Reviews
Artists: Miss Quincy / Deer Park / Charlotte Sterland
Venue: Green Note
Town: Camden
Date: 3rd February
Website: http://www.missquincy.net
http://www.myspace.com/deer-park
http://www.charlottesterland.com/
I have never been totally convinced by Camden's Green Note as a venue. There is something about places where the music seems secondary to the food that bothers me. That said, the Green Note does have live music five nights a week and only plays bands it likes so is a more inviting prospect of many other Camden venues populated by promoters who sole aim is to put any five bands on a bill as long as they can bring 20 to 30 people with them.
The hushed setting worked well for Charlotte Sterland; she has a Judy Collins style voice, has released one album (Sacrificial Scream) but gave a nervy performance and anywhere else the crowd would have drifted.
Deer Park, whether in full band mode or, like tonight, just singer-songwriter Mark Grassic on acoustic guitar and harmonica with Lizzy O'Connor providing harmony vocals and banjo (played with a bow on a couple of tracks for a particularly eerie sound), could play nigh on anywhere to any crowd and make their rootsy americana work.
Miss Quincy opened her set with 'Bad Luck Woman' a powerful dirty blues with electric guitar, harmonica and voice - and what a voice. The guitar and harp may have been dirty but her voice was clean and clear. The somewhat muted quiet applause of the audience was not what she was expecting and despite having been "warned" what to expect of English audiences Quincy spent the rest of her set trying to work out exactly what crowd wanted.
With a voice as good as hers Quincy could sing the proverbial telephone directory and make it sound good. As well as the blues of the opening track she sang rockabilly, she sang folk and she sang country ("loving married men and whisky is like dragging a dead horse around" - 'Dead Horse' is one of the best lines I've heard for a long time) and still she did not get the crowd response she was hoping for. Quincy is used to playing bars in Canada where the punters would have had a belly full of Labatt's rather than a veggie café were they'd had a belly full of humous - there was no less love, it was just a bit less demonstrative and at the end of the night I felt the we had enjoyed the gig a lot more than she had.
John 'The Jacket' Hawes