‘Jay is our Saint George, standing on a wooden chair,” sang Frank Turner of Jay McAllister – AKA Beans on Toast – when they were both emerging musicians on the London folk scene. “He sings songs and slays dragons, and he’s losing all his hair.” Today the singer-songwriter with his remaining barnet hidden under a baseball cap has notched up eight albums and a devoted cult following who sing along with every other word.
The dragon slaying starts with the recently penned song I Think Everybody Should Be Terrified, Saint Beans’s aghast response to the impending Trump presidency and the prospect of a global rise of fascism in 2017.
Several such songs feature in his set, which careers from passionate polemic to songs about sex on drugs at festivals and at least one about penguins. As he admits in song, he sings about whatever comes into his head, which may harm his commercial chances and makes him occasionally prosaic, but endearing. “I was told this would be a tropical garden party,” he says, grimacing at his garish apparel. “The only thing tropical is my shirt.”
Beans’s songs won’t be to everybody’s taste – it’s hard to decide whether No Charlie, a reggae lilt about giving up cocaine, sung in his “reggae voice”, is inspired or excruciating. Still, at his best, especially as a protest singer, he is passionate, funny and human, articulating an everyman’s fears about these times. “If you want to change the world, start treating everybody how you’d like to be treated,” he sings. A simple idea, but a good place to start.
• At the Boileroom, Guildford, on 23 January. Box office: 01483 440022. Then touring.
