Josienne Clarke and Liv Dawn @ Celtic Connections – The Hug & Pint – 31st January 2024

What a difference a day makes, from the pomp and grandeur of City Halls to, out on the Great Western Road, a vegan and craft ale bar, where actually getting a pint necessitates a hug, so wee is the downstairs room. Bijou might describe it, possibly niche, with the effect of making Brum’s Sunflower Lounge, in a similar subterranean setting, feel like an arena. But, hey, it’s lovely, and just don’t you love live music in such a setting? Well, I do. 100 tops capacity, I gather, frankly worried how that might feel, the 70 here tonight, right about comfy. I’d eaten before, but felt safe in that no animals had been harmed in the preparation of my beer, from Glasgow’s Williams Bros. Brewing Company.

About Liv Dawn I knew nothing, save a swift gander at her YouTube presence, finding her ticking all the boxes the booker of a basement bar in 2024 might require. So a safe presence with a croaky crack of a voice. Which is harsh of me, as live, she was so much more, having a sweet voice and presence, her songs better without that studio edge, added for an effect she doesn’t need. Just herself on guitar, with Aidan Smith on an electric piano, her set of around 6 or 7 songs, mainly her own, with a rendition of Mac standard, Dreams, was well received and I would say she has promise. Just sack the producer? No, but maybe dial back a bit. (To be fair to her, many of the YT’s are live clips, from places such as here and the fabled King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, so more representative of tonight.)

A short break to dissemble the stage, revealing the burly presence of Clarke’s guitar tech, roadie, occasional musician, if not tonight, videographer and general factotum. OK, her husband and father of their young child as well, but mentioned as he actually has quite a cv of decent and, more to the point, watchable videos for quite a selection of performers. Alec Bowman-Clarke; google him. Good photographer, too. Tonight his bass guitar was not needed, and neither was there a drummer. Clarke had not even brought her saxophone, it was just her and a pair of guitars, an acoustic and a hollow body electric. This would provide a more stripped-back and intimate version of her songs, her back catalogue having been recently revised for last year’s Onliness, which we reviewed here.

If Dawn sang mainly about love, that would not, explained Clarke wryly, be her focus. Oh no, these were sad songs, as befits her soubriquet as the queen of melancholy. These songs would reference the passage of time and the vagaries of life with a short straw. In a dark green dress, as was Dawn before her, this seems swiftly to be becoming the signature colour for CC, befitting, perhaps, Glasgow’s Dear Green Place. Starting with acoustic, she began with relative oldie, Something Familiar, full of poignancy, an older song that becomes ever more fraught by the refashioning given it on Onliness. Super Recogniser, stripped of the hop skip and jump rhythmic texures, then too became more of a gaunt beauty, and a version I preferred

A switch to the amplified, if barely, instrument, The Tangled Tree needs the spiky warmth of the electricity. A wayward string necessitated a mid verse re-calibration, as she stressed the particular nuance required by a particular note/chord. Such interruptions to the flow are seldom worth it, but, you know, it actually was, as she found exactly the right texture, the sound of social awkwardness. For the “slightly less sad, but it’s all relative” Driving At Night, we were getting the picture. Here I became reminded of the American singer, Dar Williams, a slightly fractured delivery allowing greater emphasis to the lyric. (An unconscious influence, I later learned, as she entirely unaware of Williams’ work. Promising later to listen, hopefully she will see it as a compliment.)

A new album is due in April, she told us, if uncertain she had told anyone else yet, making it an unofficial secret, with Fear Of Falling the title track. Subject matter? Well, you can guess, but it augurs well. It Would Not Be A Rose is perhaps the closest to a traditional song in her repertoire, now drawing out the not-infrequent Sandy Denny comparisons she gets. We also learned how she had left home unduly early today to get her, her home being the Isle of Bute, the ferries threatening disruption on this very windy of days. So, when she asked why anyone would be here, in the dark, in a basement, listening to songs of woe from a self-confessed miserabilist, it was time for some wag to counter with that it maybe as it was raining outside.

Ghost Light sounds as if it may be a beacon of hope within all this dark, but that soon fell on its face as she explained that it is the light of a dead star. Right… Nonetheless, it is a delightful song and the audience were appreciably warming to her, ignoring any light year dilution thereof. Pouring on still further deprecation, we got then her tale of how she had once played a gig to an audience of none, in Chicago, no less, which had meant no small logistical arrangement to even get there. The solution; “it’s what I do,” was to make a song of it. This was also her opportunity to air her angst around the “biz”, with the odds always stacked against the performer, especially when, as then, a name record label is involved, cracking the whip of not ever selling enough to appease them, yet being poorer than without their “support”. (I had a sneak peek at Discogs to see which it had been, and it seems fair to say her “trading” with them seemed “rough”.) The song itself, Chicago, is lovely, and I gather the Chicago Sun Herald has recently spun a story out of it. But she’s not bitter: “It’s not Chicago’s fault that no-one came…”

Mindful that Celtic Connections is nominally, just, a celebration of folk music, and Scottish at that, she then regaled us with Dead Woman’s Bones, a riposte to the tradition Two Sisters (or Twa Sisters, even). I hadn’t appreciated that the aged ballad told of a man who fashioned an instrument from the bones of a woman found dead in the forest, as you do. Naturally, it played itself and made him a mint. This was the song from the point of view of the corpse. Like many a good dirge, it was strangely uplifting. Which was time for a cover, to catch as we recognised it, rather than by introduction. Luckily, no difficulty for this audience, all of the applicable vintage to know and appreciate a bit of prime time Joni, Both Sides Now.

Last song, Magic Somehow, actually was. I think another new song, it brought out all her vocal skills and microphone technique, ahead the discomfort of the impending encore moment. As in, will they won’t they, and the somewhat contrived balance between expectation and routine. Well, we did, and it was deserved, a song she had kept to last for the opportunity and, again, an abject lesson in the application of her craft: “Sing us one of your sad songs, the one about love“. Consummate.

Twice in a week I have been gifted the opportunity to see strong women, fighting back, and making it work, on their own terms and by their own rules. Thea Gilmore and Josienne Clarke both point a way forward, it is just for us to allow it to happen.

Here’s Chicago, from a few months back:

Josienne Clarke online: Website / Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram

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