Reviews
Artist:Clive Gregson
Venue:Bournemouth Folk Club
Town:Bournemouth
Date: 25/11/07
Website:http://www.clivegregson.com
When we heard that former Fatea Talking To… guest Clive Gregson was making a return to Bournemouth Folk Club for the first time in five years, we just knew we needed to send someone along to witness the event.
The more I see of Bournemouth Folk Club, the more impressed I become with the set up and the venue. It’s a well run club, with an appreciative audience. The stage is clearly visible with great sound, so it pretty much ticks all the boxes.
Bob Burke played a short opening set to get the evening underway. A couple of songs from his own back catalogue, a song that he performs as part of rising singer/songwriter Lou Brown’s band and another couple from the solo album that he’s in the process of recording for release in the Spring.
Bob is a highly competent performer and a more than capable writer. His banter with the audience was free and easy, but the short set seemed to pull him up just as he was hitting full stride. Really must get along to see him when the stage is his own.
Off stage, Clive Gregson is a pretty unassuming guy. If you bumped into him in the street, the chances are you’ld both just apologise and move on, nothing here to see. That all changes the moment he sets foot on the stage.
Suddenly there is an air of authority that seemed to be missing that one step ago. Clive is in his natural habitat. He knows it and so do you. He manages to achieve it without taking on an air of arrogance. He’s the entertainer, he’s there to do the songs and lead the banter.
Clive’s playing two sets tonight, which he sort of splits down the middle, separated by an opportunity to replenish your drinks, buy a cd and a strip of raffle tickets or two.
The first half covers Clive’s wide and varied career, except that which was dominated by the time he was in a duo with Christine Collister, the reason for which would become clear in the second half.
Songs performed with his band Any Trouble, sat alongside songs that he’s written and performed with the likes of Boo Hewerdine. The material drifted around the folk and rock genres, before drifting into country. A good and/or successful songwriter doesn’t tie themselves down with a single style and Gregson is very much the archetypal genre whore.This was brought home, by both a tale about and a rendition of the song “This Town”, a song of Clive’s that Nanci Griffith took to the top of the country charts a couple of years back. Sung in Clive’s Northern accent it grounds it back in it’s root. It also brought the first half to a close.
The second half was pretty much a romp through his Gregson & Collister catalogue. Drawing on all four of their albums together, albums currently being re-released, Clive reminded us, if we needed reminding, what a great duo they were.
Maybe it was because of that, that many of the songs were written to be performed by a lady, it seemed a more emotive half.Clive seemed to go deeper inside himself. The banter was very much still there, but the performance was more intense.
The audience were genuinely moved by the numbers and the applause gained in volume and intensity as it progressed. One interesting point was where Clive mentioned that his song “Snow In Philadelphia” was originally set in Wolverhampton, but he thought giving it a US place name would make it more poignant, but having actually seen the place was tempted to set it back to Wolverhampton.
The mark of a good gig is when nobody realises where the time is going and all to suddenly the set was at an end. There was just enough time to call him back for an encore.
Rather than returning to the stage, Clive rounded off the evening, pretty much in the audience, doing a fully acoustic version of one of Waking The Witch’s Patsy Matheson’s songs. A great night.