Reviews
Artist:Clive Gregson & Lou Brown
Venue:Bournemouth Folk Club
Town:Bournemouth
Date:17/05/09
Website:http://www.clivegregson.com/
When you’ve got Lou Brown and Clive Gregson sharing a bill, you know that you’re in for a top night of singer songwriting. Two artists to whom the oft used phrase wordsmiths can be genuinely applied without fear of selling the word short.
Both artists are more than capable of writing songs across a number of genres and holding them together to form a coherent set. Lou has even been known to compose a set on the spot with suggestions taken from the audience ala Josie Lawrence in ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’. She doesn’t do it often and doesn’t do it tonight, but it does highlight her ability as a writer.
Clive Gregson has been an integral part of bands(Any Trouble), duos, with Christine Collister, a sidesman with Nanci Griffith as well as a solo artist. He recently had a greatest hits compilation released and this was drawing on that.
Lou Brown was playing a home town gig. She’s playing a number of dates on Clive’s tour, but this is very much her backyard. It gives her the confidence to try out some new songs that have been recorded for her sophomore album due out later in the year.
You can feel her sense of pride in what she’s doing, the songs, like lion cubs getting a sneak preview with the zoo keepers family before being thrust fully into the public spotlight. From the audience it felt like a real privilege.
It made Lou’s set feel really special. It also gave the set a new dynamic, Lou is normally a stand up and play singer/songwriter. For the new material she sat down and it gave that part of the set a more intimate feel and zoomed her expressive style and sense of movement into a more refined space.
The set contained delicate emotional songs and real rip ‘em ups. Lou Brown continues to grow as writer and performer. Roll on the album.
Clive Gregson is playing two sets. He announces that if anyone’s got any favourites mention them at the interval and he’ll try to build them into the second half. He’s got a lot of recordings to his credit, I hope his memory is good.
As with many top singer/songwriters, Gregson has a great wit and plenty of banter to build his relationship with the audience during the parts of the set where he retunes his guitar ready for the next song. Sometimes it’d the history of the piece at other times things that were going on in his life when a song was happening.
It’s not just his own repertoire he draws on. He likes to play works of people that he’s worked with in the past, songwriters, like Boo Hewerdine, who have impressed him. The first set, features rock, folk, Americana, songs from all aspects of his career, there’s no danger of it all sounding a bit samey when Clive gets behind a guitar.
In terms of variety it’s a similar story in set two. People have taken Clive up on his offer and it really is a request show second half. Some of gone for specific tracks, “I Love This Town”, by way of example, others for a more general, “Something off the x album” it adds to that variety and highlights what a good songwriter he is.
There’s an interesting story about when he went to live in America. He was playing showcases with local writers perplexed about his take on country music, too complicated and using the wrong chords. An approach that turned out to be subsequently vindicated by country chart success for the songs.
For his encore, he leapt from the stage completely unplugged and did a fully acoustic version of one of Lou’s songs. A fantastic way to end the evening.