By David O’Neill
The Globe is another one of our #SmallStagesBigSounds venues and another reasonably sized crowd was there to witness Lauren Housley And The Northern Cowboys open up tonight’s proceeds. Normally a band of seven apparently, there was only Lauren and her partner Thomas Dibb on guitar and backing vocals, along with Mark Lewis on bass and backing vocals.
After bidding us welcome and explaining that with two small children at home being on tour was like a holiday (don’t tell the babysitters!), she opens with the ballad ‘One Step Closer’ from her 2017 album ‘The Beauty of This Life’, which easily displayed why she is rapidly making a name for herself among the Americana scene; then she topped it with her ÜK ‘Americana Song of the Year’, ,High Time,. Whilst it is lacking the depth of the recorded versions due to it being a trio not band of seven, the backing vocals and instrumentation of Dibb and Lewis add appropriate warmth to all the tracks.
With the absence of children on tour, ‘Whats Troubling You Child?’ was a bit poignant, as I am sure they were missing her as much as she was them. ‘The Waiting Game’ had a nice laid back feel to the track and the guitar sound displayed this. Her clarity of vocals was very easy on the ear. Ending the set with the upbeat ‘All You Need Is A Friend, a typically country feeling track. This was a very good opening set and she had a very engaging stage presence with regular commentary inserted (and a few clangs during the name drops!).
Enter the Bywater Call septet. Very definitely showing that the Globe has a #SmallStage, keyboard player John Kervin tight against the left speaker stack was joined stage left (as the audience view) in very close proximity by Julian Nalli (sax) and Stephen Dyte (trumpet). Drummer Bruce McCarthy was tight against the backdrop whilst the not inconspicuous figure of Mike Meusal (bass) was joined right of stage by Dave Barnes (guitar). Good job he didn’t have a guitarist rack of instruments with him! The diminutive tattoo bedecked figure of Meghan Parnell occupied centre stage. By this point the crowd had swollen but it was not at capacity, which made my job of photography much easier to move around.
Opening up with ‘Falls Away’, you could see everyone’s jaws drop as Parnell started her vocal display. It reminded me of the great blues singers of the late ’60s, with some of the grit of Janis Joplin thrown in for good measure, especially during ‘Walk On By’ and the very upbeat and funky ‘As If’.
If you want to get a crowd on side try playing ‘The Weight’ by The Band and throw in a scintillating bass guitar solo right from the off. There was the grit in the vocal again, thankfully everyone in the audience didn’t try to do the harmonic vocalization that everyone tries when listening on the radio, (you know you do!)
By this time the audience were enthralled with the vocals of Parnell as well as the exemplary musicianship of everyone else in the band, with Meghan taking regular breaks in the singing during the tracks for the whole band to demonstrate their virtuosity at numerable occasions.
‘Holler’ is a typical country track with Dave Barnes playing a bottleneck slide on his beautiful Gibson hollow body guitar, it’s a real toe tapper of a track underpinning the powerhouse vocals of Meghan. Thus it continued for the whole set: vocals, instrumentals and song writing drawing wholly appreciative cheers and applause from the crowd. Finishing up with ‘Everybody Knows’ led into the encore of Stephen Stills’ ‘Love The One You’re With’ and the audience also joining on the “doo doo doo” bits as well.
Small Stage Big Sounds? No small stage HUGE sound. If you get an opportunity to witness it, you will not be disappointed.
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