Well, that’s another one for the bucket list. It’s taken a long time but I’ve finally had a conversation with someone who began a sentence with ‘Y’all…’, so thank you very much Hannah Aldridge from Muscle Shoals, Alabama for finally putting that one right for me. I was at Green Note to see Don Gallardo and Hannah on the last night of the UK tour to promote their respective current albums, Don’s “Hickory” and Hannah’s “Razor Wire”. Don’s band for the tour has been Travis Stock (playing bass, mandolin and guitar) and two musicians from the UK on keyboards and pedal steel, while Hannah has been delivering a stripped-back solo acoustic set of songs from her debut album, plus a bit of new material as well.
As always, the Green Note audience on this sold-out night was attentive and appreciative giving both artists a warm response. Don Gallardo played a set featuring songs from his new album including “Diamonds and Gold”, “Carousel”, “Ophelia, We Cry (Ode to Levon Helm)”, “The North Dakota Blues” and the superb “Down in the Valley”. Don’s easy geniality between songs created a warm atmosphere that was perfectly suited to the intimacy of the venue and the set came to a perfect close with Hannah joining the band on a cover of the Neil Young/CSNY song “Helpless”; it was one of many spine-tingling moments on the night.
Hannah Aldridge’s songs on her debut album “Razor Wire” are intensely personal and confessional; at times they’re brutally honest and even harrowing. The band arrangements on the album aren’t obtrusive, so it’s relatively easy to see how the songs would work as unplugged versions in a live setting, but Hannah also has a few curve-balls to throw, which is impressive under the circumstances; she’s been ill throughout the tour and has just started to recover and get her voice back to full power.
From the start of the set, Hannah pitched her between-song delivery somewhere between the real Hannah and the more strident, harder Hannah who appears on the cover of the album; you think it’s mostly a stage persona, but you probably wouldn’t push your luck to find out. She had a setlist prepared but after the opener “You Ain’t Worth the Fight”, all bets were off as the audience had their say and Hannah adjusted the dynamics of the set accordingly. “Rails to Ride” (from 2013) and the superb new song, “Gold Rush” were the only songs in the set not featured on “Razor Wire”.
The entire set was absolutely spellbinding as Hannah poured her soul into “Old Ghost”, “Razor Wire” and “Black and White”, but two songs stood out, for different reasons, from the rest of the set. “Parchman”, unlike most of Hannah’s songs, was inspired by something outside her personal experience; it’s about a female prisoner waiting to be executed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary (known colloquially as Parchman Farm) for the murder of her abusive husband. The song pulls no punches, and had the audience enthralled throughout. For the final song of the set, “Howlin’ Bones”, Hannah left the security of the stage, and amplified vocals, to take the song direct to the audience, moving around the room to deliver a raw and genuinely unplugged version of a powerful song. You couldn’t call it easy listening, but it was raw and compulsive.
Although the entire evening was packed with lovely moments, Hannah Aldridge’s set confirmed my suspicion that she not only has a gift for turning life into art, but she’s also a hugely gifted and empathic performer who can project the emotional power of her songs. We may have missed out on the Jackson Browne cover “These Days” on the night, but this was a stunning solo performance of songs of the highest quality.
Watch out for her next UK tour, but check out “Razor Wire” in the meantime.
Here’s something that we really have to share with you. It’s an album from 2014 by Hannah Aldridge called “Razor Wire” and the title gives more than a hint at the lyrical content; it’s painfully honest and uncompromising, which isn’t so surprising when you discover that her musical hero is Jackson Browne. She describes her music as ‘dark Americana’, which is probably right on the money with musical stylings straddling the country and country/rock genres providing a platform for Hannah’s strong yet vulnerable vocals and confessional lyrics.
The eleven songs on the album, plus a bonus acoustic version of the title song are shot through with melancholy and a willingness to shine a torch into the murky basement of a life that hasn’t always followed a straightforward path. There are references to addiction (“Lie like You Love Me”), taking control of your destiny (“Howlin’ Bones”) and wrecked relationships (“Razor Wire”) although there’s also the more introspective, nostalgic feel of “Black and White”. Despite using so much biographical detail, the person delivering the songs isn’t quite the real Hannah Aldridge, she’s a character who shares the same past but has a different, harder attitude to its reality and to risky behaviour.
This is an album that transcends genres; it’s rooted in Americana, and the Muscle Shoals tradition, but the quality and the delivery of the deeply personal songs create a piece that’s essential listening for anyone remotely interested in high quality songwriting.
You can see Hannah in these UK venues in July:
Saturday 4 Easton, Suffolk Maverick Festival 2015
Sunday 5 Birmingham Kitchen Garden Café
Tuesday 7 Nottingham The Maze with guest Don Gallardo
Thursday 9 Plymouth The B-Bar with Don Gallardo
Friday 10 Bristol The Golden Lion with Don Gallardo & The Rosellys
Sunday 12 Winchester The Railway
Monday 13 Brighton The Greys
Tuesday 14 London Green Note co-headline with Don Gallardo
We’ll be reporting back from the final show of the tour at Green Note in Camden. Until then, have a look at this:
