The saying goes, (from an Aesop tale), that  ‘you are known by the company you keep’, however  if you’re a musician,  sometimes ‘you’re known by the instruments you play’.

I first saw Toy Hearts supporting Stackridge at the Trinity Arts Centre in Bristol around 2008, and I thought then that these girls had bags of stage presence, shed loads of ability and deserved to go far. I didn’t hear from them again till I noted that they were at the Prom on the beloved Gloucester Rd, last night.

Toy Hearts are sometimes  a 5 piece band, two young women who sing and play  guitar and mandolin who are accompanied by their father on Dobro and Banjo. They have an upright bass player and sometimes have a fiddle player, though last night they played without him.

Members:-

Stewart Johnson  Banjo / Dobro
Sophia Johnson  Guitars / Vocals
Hannah Johnson Vocals / Mandolin

Howard Gregory  Fiddle / Vocals  (not playing on the 25/11/09)
Bradley Blackwell  Double Bass  (not playing on the 25/11/09, stand in being used).

This band has a lot going for it and are already recording a new CD in Nashville, they have already toured France and Germany and have played some of the major Festivals.

Essentially they are a bluegrass band but with the ability to play a hybrid of country / blues swing, with a gypsy jazz feel to some of their songs.

Hannah Johnson the mandolin player and main singer, along with sister Sophia, a slick guitar  picker and vocal accompanist, have good stage presence, a light engaging banter that draws in the audience, great musicianship and faces that beamed with the glee of knowing they are delivering a  vibrant set. Hannah  plays an Epiphone MM50F Style Mandoline and rates her influences as being:- Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Alison Krauss, Alecia Nugent, Rhonda Vincent, Gillian Welch, Patty Loveless, Kate MacKenzie, The Steel Drivers, Cadillac Sky, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Randy Travis, Steve Earle, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Kay Starr, Wayne Hancock, The Quebec Sisters, The Dixie Chicks, Bad Company, Otis Redding, Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

Sophia Johnson alternates between playing a top of the range Martin D28 and a Gitane D500, (a Django Reinhardt  Macaferri copy). She states her influences  as being Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Clarence White, Tony Rice, Whit Smith (Hot Club of Cowtown), Jimmie Bryant, Django Reinhardt, Tony Rice, Paco de Lucia, Olivier Kikteff (Le Doigts De L’homme), Birelli Lagrene, Charlie Byrd, Joe Pass, Andy Falco, and Cody Kilby.

Stewart Johnson, the  father of  the two front women,  is a seriously good Dobro and Banjo player, delivering a solid, yet delicate professional back line for the band. Keeping himself to the fringe of the stage he allowed his daughters to play and dominate the bands character and stage presence, all the while laying down lovely claw hammer banjo pickin’. He  He plays on a glorious instrument, gleaming with brass hardware, a 1925 Gibson Mastertone. He’s been in countless bands before and still does, and his experience shows through.

It was a full house at the Prom, and for a wet Wednesday evening at the height of a recession, it reinforces the point that the ‘cream rises’, good music will find its way through the mediocre.  So ‘hats off’ to Toy Hearts for coming down from Birmingham to play, for a couple of hundred quid, and well spotted by the person at the Prom who does their bookings.

Though only in their early to mid twenties, Sophia and Hannah made reference to having been playing and singing since they were 12.  They seem to have made a meteoric rise to where they now sit amongst the top flight of ‘bluegrass’ exponents. It just goes to show that the pathway to success combines at least these two factors:- a) Playing most of your own material and b) if you want to develop and rub along with professional musicians, strike out by trying to get a slot in one of the  minor tents at one of the hundreds of  summer festivals , especially abroad. To remain playing covers in any genre in a local pub, folk club or wine bar is unlikely to get you the recognition you might well deserve.

Another footnote:- If you take ‘flash’ instruments  onstage, you had better be able to play them reasonably well,  Toy Hearts  certainly can.