by Jacob Jefferson
I had just finished work at 6pm on a Sunday, entering the rain and the cold and the darkness of the ever-expanding winter night, protected only by a blue umbrella that had been left abandoned by its original owner at the doorway to my bar. I headed up Park Street and alongside the BRI towards Crofters Rights for an evening of acoustic music with Eve Appleton Band which I had a sense would help to heal my oh-so-tiring winter blues. Arriving at Crofters, I consumed a cup of tea at the cafe across the road for a monumental caffeine injection, letting the bag simmer inside of the pot for a strong 6 minutes before sipping at the brew. I felt the tea’s power keeping me half alive and awake as I entered the warm venue.
Laurie Lelliot
I sit in the corner of the room with the stage where the music people go. The lights shine red and green down upon Laurie Lelliot as he readies for his set. A lady in the crowd very noticeably says “Hi, I’m Sally'' to another crowd member. Laurie sits down and begins to sing without accompaniment into the mic, his baritone voice amplified alongside a detuned frequency-shifted layer of itself reinforcing his words with an eerie tone. He sits down with his guitar for the next song, capo on the 2nd fret and long hair only just landing upon the instrument. The door to the room audibly creaks open and close as the audience starts to build.
Laurie’s music gives melodramatic cowboy vibes, which is objectively one of the best vibes; reflective, warm, sparse, withdrawn. Drawing to a close, he says to the crowd “last one”, which echoes slowly through his vocal effects to some amusement, and begins to stomp his foot in time with the last tune, some of the crowd momentarily to do the same. The set closes in a circular fashion, with the same eerie detuned effect on Laurie’s vocals to which it started.
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Potts
Potts is now on the stage, the lights change from red and green to blue and green. “I’m not playing till everyone comes in” he says, a task which Sally eagerly completes, “Don’t fuck with Sally” he comments as a stream of people enter. Potts takes the time to introduce himself and pleasantly converses to the crowd between songs, a very nice charming man, his songs are sweet and direct, his singing voice ranging from gentle crooning to vibrative belting. He sings a song about his anxieties surrounding his children's future, and I feel relieved that I don’t have any kids as I’m already overwhelmed enough as I sit here trying to write words about all this new-fangled music stuff.
He plays a cover of an old song his dad used to play, with lyrics referring to somebody's brother named Jake. Each time he sings that name it registers funny in my brain because my name is Jacob and some people call me Jake, it would be very strange if the song was about me. That would be quite the coincidence. Probably not.
Eve Appleton Band
It’s Eve Appleton Band, they’re all coming on stage, all seven of them with all their varying face-paint, quite a change in numbers of people on the stage from the previous sets. The lights change one last time, overlaying their bodies with a green from below and a blue from above. I hadn’t been super acquainted with their music beforehand, apart from seeing a video of their performance for the Green Man Rising competition earlier in the year, which they won! Hooray for them, they must feel so victorious. I bathe in their victorious energy and the blue and green light as they begin to play.
Beautiful soaring songs of revitalized 60s Americana and Folk, birthed into my ears with some great detail in the grooves to which the crowd bob and sway, and many luscious melodic breakdowns that make my heart feel heavy and vibrate in a sort of light golden colour. The vocal harmonies are immaculately conceived and give every tune a unique colour. I catch brief glimpses of musical and energetic perfection, where the sight of the light-laden bodies of the band and the sounds of their lucid synchronicity all seem to meld and merge together within my mild drunkenness.
Some more talk about this Sally at one point, “quite the character you’ve become this evening Sally” says Eve, I wonder who this Sally is? I wonder why everyone seems to know her name? These questions are overcome by a masterful display of the tambourine by Eve, shaking out a speedy rhythm that electrifies the atmosphere and again reminds me of the power of the humble tambourine, one of the most overlooked instruments in history.
Eve Appleton and her merry little band brought a joyful energy to close out the night as well as the week, and made me want to return to the woodlands and my natural state of being amongst the spring-time trees and all the blooming flowers and singing birds but instead I was in a large room in a building in a City, but it still wasn’t half bad you know. Can’t wait to be out of this winter already.
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