Friends, Songs & Videotape
A singing start to the season.
It’s Autumn! I hope you’re keeping warm.
I’m still processing the last month of music. I ricochetted from project to project, feeling to feeling. A lot of nostalgia, a lot of new ground, a lot to report, I’ll try to be selective.
ONE:
Still jet lagged from Montreal I took part in Dawn Landes’ Liberated Woman’s Songbook at The Barbican. I first met Dawn in Paris, maybe 2012. We’d played different shows but ended up at the same bar wearing almost the same jacket. Red, tartan. Over a decade later we were once again in matching outfits, along with all the singers on stage - long black skirts which got ripped off at one particularly liberated moment of the show. My skirt actually had technical difficulties in the tech rehearsal so I was whizzed over to the opera seamstress in another building for some new poppers. La bohème!
When guest of honour Peggy Seeger arrived we were all ready to practice her song ‘Different Therefore Equal’ for the finale. We did our best to impress her with our solo lines until she set us straight: If you sing like that people will listen to your voices instead than the words! We sang in humble unison from then on, following the beat provided by her walking stick, awed by her command of both song and situation.
Here I am singing Leslie Gore’s 1963 feminist anthem You Don’t Own Me:
TWO:
The following week I opened two solo shows for an even older friend of mine, Jeffrey Lewis. 2007 I think it all started. New Old Friends Take Time. IYKYK. An anti-folk post-pandemic reunion. It felt good to refocus on songwriting and lyrics and friendship and purpose. To remember how much Jeffrey’s music meant to me and influenced me, and how exciting that time was, that scene, so much of it lived in the night, at shows, after shows, the hours I am now very much asleep, if I’m lucky. Also good to hear his new songs, to share my new songs, musical journals of respective lives lived on different sides of the Atlantic in this so-far very strange decade.
Remember that “poem” I sent out in last month’s letter? Well I put it to music and tried it out for the first time at the second show… too new to be playing… too new to be sharing… but you were with me from the start so…
THREE:
And just a week later The Songs Of Joni Mitchell hit the road! I think it’s fair to say it was a grand success. Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, all sold out, all joyful. It took five seconds on stage to forget the hours work that went into producing the tour and remember the reason we were all there. Everyone was so happy to hear those songs! As happy as we were to sing them! I felt ridiculously lucky to be sharing Joni’s words and melodies alongside such excellent artists in such beautiful venues. 2025, watch this space!
I have to say singing the final verse of Woodstock felt overwhelmingly resonant in these wartimes. Here is it at Bristol St George’s, with the fine detailing of my tour-mates Olivia Chaney, Jesca Hoop, Gigi Williams and Kielan Sheard:
Who’s coming to our Christmas show? December 17th at West Hampstead Arts Clubs - same venue as the Jeff Lewis shows! - tickets going fast…
I look forward to the next five songs.
Those wonderful octaves!