Reviews
Artist:Lizzie Nunnery
Venue:Bournemouth Folk Club
Town:Bournemouth
Date:28/09/08
Website:http://www.bournemouthfolkclub.com/
Stage craft is one of the more interesting domains on a modern music course. Leave your inhibitions in the wings, get out there and do a show. There's a few tricks of the trade, movement, positioning, banter etc.
Stage presence is something very different, the ability to hold an audience's attention just by standing behind a microphone. To have people know that something special is about to happen before a note has even been sung.
I don't know if Lizzie Nunnery knows any stage craft, Vidar Norheim her sidesman certainly does, but then she doesn't need it as she oozes presence as soon as she makes the short step up from the audience and up to the microphone.
Lizzie and Vidar have travelled down from Liverpool on the recommendation of Folkwit's Nick Butcher, it's a long way to travel for a one off gig, but it's been a good day and Poole/Bournemouth have miles of golden sand.
A brief technical problem with Vidar's guitar brings a short delay to the set. Lizzie jokes that she really should be telling a joke or two, but she doesn't know any. Instead she takes the opportunity to plug her new EP, "Hunger".
The thing with presence is that you've got to deliver on it. It's said that Rudolf Valentino had presence right up until the moment he opened his mouth. It's partly why he was so good at silent movies, but couldn't make it in the talkies.
From the moment Lizzie hit her first note, you knew she had the ability to walk the talk, to use that much maligned bit of management speech.
Ms. Nunnery is the proud possessor of one of those voices that hold you spellbound, powerful, clear, a hint of vibrato, at first it almost seems too big for the room, but it soon settles down and adjusts to the venue.
Two things quickly become apparent, Lizzie has a character based songwriting style. This is apparent before she introduces one of her songs, "This song features the line, I'm A Man, it's because I've written it from his perspective, it's not a confession or anything." Lizzie does know a joke or two after all.
Another one of her songs, she said was written in ten minutes to impress a boyfriend. "I'm not sure why, I thought being a fast songwriting girl would help." I was tempted to shout that if you removed the word songwriting from that sentence it would, but I didn't.
Her other great strength is that she is a very visual songwriter. Her songs are laden with images, sometimes a bit surreal, "If I was a painter I would sell my body to science" sometimes very open to individual interpretation, "Entwined like two clockwork toys," always evocative.
Most of the songs are accompanied by strings, normally Lizzie on one guitar and Vidar on another. When Lizzie announces that the next song is going to be a bit louder, Vidar puts his guitar away and starts drumming away on the cajon box that he's been sat on during the performance.
If you've not seen a cajon before they're a device that are slowly creeping into roots/acoustic music. They're based on an African instrument and basically are a box that you sit on and then play with your hands in a similar style to bongos. Like the bongos, the sound changes depending on where you hit the front face. It raises the tempo, but not really the volume.
The stage at Bournemouth Folk Club has a mini grand piano next to it. Lizzie and Vidar had spotted it as soon as they arrived and decided that it was too good an opportunity miss. Consequently and without much rehearsal, though you wouldn't have known if they hadn't mentioned it, we were treated to a song off the first EP that hardly ever gets an outing.
After the song from the piano, Vidar drops into the audience so that Lizzie can do a couple of numbers completely solo. Lizzie swaps her guitar for a uke for the next number. It gives the song a harder edge.
Bournemouth Folk Club has a reputation for the high level of respect that it shows artists, but I find myself trying to remember the last time I'd heard it this quiet during the songs, I couldn't detect the faintest hint of a murmur. Judging by the rush to the loos after it seemed that a number of audience members were prepared to risk wetting themselves rather than miss a note.
The silence of the crowd during the songs is heavily contrasted by the applause and shouts between them, at times threatening to rival the strength of her voice.
Vidar rejoins Lizzie for the final section of the set and it's been one hell of a set, powerful and evocative. Lizzie Nunnery is definitely an artist that I want to see more off, but I suspect the distance between her home town and Bournemouth might make that difficult. That said she's just got a new agent so hopefully she'll be out and about more.
I've seen some really good sets at Bournemouth Folk Club, but this one was top of the premier quality and will be talked about down here for quite a while. She may have briefly ruined the club for other singer songwriters and there's still time for one more.
Vidar has set his guitar up on top of his percussion box of tricks, almost cello like, A horsehair bow quickly makes an appearance, Vidar knows stagecraft.
It's the first time I've seen a guitar played like this. Sometimes the bow is drawn across the strings, at times bounced off them to give a percussive quality. His left hand sliding up and down the neck and yet despite this, your attention was almost inevitably drawn back to Lizzie stood behind a microphone, playing her guitar far more conventionally, but oh the sound of the finale.