Three Chords and the Truth UK

The journey complete. Destination reached. Mission accomplished. Around 1000 reviews since 2012 and a race now run. Pastures new ahead, with music still to the core, albeit a different focus. Archives intact until Google decide to crash this platform. Farewell, so long and keep it real, authentic and live. We will never know whether it was the journey or the destination. However, two things are certain, there are more than three chords, but the truth is always singular. 

It's been a tradition since 2012. So that annual trawl through the gig diary to add a quantitative aspect to the live music experience continues for another year. Also the ritual of honouring those who take gig-going to extraordinary levels is upheld and their presence does as much as any insider to keep the wheels of live music active away from the realms of the public eye. Anyway, from a list that fluctuates from year to year, here are the twenty shows that rose to the fore to shape the gig year of 2019. 1. Lucinda Williams - Birmingham Town Hall 2. The Delines - St.John the Evangelist, Oxford 3. Ryan Bingham - The Bullingdon, Oxford 4. Dale Watson - The Bullingdon, Oxford 5. Molly Tuttle - Kitchen Garden, Birmingham 6. Yola - Hare and Hounds, Birmingham 7. Hayes Carll - The Glee Club, Nottingham 8. Jason Ringenberg - Kitchen Garden, Birmingham 9. Simone Felice - Hare and Hounds, Birmingham 10. Danni Nicholls - Midlands Arts Centre, Birming...

If you are anti end of year lists then feel free to move on (but cheers for the curiosity click). To get this far there must be some minuscule of interest to what albums came from an exhaustive pile to create most interest and ultimate enjoyment throughout the year. Maybe art should not be a contest, but rules of the game suggest otherwise each December in these pages. So here goes, the favourite albums (please do not use the term 'best' until you have listened to every single release) of 2019 1. Miranda Lambert - Wildcard 2. The Highwomen - The Highwomen 3. Yola - Walk Through Fire 4. The Delines - The Imperial 5. The HawtThorns - Morning Sun 6. Ags Connolly - Wrong Again 7. Caroline Spence - Mint Condition 8. Danni Nicholls - The Melted Morning 9. Jade Jackson - Wilderness 10. Molly Tuttle - When You're Ready 11. Steel Blossoms - Steel Blossoms 12. Allison Moorer - Blood 13. Kelsey Waldon - White Noise / White Lines 14. Danny Schmidt - Standard...

It's fitting that the final review to appear on these pages is a previous recipient of the prestigious 'Favourite Gig of the Year' award. My Darling Clementine took the honours in 2013, and have since become regular review subjects with successive albums and a handful of other shows. It is also fitting that the final review is from the Kitchen Garden, a venue the scene of gigs well into three figures since the first published piece back in 2012. Not all gig reviews have come from sold out shows (that is not always a prime driver for a successful night), but it is nice to see the 'house full' sign for a change. So cheers to Michael and Lou for closing these pages, and to much more music from them in both the live and recorded formats in the future. Ok not the most comprehensive review to end on, but My Darling Clementine did record a song titled ' Our Race is Run ', and by a further stroke of fortune they included it in tonight's setlist. A shared senti...

Danni Nicholls crowned a successful year with a second visit to Birmingham and a third set seen when you throw her Long Road festival appearance into the mix. This is in addition to the release of her latest album THE MELTED MORNING, which has been rapturously received in ever expanding horizons. The Kitchen Garden has been a regular dropping off haunt for Danni since first discovering it a few years ago and this evening's show saw her at her usual best, filling the gaps between the excellent songs with much valued insight into their inception, collaboration and inspiration. As the decade draws to a close, Danni Nicholls is one of those artists who heralded its opening ten years ago when discovering her music at the Maverick Festival. Who knows where the next decade will lead, but one guarantee is that songwriting and music is set to play a signifiant part.

Cara Luft has built a loyal UK fan network, following the many tours she had undertaken over the years. On one of her several visits to Birmingham a few years back she introduced a new touring partner in the guise of fellow Canadian JD Edwards, which in effect was the embryonic stages of a brand new duo being born. Since that January evening at the Kitchen Garden in 2014, The Small Glories have gone from strength to strength on the back of a couple of album releases, signing to a US label and continual touring around the world including a successful stint in Australia. Perhaps it is the latter that shines the most favourable light on the duo as there is nothing quite like the interactive and connective nature of the live show to bring the best out of the pairing. It was of no surprise that the Kitchen Garden appeared on the latest touring schedule, and also that the venue was packed to its near capacity to greet the return of Cara and JD. Once recollections from previous Kitchen Ga...

2019 is an active yet reflective year for Bella Hardy. The acclaimed English folk singer-songwriter has been in a non-stop cycle of music making, tours, album releases and innovative projects for close on twenty years. Maybe the time to take stock, and reflect on a back catalogue of an album count nearly in double figures and a recording song catalogue pushing three figures. It is certainly prolific output for a artist only in their mid thirties While not ready to step away from the limelight, she has taken a carefully selected twenty five songs from the catalogue, added a couple of news ones, and delivered POSTCARDS & POCKETBOOKS: THE BEST OF BELLA HARDY. This is a gift to old fans in a neatly presented compendium, and new ones in a shortened showcase format. The only polite thing to do next is take these songs on the road to remind folks why she is such as compelling live performer as well. Birmingham's MAC has been a regular host for Bella Hardy over the years and it pro...

The Remedy Club A quick check in the gig archives revealed it was only February and April last year when Hope in High Water and The Remedy Club respectively made their last visits to the Kitchen Garden. Maybe the crazy amount of gigs in the intervening period made these shows feel a lot longer ago. Roughly eighteen months since both duos last dropped into Kings Heath has seen developments move quickly to the point where one has a new album, and the other will not be too far behind on the evidence revealed during this appearance. This gig was part of a run of dates arranged in liaison with the Fish Records operation, key drivers in helping both acts get wider recognition around the UK. With the pre-gig promotion seemingly evenly balanced, it could have been a toss up to who took centre stage, but it eventually panned out that Hope in High Water opened proceedings with an extended fifty-minute support set. This left The Remedy Club with around half an hour extra following the oblig...

Three assertions from this evening: Willy Vlautin and Amy Boone are exclusively compatible vehicles for each others art; the sedative-induced brass element gives the sound a more jazz than soulful feel, and The Delines are immense at magnifying a heavily curated album style in a live setting. Every column inch and word of mouth praise accrued in 2019 on the back of releasing THE IMPERIAL at the beginning of the year came to fruition at this sold out Oxford gig. Sheer class oozed from the stage as we were firmly reminded that it may be late in the calender year but pure polished gems can appear at any time. On a personal front, The Delines experience began in June 2014 when they played the small room at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham to around fifty people. This evening the audience must have been pushing to the unconfirmed four hundred mark such is the interest generated. Much of this has been the buzz around the new album, which acted as the main follow up to the 2014 debut COL...

Don’t judge art by the cover, the saying intimates, but maybe in this instance the image goes a long way to dictating the outcome of the latest album from Ags Connolly. The simplicity is striking from the front and back poses of our esteemed country troubadour sitting proudly and independently in the homely confines of his local. Exqusiitely profound and without a single air of pretence, WRONG AGAIN comes across as a singular aim of pursuing the holy grail of making music as close to an ideal as is possible. This album tramples over borders and any bow to consensus or evolution. Ags Connolly makes no attempt to be a pseudo- American or a Brit putting an Anglo slant on American music. There is very little deviation from a focussed goal and maybe, the realisation that we are getting close to reenacting a dream. People latch onto country music in distant lands for a multitude of reasons. If you seek some sort of escapist romanticism that steers your mind away from the norm then this re...

It has been a bit of a stop-go start getting into The Local Honeys. A last minute hitch delayed seeing them make their Birmingham debut at this same venue back in January. Likewise clashes didn't go in their favour when attending the SummerTyne Festival in the summer. It proved a case of good things come to those who wait when no hiccups impeded a Bonfire Night return to the Kitchen Garden and a chance to check out this highly rated touring duo out of eastern Kentucky. First good news for Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs was a vastly increased turnout from the last visit and a point where they were just a handful of ticket sales short from a 'house full' sign. This is a testimony to the interest generated over the year and perhaps word getting around that they deliver a truly memorable and engaging show. Having now been fully engrossed in a two-hour Local Honeys gig, there is full concurrence with this sentiment and the firm prediction that we are going to hear a lot ...

The eleventh month has been the longest wait in any calendar year to catch a Kim Lowings live performance since first discovering her while opening for Jess Morgan in Stourbridge back in 2013. Indeed, the stretch is even longer as the previous performance seen was way back in the summer of 2018 when she appeared on the main stage at Beardy Folk Festival with the full Greenwood band. It is not that she has been totally inactive in this interim sixteen month period, although we are in a 'between album phase' that hopefully will be snapped at some point in the not too distant future. In light of the gap, there was something refreshing about seeing the live show again, even if this evening's format was a stripped back set up playing in a duo with her dad Andrew. To some extent, this also had its own advantages as Kim herself implied that it is good to revisit how the songs were born and take this side of her music out on the road. So the stage was set for a return to the studio...

America may have its Mother Church; the UK just utilises the real thing. A rough finger count has St.Pancras Old Church as the sixth different holy place to see a gig in recent years, with no doubt a lengthy list of many others doing likewise up and down the country. This exchange of performing space does throw an extra dimension on the live music experience. Acoustics, ambience and atmosphere are frequently called out alongside a tendency for artists to fully test the surroundings by stepping away from the mic to strip song and music down to its purist form. One of my earliest memories of a country/folk/Americana touring artist performing in a church was the Good Lovelies singing a version of ' Hallelujah' in Ross-on-Wye. To bring things up to date in a similar setting but very different town, Carter Sampson closed this return to St, Pancras Old Church with a personal moving version of the film classic ' Moon River' , delivering an identical feeling to what occurred on...

Songwriting retreats where artists formally meet up to share and hone their craft appear to be increasingly popular. It's not that audiences are open to such things, just that more and more songs are being introduced as originating from these structured events. This has happened on consecutive nights during a current run of four straight gigs. First Robert Vincent preluded a new song with a story of it being a co-write with James House at one of these events. Now a pair of artists have taken the concept a whole step forward by not only meeting up to write one song, but continue the association to come up with a whole album. This process is not just a vehicle for novices to plot their way forward. Indeed Robert Vincent has written some excellent songs prior to his involvement and the two songwriters who spun the whole concept in a new direction are no other than established operators, Emily Barker and Marry Waterson.  Earlier this year, A WINDOW TO OTHER WAYS introduced the collab...

The irony of discussing streamed music funding models in the vicinity of a small but dedicated band of gig goers each paying £14 to attend on a Monday night in a tiny city centre cellar bar quickly resonated around all concerned. This signalled the ultimate bond of three artists on stage and in front of them, the very reason they exist. A poignant moment indeed, yet one that struck a chord and if anything helped bring the purpose of live music together. From the moment Matt Owens commenced his opening set at 8:15 to Robert Vincent not creating a shock two hours later by ditching ' Demons ' as the closer, this ad-hoc combo sprang up as an unpolished gem, not exactly purring like a stage managed operation, but prevalent in an unconscious gel that only intuitive musicians can adopt.  Essentially this was a Robert Vincent gig, but certainly one with a difference. Over the last six years, I have seen him live on several occasions and in different formats. These included full b...

A member of the Thompson clan is just one piece of the jigsaw, though not a too shoddy one to portray when making introductions. Throw into the mix a co-front person with the pedigree of James Walbourne and it of no surprise that The Rails have created great waves since moving into the world of a recording outfit in 2014. The core duo of Walbourne and Kami Thompson, husband and wife in their regular lives, morph into a five-piece band when hitting the road, and it is this format that greets folks heading out to catch them live on the current tour. This latest run of dates coincides with the release of the band's most recent album. Therefore the bulk of the seventy minute set played at the Hare and Hounds this evening came from the recently released CANCEL THE SUN and those present had the perfect opportunity to tune into its riches in a near unfiltered and complete state. This album is The Rails' third full length release since formation and cements a status of being at the...

The lure to compare and contrast a new album with the previous work of an artist is one mulled over to determine any degree of relevance. In the midst of gathering some thoughts on Hannah Rose Platt’s long awaited follow up to her 2015 debut effort, thoughts did turn back to an artist who drifted under the microscope via an independent network and left a positive impression. Not only was PORTRAITS dusted down and played, but past published thoughts were relived to gauge the starting point of a journey that ventures in a new direction now that LETTERS UNDER FLOORBOARDS is delivered to the world.  Firstly, the four years between releases has seen Hannah striving to remain a presence to such an extent that her own network has solidified in an established community where it was initially felt her music would find synergy and conformance. So a case of all change in the team assembled to create the album was initiated. Secondly, the names of those called up reads like a ‘who's ...