Mics Open at Appleby’s Avenue 67 - An Evening of Rich Variety
admin September 23rd, 2007
Fiona Clayton and Rob HeronI felt fortunate to be there. September 14, the Open Mic event at Appleby’s Avenue 67 was an evening of fantastic music from some of Cumbria’s best young musicians. Any one of the three acts would have had sufficient stand-alone value for an event, but following one after another I felt totally spoiled by the end of the evening. You can’t get better value for four quid.
Fiona Clayton was unphased to open the entertainments and she performed with elan, playing a varied set that allowed her to show off her considerable talents. The vocals were sweet, the lyrics sweet and sour, and the guitar highly polished. It was a lively set in which her own compositions compared very favorably with some high quality covers. Fiona’s music seems to have lost the rough edges and I sense the development of greater poise and precision. While her beauty and stage presence are self evident from the pictures and video, I find that they now complement rather than eclipse her music, which now comes across as well rounded. If she hadn’t looked so green for most of her performance, it would have been a very hard act to follow.Fiona opens with a well polished actRob Heron followed very well and well lit, with some old favorites and some feisty new stuff. As usual, his live performance was great, very bluesy; his music packs a lot of punch. Rob’s songs are inspired by real life events and have a a no-nonsense gritty power derived from first and second-hand experience. All his songs were well played and with his customary high energy, but I particularly liked his new song about being hit by a bus. Assuming that he doesn’t get squished in the interim we’ll look forward to seeing him playing again at Avenue 67 on Friday September 28.Check out the video below, in which, not unlike a certain (saintly, yet very human) Jude, he took a sad song and made it better.The crowd loved the first two acts and just as we were feeling quite spoiled, we becamevery spoiled. The final act by Jenanella was superb. Their music is all about harmonies, it transports the listener on waves of delight to places of inner space and beauty within their own souls - or is it shared soul? The listener’s soul? The world soul?
Jenanella Whatever. Theirs is a beautiful and very healthy, heady sort of music. It defies any categorization that might, by attempting to encompass it, instead diminish it. It is however, safe to describe it as the kind of music I’d hope to hear in heaven; very choral, crafted to capitalize upon the familiarity and strengths of the performers and perfectly executed, it will certainly find favor with a broad section of the wider public.I hope that they’ll be able to handle the fame, because there’s an innocence about the performance between songs that contrasts starkly with the professional finesse of the music itself. Frankly speaking, if there has to be a weakness in an act, I think it is far, farbetter for it to be in the banter rather than the music itself, so I’m not complaining. On the contrary, I think it was wonderful to hear song after brilliant song without much small talk in between, and when a mic blew and the artists were forced to talk during the remedial action, they handled it pretty well. I didn’t detect the slightest hint of impatience from the audience.
Rich variety characterized their set. All their songs were original, derived from real experience in some cases, vivid imagination in others, and composed to emphasize the highly complementary qualities of their voices. I liked the whole set, there are several albums worth of songs ready for recording here. It was lovely to hear harmonies that have emerged through long years of warm friendship. There’s a lot of mutual trust in their performance. The songs derived power from this and in some fashion conferred it upon us in the crowd. Artist interview with Jenanella coming up soon!
Thank you to all concerned, to all the artists, to the venue and to PhasingHz the organizer. We saw some swift and efficient troubleshooting there, it was a privilege to see such a great variety of local talent and so vividly lit. It’s really nice to be in the right place at the right time. Really, if you miss the next open mic - with Rob Heron as main act on September 28, it will be entirely your loss. These young people are too good to miss.