-town gig on May 17th.

His range and technical ability are dazzling, exploiting the entire body of his battered acoustic guitar in a way I’ve never seen with flamenco-like percussive techniques whilst delivering songs in a familiar popular vein, such as “Ain’t Nobody” by Chaka Khan or “Message in a Bottle” by the Police. The rest of his new album is, I think, original material including “Passion-Flower” (6 million hits on You-Tube) which tells the story of, well, a Passion Flower unexpectedly blooming in the yard of his back-to-back in the dank streets of this very city.

The venue itself was a suprise, tucked under the wing of the Trinity Quarter, the forbidding-looking Church inside is all bright white stucco and neo-classical pillars like something you’d find in Italy. It wasn’t in fact, as I learnt, built by those nice people who brought us the shopping centre. I think on Sundays they even do actual praying and stuff. Buy they do serve alcohol in the evening which can get weird when you notice that there are saints looking down at you in a pew fervently clasping a can of Stella. But it’s an interesting venue apparently hand-picked for its intimacy to allow the artist to play some smaller gigs on his return to his roots now that he has won world-wide acclaim.

Not sure how many more lessons I’ll need…