To watch Tod Weidner perform is to witness a human being firmly in the moment. “Stuck in”, as the Brits say, riding whatever wave might be under him at the time. In one instant, his guitar murmurs Curtis Mayfield-esque sweet nothings. In the next, it swaggers with the ragged, gleeful joy of a kid with his first pawn shop axe, trying to channel the louche charm of his battered copy of Exile On Main Street. “There are countless guitarists who play rings around me,” he admits. “That’s no real concern of mine. All I need to worry about is that what’s coming out of me is honest and from the heart. I’m a student of the Neil Young School of Communication.”

And then there are the lyrics. Tod likes words and, as it turns out, his audience likes the way he uses them. A lot. The late, great folk singer/songwriter/author Bill Morrissey once pronounced him “one of the best lyricists I’ve heard”.

“My father taught high school English and Literature for thirty-four years,” he recalls. “He’d sit at the dinner table and recite sonnets which, I discovered, was not a common occurrence among my friends. Dad taught me a healthy respect for words- how fascinating they are and how satisfying it can be to put the right ones together.”