The Lion is an autobiographical tale of love and loss, family and music, maths exams and cancer, employing a suite of songs that he uses six guitars to play and which demonstrate a substantial gift for story-telling as well as song-writing, the narrative throughline that emerges is extraordinary. It’s also deceptively simple – the opening number of ‘Cookie Tin Banjo’ has a child-like glee but also contains the beginnings of a tumultuous relationship between father and son.
This folk style, almost country-like, is where Scheuer shines and in tracing the major events of his life – the death of his father, the trials of falling in and out of love, a battle with cancer – it is where the moments of intimate emotional truth really hit home. As with most boys, there’s a rebellious streak in him and with one of the guitars being electric, a rockier edge provides texture to the score, especially during the boarding school years.