Mike Willis – photo Kate Butts

Mike Willis plays Ramshackle

Mike Willis, singer-songwriter and venue owner, moved to Hastings from Nashville, Tennessee in 2015 after being seduced by the Hastings music scene (and specifically a local bands take on Dee-lite’s “Groove is
in the Heart” which he heard while out drinking with a pal.) Willis has been instrumental in developing ideas and making music happenings in Hastings ever since. Andrew Logan pays a visit.

He has a shop in St Leonards which is not really a shop at all. Think Mr. Benn ‘…as if by magic the shopkeeper appeared’. It’s called Ramshackle and seats up to 30 people. It also seems to double as a recording studio, bar, art gallery and alt.community centre.

I was invited to the shop on the evening of 7 November and immediately sensed that I was joining an excited and expectant audience that already seemed to know Mike’s work and each other intimately. The songs Willis played that night drew from traditions of guitar based rock fusion, folk ballads, songs as storytelling, along with a generous drizzle of piano and a big slice of good ole country hospitality.

Citing Kris Kristofferson, who pioneered an introspective ‘outlaw’ style of country in the 1970’s that moved away from the polished Nashville sound and Paul Simon who blended folk rock flavours with a love of narrative storytelling, as major influences.
And it seemed that storytelling was very much on the menu tonight, infused with a sometimes dark but cheeky self deprecating humour (the first song he played had, he told us, been written on the back of a vomit bag in Nashville) and always with a twinkle in his eye.
There was a reasonable amount of death in the mix: a triple homicide and the sad but true realisation that all our friends are going to die, there was a turtle stuck on a fence and a fuel tank for a love machine. We had tales of his neurodiverse neighbour, met Hillbillies from outer space, measured time by the skyline and discovered that our host once sang underwater on video!

Al Stewart on steroids, anyone?
Born and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Willis started playing guitar and writing songs in high school because he always felt like he had something to say that required more than just words. For me, Mike Willis was for one night only, the grim reaper’s younger cousin, wearing a metaphorical party hat and inviting us to sing along together around the piano, because life is short and it’s always good to be grateful for what you’ve got and count your blessings.
It also served as an entertaining hors d’oeuvre, an appetiser for the many exciting events that Mike Willis and Dan Wiltshire have planned for Henry Ward Hall over the coming months. A beautiful (and considerably bigger) venue in downtown Hastings which looks like a church inside (because it is!)

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