Three Idle Women Phoenix Theatre, Ross-on-Wye: Live Review

By John Barlass on 6th December 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

Three Idle Women bring their tales of life on the waterways to the charming, bijou surroundings of The Phoenix Theatre, Ross-on-Wye. At The Barrier was there.

WELCOME TO ROSS ON WYE

Ross-on Wye. It’s that place at the far end of the M50 that always looks really alluring and makes you promise yourself that you’ll go there one day, but you never get around to it. Well – let me say, that if that’s been your view of this delightful market-town-on-a-hill so far, then you’re missing out. Ross-on-Wye has a great deal to offer, from the grand sweep of the River Wye that almost surrounds the town, the red sandstone, 17th Century Market House and the 700 year-old St. Mary’s Church that dominates everything, to the constant reminders that these streets were once the stamping ground of philanthropist John Kyrle (1637-1724), aka The Man of Ross. And, tucked away in a discrete nook between St.Mary’s Church and the sprawling Royal Inn, you’ll find the Phoenix Theatre – a small – but perfectly formed venue that, on the evening of Saturday 30th November, played host to those Ladies of the Waterways, Three Idle Women.

remember Three Idle Women?

It’s only around a month ago that the trio of vocalists and multi-instrumentalists reset this particular writer’s benchmark for what can be achieved from close-harmony singing to a backing of spartan but quirky instrumentation that includes ukuleles, harmonium and even a musical saw, when I was “charmed to my wooly britches” by their debut album, All Hands Together.

The band are: Charlie Henry on vocals, accordion, musical saw, baritone ukulele and banjo, Steph Pirrie on vocals, ukulele, harmonium and whistle and Jane Rouse vocals, concertina, bass ukulele and percussion and, with All Hands Together, they paint a vivid picture of what life is like when your home is a narrowboat. Tonight was a celebration of the album and of life aboard and The Phoenix Theatre was packed to its gunnels with fellow voyagers.

BETHANY LYNN

But – first things first. The ladies had a special surprise in store for us; they’d invited Bethany Lynn, a young singer-songwriter, to open the show with three of her self-penned songs and what an inspired invitation it turned out to be. Bethany tells us that she’s been writing songs “…since I was very young” and her experience is clearly evident. There’s a real maturity to her writing and to her delivery; her voice is soft, warm and mellow and it’s the perfect match for the easy, jazzy, style of her music – and her lyrics are remarkably well-considered too!

Opening her short set with Rosemary Rows, a song that she wrote when aged just 14, she was visibly reassured by the reception she earned. She stuck with the relaxed jazzy theme for Simplicities before concluding her slot with L’Amour, a song that, to me at least, seemed to channel a few strains of Kate Nash. Her set was short, yet wonderfully sweet and, with that voice and that songwriting talent, I suspect that we’ll be hearing more of Bethany Lynn before too long.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: THREE IDLE WOMEN

And so – to the main attraction…

Three Idle Women are noted particularly for their close-harmony vocals. On the album, those harmonies set my heart a-racing; when delivered from tonight’s concert stage, they sent my underfloor engine into hyper-drive. They’re divine. And I was intrigued to see that the evening’s waterways theme had been extended to the band’s setlist, laid out at Jane’s feet, which set out the performance as a canal journey, with each song represented as a lock along the route.

It was Jane’s Boaty Boy that got the show underway. In the song – the opening track on All Hands Together – Jane recalls how she met her life partner whilst tackling the daunting Hatton lock flight on the Grand Union Canal and Jane introduced the song with a description of the 21-lock flight, before going on to give her boating experiences a more local flavour with a story about falling out of a canoe on the River Wye. Boaty Boy is an acapella song and the ladies’ powerful harmonies were delivered with a devastatingly full force – and it was clearly evident that, already, they were having a great time.

PITCH-PERFECT

Charlie’s Hieronymous Peypes – her story of the time she spent living aboard a notoriously troublesome boat of that name – is, perhaps, the most infectiously catchy song on All Hands Together. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m always hesitant about singing along to a group, when the group’s harmonies are so pitch-perfect that I’m bound to spoil it if I do sing. But Charlie did invite us sing along here, so that was alright – and we managed it without putting the girls off their stride, either, and Steph’s heavenly sighs and her snoring noises brought the cosy ambience of the Hieronymous Peypes bed chamber right inside the Phoenix Theatre auditorium.

It was musical saw time, and Charlie used her instrument to great effect by adding a range of beautiful, keening sounds to Jane’s lead vocal for a version of Rosemary, the Peter Dodds song about the restoration of a previously derelict narrowboat. The song was the cue for Steph to tell the story of Kilsby, a historic narrowboat currently undergoing its own restoration at Tooley’s Boat Yard in Banbury, during which the boat will be repurposed as a community boat, offering educational trips and theatre performances along the Oxfordshire waterways. More details about Kilsby, and about how you can support this worthwhile project are available here.

THE JOY OF SPRINGTIME

Even on a dark, damp, November evening in deepest Herefordshire, Charlie managed to evoke the joy of springtime-on-the-cut, as she accompanied her light-as-air vocals on Springtime, one of the most joyful songs on All Hands Together, with her accordion and Jane and Steph added their soothing, tootling, backing vocals. And, it’s perhaps appropriate here to mention the fascinating slide show that the Idle Women had compiled to add extra atmosphere to their songs and to the evening’s experience.

Springtime was accompanied by a sequence of slides depicting the changing seasons on the waterways, before a wonderfully detailed graphic of the navigable Thames (drawn by artist Jane Tomlinson) was flashed up to give context to the girls’ version of Peter Dawson’s Old Father Thames. It’s a song that came to Jane’s attention on a vintage 78rpm record (which, inevitably, got broken…) and Three Idle Women give the song an authentic 1930s feel with their ukuleles and tight harmonies. Whenever she gets the opportunity, Steph likes to add a touch of trumpet to the performance of the song but, tonight, her two hands were fully occupied with her uke.

The material for tonight’s show is drawn overwhelmingly from All Hands Together, but Barry’s Song, the sad story of a waterways character who used to spend his time around Wolvercote Lock on the Oxford Canal, just north of Oxford, is an exception to that rule. Hailing from a boating family, Barry was a familiar sight to boaters using the lock and the song recalls the reaction of the boaters when it was realised that Barry wasn’t around any more. He’d had no next of kin and he’d died alone but the boating community got together and persuaded the local council to give Barry a well-attended funeral and send-off.

The first half of the show was concluded with a version of Ben Avison’s The Water is Narrow. Ben is a close friend of the Idle Women and was closely involved in the recording and production of All Hands Together, and Fran Monks’s evocative photographs of working life on the waterways ensured that we went for our interval drinks in a thoroughly canalised frame of mind.

WATERWAYS CONNECTIONS

Ross on Wye is quite a way away from any navigable waterway, but from the conversations floating around in the theatre’s foyer during the interval, it seemed that a healthy chunk of the audience had some form of waterways connection and Jane commented accordingly as the Three Idle Women returned to the stage for the second half of the show. And, it was a couple of non-album songs that got Part 2 of the concert underway.

First up was Steph’s The Floating Chapel, a tribute to the benevolence of Harry Ward, whose donations allowed the conversion of a redundant barge into a chapel that was consecrated in 1839 and which went on to provide educational services for ‘depraved’ boat children. Steph played her ukulele and Jane added bass uke and the trio’s vocal harmonies were stunning – maybe their best of the evening.

paying tributes

And, whilst the girls were in the mood for paying tributes, they moved onto the first of the evening’s two songs that commemorate the lives and activities of Jack and Rose Skinner. In her introduction to Jack & Rose, Jane recalled her own encounters with the couple – owners of a coal-carrying vessel and activists in the movement to keep the waterways operable. The song – “I was a boating woman, I was born afloat. I live my life on a pair of narrowboats” – was accompanied by a sequence of slides depicting the Skinners aboard their boat and the combination of music and images was awesome.

We stayed with the Skinners for Rose & Castle, the endearing tale of how the couple engaged their friends in the boating community to “pull a fast one” over Transport Minister Barbara Castle when she visited Oxford in the mid-1960s to investigate whether the canal was still navigable and viable. The boaters’ joint action, which involved opening the locks above the section of canal that was being visited, to ensure that it was full of water, is the event that gave All Hands Together its name. Rose & Castle is one of the true highlights of All Hands Together and, tonight, the ladies – with Steph on her whistle and the trio locked into the tightest of harmonies, absolutely nailed it.

A EULOGY TO THE VOLUNTEERS

After a brief eulogy to the volunteers whose work has, over the years, enabled more and more of our canal system to be reopened to traffic, Jane turned her attention to the climate crisis as she introduced Lowlands, a song that’s probably best known from the repertoire of Anne Briggs. If you’ve heard All Hands Together (and, if you haven’t, you need to make sure that you do…) you’ll already be aware that Three Idle Women turn in a stirring version of Lowlands – and they did exactly that tonight, with Charlie on lead vocals and all three chipping in with harmonies that almost set the theatre adrift.

Of course, boating isn’t always a bed of roses (and castles…) and Jane’s hilarious Green As reminds us of the things that can – and often do – go wrong on the cut. Charlie and Steph donned their ukuleles and Jane played cabasa as she regaled us with her catalogue of misadventure from her early days as a boat-owner. Her line “I was on the tow path, but the boat was on the other side” raised a particular laugh from an audience that, I strongly suspect, has, in many cases, suffered similar misfortune…

TIME TO GO

And, suddenly, it was almost over. Introducing Turbulent Waters, another earworm from All Hands Together, Jane informed us that this was our “last chance to have our voices raised.” We duly raised them as we sang along to the song’s “Don’t be afraid, this boat will carry on floating” chorus and Charlie completed the picture by adding an improvised ‘trumpet’ solo. The ladies didn’t need too much persuading to give us one more before sending us on our way; it was ukes all round for a rousing version of Zac Brown’s Knee Deep, with Zac’s original lyrics subtly altered to change the song’s subject from the ocean to the canal – and we all clapped along happily.

a revelation

All Hands Together has been a revelation – one of the best things I’ve heard all year and hearing those wonderful songs performed in the live forum was exhilarating. The embellishments of cello, double bass, bodhran, guitar and feline snoring that added a final gloss of richness to All Hands Together may be missing but their absence is more than compensated for by the passion and vitality that the ladies bring to their live performance of the songs. That they are justifiably proud of these songs is clearly evident from their every nuance, from every word they utter and from every note they sing. And that pride is thoroughly deserved. I’m delighted to have discovered Three Idle Women and I heartily recommend that you do the same. You won’t regret it.