Roachford – Tuning Fork, 28 May 2025: Review & Photo Gallery

29th May 2025

Roachford is the perfect Zelig Soul artist. He can morph at will into different classic Black performers.

Zelig was a great Woody Allen mockumentary from 1983, about a Jewish man who would physically resemble famous people he encountered, like a chameleon.

Andrew Roachford looks like the great Jimmy Carter from the Blind Boys of Alabama, when he first strides onto the stage. Slim and diminutive with a bald head. He is wearing an all-white suit so he can also be a ringer for Dave Ruffin, off the Temptations’ Temptin’ album cover.

Behind his Nord Stage digital keyboard, he mimics Ray Charles. He can echo the voices of many classic Deep Soul Southern Black Americans like Joe Tex, O.V. Wright, Sam Moore from Sam & Dave.

All this means a lot of Gospel, and he directly addresses this in the interview from late last year.

Roachford’s parents are from Barbados, but he was born and raised in London, and he has the appropriate accent.

With him are Chris Moorhead guitar, David Levy bass, Jackie Barnes (son of Aussie Jimmy) drums. They are a superlative tight unit. The only thing they lack is a horn section.

They make up for that with the guitar riffing those parts, like the early Rolling Stones taking on Otis Redding with Satisfaction.

It does not take the sound desk long to bring up the vocals, buried slightly on The Doctor and High on Love.

The Way I Feel. The engine is thrown into overdrive. A great Pop Soul ballad with the Southern Baptist church letting loose. Keyboards interlace some Jazz in the Gospel. James Brown styled rap banter for the first time.

Ain’t No Sunshine. The Bill Withers classic that loosens up the band and they bend and mold the phrasing like Brother Ray.

Roachford the band made a great album in Permanent State of Blue (1994). They play Ride the Storm from that one. It is a curious thing that you can hear some of the Jagger mannerisms (Jaggerisms) in this and other songs.

Not so unusual. The Stones vocalist is underrated as a song stylist. Whereas everyone recognises John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival with his affected Little Richard patois.

Which leads nicely into their cover of the Teskey Brothers Carry You. Singing Soul is not defined by colour or race. It is by the emotional state.

Otis rated the Righteous Brothers above Sam and Dave.

This Generation always had a little of the Who in there. Talkin’ about this generation. Tonight, Roachford threads in the Temptations’ Papa Was a Rolling Stone.

Also recorded and toured extensively with Mike and the Mechanics. Hence Over My Shoulder.

We get a little teaser of the Boss’s Dancing in The Dark. Does he think better of it? Poor old Bruce is suffering a recent backlash of anti-Trump comments he made on stage in Europe.

Escape over the border and hole up with Neil and Joni for a while.

Tom Petty’s Free Falling is a stunning version, in which the band casually add in Smokey Robinson’s Tracks Of My Tears.

Huge hits Cuddly Toy and Only to Be With You are expanded into a wonderful Soul Revue finale.

Andrew Roachford has been performing for close to 40 years and this is only his second visit to New Zealand. Of course he tells us he’ll be back soon.

Rev. Orange Peel