Legend Lane's music lives on

Slim Chance The Robin 2, Bilston
Jon Griffin | 12/03/12 | Birmingham Post

THE late, great Ronnie Lane tragically died from multiple sclerosis back in 1997, aged just 51 - but his music will live on forever. Ronnie was the creative Iynchpin of the Faces,one of the all-time great singer-songswriters. Rod Stewart may, have been the on-stage star but Lane's melodies and musicanship were sublime.

When the Faces broke up, Ronnie went back to his roots playing pubs and toured circus-style with his band Slim Chance, and the spirit ,of those times has been lovingly recreated by a latter-day version.

Charlie Hart, Colin Davey, Steve Bingham, Steve Simpson and Alun Davies are 64 carat gold musicians, with a new retrospective CD, The Show-Goes On. There's also a new DVD re-telling the Ronnie lane saga with all the 10s legends - catch this band live while you can. One For The Road, Kuschty Rye, Flags and Banners and Ooh La La were gloriously true to the genius of Ronnie Lane.
Verdict *****

Slim Chance, London Borderline 23/09/2011

View: from the bar
Joe Geesin, Record Collector 7th October 2011

This sold-out show saw the launch of the band's new single, One For The Road, an old Lane classic, backed with Flags And Banners, co-written with Rod Stewart. The show mixed Faces and Ronnie Lane/Slim Chance material with aplomb; the band were clearly tightly rehearsed and enjoyed it too. The enthusiastic reception ensured that Last Orders and You're So Rude went down as well as Anniversary, Don't Try To Change My Mind and You Never Can Tell. From mod to blues to rock'n'roll, the sound was solid, yet smooth. The underlying feel of R&B-meets-Americana meant everything across the two sets ran seamlessly. Charlie Hart's accordion bolstered the sound nicely, and bassist Steve Bingham nodded along as if they were playing in your front room.
Thoroughly enjoyable.

ONE FOR THE ROAD

David Cavanagh
UNCUT, July 2010.

It was one of the most ambitious tours of the '70s. A merry troupe of minstrels, travelling the country in caravans, accompanied by clowns, animals and a big top. Ronnie Lane, the beloved entertainer, was taking his music back to the people. From May into June 1974, while the likes of Deep Purple cruised from hotels to concert halls in limousines, Lane and his band Slim Chance snailed around Britain in a raggle-taggle convoy. Wearing spotted neckerchiefs and scarves, they almost begged to be flagged down by a patrol car and asked what century they’d come from.

Ronnie Lane was a Plaistow boy, a Mod, an April fool (born April 1, 1946), a writer of deep-thinking songs and an occasional rogue. “He was a superstar… a wonderful mixture of East End nous and Romantic,” says Bruce Rowland, the drummer on that 1974 tour. Songwriter Graham Lyle, half of the Gallagher & Lyle duo who played on Lane’s album Anymore For Anymore, describes the tour's concept as “irrational but typical of Ronnie. He wanted a troubadour existence. He would turn up at a town, set up his tent and play to the locals.”

It was called 'The Passing Show'. A picaresque odyssey along the highways and byways, it framed Ronnie's love of good-time music within the wider context of a Romany way of life. Viewed through the eyes of conventional rock tour promotion, 'The Passing Show' was crazy. It required the country's least flexible officials – the town councillors, police constables and fire chiefs – to look at life not as a protocol but as an adventure. And deep at its heart lay an intriguing puzzle: Lane himself. Had he given up the jet-set glamour of The Faces for this? To eat his meals round a campfire and wash his body every few days in a municipal baths? To gamble his shirt on a pipedream, a chimera, a circus?
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Summoning Up the Spirit of Ronnie Lane: The Triumphant Return of Slim Chance

100 Club, London, November 26th 2010. By Andy Worthington

Every now and then, amidst all the manipulation of reality shows and youth-based hype, something truly special happens in the world of music. On Friday November 26, 2010, at the 100 Club in London's Oxford Street, that special something was the return of Slim Chance.

In the 1970s, Ronnie Lane, founder member of psychedelic pop stars the Small Faces, left that band's hard-rocking, hard-drinking successors, the Faces, for a farm in Shropshire and a musical vision -- focused on his new group, Slim Chance -- which, as well as sticking two fingers up at the celebrity trappings of rock stardom, was refreshingly original: a melting pot of rock, folk and blues influences, with some Gypsy leanings and a sprinkling of Motown grooviness.
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