Ashley Naylor’s Acoustic Mayhem @ Gibson Stage, The Gov, Adelaide 1/3/2025

In a recent interview with Ashley Naylor, he told me he thinks the first time he played live was with some school mates, doing a Led Zeppelin song. The experience may have gelled with Ash as “The assholes in my class were strangely friendly to me after that.” Since then, Ashley Naylor has been an integral part in Australian music, a lot more than one would appreciate. While being a founding member of the band Even, playing in Paul Kelly’s band, The Church, The Ronson Hangup, Rockwiz, The Stems, Ashley Naylor has also had a wonderful solo career. And that is just scratching the surface of his fine career as a musician.

The show was called Ashley Naylor’s Acoustic Mayhem – Tunes & Tales from the Indie Underground, and the name certainly lived up to its name. He had a set list and when I asked if I could photograph it at the beginning Ash laughed and said, “Yes but you will never understand it”. He was right. With songs on the list not played and songs played not on the list, I guess he was only using it as a rough guide. Acoustic mayhem seemed to sum up the set list.

With the Gibson Stage room filling nicely, Ash took to the stage around 9pm, armed only with an acoustic guitar. With a ‘Thanks for coming, what a great room to be playing in” Ash started with the instrumental South Fremantle from his latest album Soundtracks Volume 2. A track from his first solo release, Four Track Mind, Under your Radar followed, Ash telling us the song is a homage to T.Rex.

Despite his son now being 21, Ash still tells us how his son wouldn’t sleep much as a baby and how he wrote a song about it for The Grapes, which was a collaboration with Sherry Rich. The Boy Who Could Not Sleep was followed by another Grapes song, Head of Blue.

“This is the last song we (Even) enjoyed on Triple J. As you get older, they stop playing your songs. But thanks to Double J who still support us” bought out the first Even song for the evening,” Shining Star. Then the first of many covers for the evening started with Paul Simon’s I Am A Rock, a song he had never played live before. No worries about “forgive me if I stuff up Adelaide”, it was a perfect rendition. Big Star’s Thirteen followed with a “Adelaide is so cool it had record stores called Big Star. I use to buy the T Shirts.” Such a beautiful song was enhanced by Ashley.

Ashley was having trouble with the tuning of his guitar during the performance but he covered it nicely by telling stories of his career and about the songs he was playing. In fact, Ashley could almost go out and do a talking tour with his stories. They were entertaining, funny and interesting. Not afraid to dig deep, Way from Even’s debut album Less Is More followed, then another “never played in public before” song in The Who’s Behind Blue Eyes. I am guessing by its perfection; he certainly had practiced it a lot.
“Against my better judgement, I am going to do a Beatles song” and Here Comes the Sun closed out set one.

Continuing in an American Songbook theme, Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman commenced set two. Asking for a little reverb from the consol led to a couple of Byrd songs. Again, Ash digs deep into the catalogue of the band rather than play the obvious songs, playing David Crosby’s, Everybody’s Been Burned. Then a surprise guest comes on stage for one song, Kevin Borruso, who Ash worked with in the 1990’s when Kevin was in the Western Australian band Superscope. With twelve-string in hand the second Byrds song I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better was played with Kevin on backing vocals, enhancing the song.

I recently asked Ash “Stones or Beatles” and he dodged the question. With John Lennon’s In My Life being played next (and not the last Beatles song for the evening), I guess the answer is Beatles. Almost from the solo album High Horse is one of Ash’s favourite songs he has written “and with that I usually don’t like to rate my songs”. The beautiful song had the audience quiet for its duration. And Ash told Kevin he actually wrote the song in his living room.

One of Ash’s traditions is to play a Bowie song at each of his gigs. This evening, we got Kooks, and when he paused after the first verse and asked “does everyone know this song?”, he admitted to being surprised with the positive response. Having sung a song about his son earlier Ash felt it only fair to sing one about his daughter in Lilly Darling, another Grapes recording. The new single, A Blue Sky finished the set, admitting he had only every played the song live twice before. With the reverb button having been pushed again, the song sounded wonderful live.

The encore started with a reprise of South Fremantle before descending into a lesson about the key of G and how many great songs were in the key of G. A medley of Suspicious Minds, Darling Be Home Soon, Stop and Go Man and Pretty Flamingo followed to support the fact. Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain came next with yet another Beatles song in Blackbird finishing the evening in its simplistic wonderful beauty.

In the theme of Mayhem, anything could have happened but in the hands of Ash Naylor, it was totally organised Mayhem.

A wonderful performance from a genuinely warm and caring artist who just happens to be a great guitarist, and singer/songwriter and was more than happy to meet and talk to the audience after the show.

Live Review by Geoff Jenke