DYLAN, CADILLACS & ROMI MAYES

Sarah and I went to a house concert on Friday night, in a village outside York. House Concerts are a weird but wonderful affirmation of the small-is-beautiful principle. About 25 people bring their own drinks and collect in someone's sitting room to hear live music from up-and-coming performers/musicians/singer-songwriters. In our area this year these have been pioneered by Tony & Nicki (http://www.houseconcertsyork.co.uk/), so thanks go to them for organising and hosting Friday night's terrific event, which featured the excellent Romi Mayes.

It was the one UK date on her European tour! She flew in from Prague and tomorrow flies out to Milan for her next gig. Cheap flights have made this possible, of course, and there's a price to be paid for these, but they're cheap even when you pay the additional voluntary carbon-offset fee.

Anyway, Romi Mayes proved an exceptional talent, combining a well-judged amount of quick-minded, refreshing inter-song talk with self-penned songs that fuse strong melodies with ardent and intelligent lyrics, and beguilingly dexterous acoustic guitar playing. She has that alertness to the moment which brings together a high degree of musicianship, expressive feeling and responsiveness to others.

She also has style, and knows it. Witness the way that while the first five or six songs were all anchored and energised by her tremendous guitarwork, she never once looked at the guitar or her hands while they carrying this off. It was quick, resourceful and highly accomplished, and never flash. She doesn't take herself too seriously but she has the gravitas of the creative artist who knows what they're doing, and knows how to turn fleeting self-mockery into lasting song.

Her CD, Sweet Somethin' Steady, might (as so often) seem less distinctive than hearing her live and solo - maybe more musicians inevitably make records sound more like other records - but the songs are strong enough to come through for anyone, I'd have thought. It has won her two awards at The Western Canadian Music Awards this month: for Outstanding Roots Recording and Songwriter of The Year.

The tunes are not only strong but suggest an authentic steeping in other people's work. The lyrics are rich with quotable lines. I love, on the title track, this acute and economical expression of wanting to keep someone around but not buy the whole conventional package: "Please don't tell me your middle name"... But Romi Mayes knows better than to be clever-clever with rhymes. Less is more in such things, and what could be better than this rhyme (in the fine and challenging 'The Other Dame')?: "I'll ride in your Cadillac / You'll talk about Kerouac".

This is an immeasurably better thing to do with a Cadillac than Bob Dylan's decision, this year, to TV-advertise their new SUV. I write as an ex-Cadillac owner myself: mine was a white 1972 Eldorado convertible with red uphostery, bought around 1980, which did 15 miles per gallon on a motorway and 7 miles per gallon around town. We weren't half as conscious of the environmental damage then, though, and it was at least a thing of beauty. There's no excuse now for driving anything as anti-social, polluting and ugly as a 2007 SUV, and even less excuse for Bob Dylan, of all people, to take the money and run with them. The ads themselves are tantalising, not least for the strong hint of homage to that great early Spielberg movie Duel - but it's a shameful and sordid act on Dylan's part to have done this. Bad car to drive during a war on global warming.