This weeks lookback comes with the great feeling that in parts of the country indoor live music although with social distancing has started to be allowed so hopefully soon our great friends and artists can return to what we all love and that’s performing live for us.
Monday night had The Rising took inspiration this week from Chris’s birth decade and held an 80s week. One of their tracks represented the start of my week as I try to come up with some inspiration on what to write. The track I’m describing was Manic Monday from The Bangles. Songs went from Take On Me by Aha to Walking On Sunshine from Katrina And The Waves.
Tuesday nights are the night for Robyn Taylor who this week had a viewer request night. Robyn is an excellent entertainer and has a remarkable repertoire and tonight’s batch of songs highlighted her ability to cross the genres with songs from the like of the Carpenters to Cher and Shania Twain. Country Sway gave us a livestream from The Adelaides, and it was lovely to see them together again and boy they sounded as good as ever. Paris, Alicia, and Abi have great harmonies and they ran through a lot of their own tracks. Each of the girls are equally at home on lead vocals and I especially love their track “Leave”. They also sang the hit they released with Charles Esten taken from the tv show Nashville. The song Sanctuary is a beautiful song and it shows how tight the 3 girls are together and when they perform the song on stage it stirs the emotions and Alicia mentioned how it gets to her when they are singing it. Dixie Jade are a duo out of Nashville and are very chirpy during their livestreams. They have been a regular on the livestream scene and along with some of their own tracks they included some great covers including Trisha Yearwood’s “In Love With The Boy”
Wednesday saw Alan West back in his music room with his guitar and beer and was hitting us with the old-style sound he loves and performs so well. Performing songs, I’ve quite often forgotten about this stream is a great memory enhancer for me. Elaine Lennon had a great chat with James Edwyn another singer songwriter from Scotland and between them they gave us a great insight to the construction of their songs and how they go about constructing their music. The young lively duo from Mississippi Southern Halo shared the Country Sways Ladies Night with Diamond Dixie and both sister duets were producing some fantastic music from their homes. My evening was finished off with a fantastic stream from another great American, Cam. She was on a zoom chat with many DJs across America and was taking part in a question and answer session and singing some songs. She has such a lovely personality and is so bouncy when performing and this was so obvious when she sang her latest hit Classic. She was very funny in some of her stories and a few great quotes from her granny had me in stitches.
Jade returned with her usual Thursday classic stream and again came out with some great tracks including Better Man from Little Big Town and her own song Stay. Luke was in top form again and totally winding jade up and just keeping her going with the banter. The lovely Jessica Lynn did a live on the Music Crowns page and well she was a s brilliant as ever with her mix of tracks including Crazy Idea and Run To. Jessica also included an older track Twice As Good which she hasn’t played for a long time and it is a great old-style song in her catalogue. The great trio Lockeland ended my Thursday night viewing with a set and included the Train hit Go Your Own Way and made a fantastic job of it. As I’ve said before about these guys they are making themselves very much a staple of the Uk festival roster and their own music has that very modern country sound to it with one of their more ballad type tracks Blackberry Whiskey sticking in my mind.
Friday nights essential watch for me and all the #Friday night crew is Kezia Gill, again this was week 21 for her with her Pour Me A strong One Sessions which included a fantastic song to start with Carrie Underwood’s “Something In The Water” then continued with Gretchen Wilsons “When I Think About Cheatin” and included her own great track “I’m Here”. Friday’s late-night entertainment saw a new artist for me Caylee Hammack. Now my main reason for looking into this stream was the fact that Ashley McBryde and Tenille Towns were going to be on but I’m so glad I did watch as Caylee is a fantastic singer and this was her album launch which had me downloading the album straight after the stream. If you have not heard her, I would recommend a listen.
Saturday night it was back to watching folks from my local area as Diane Barbour and family gave us a fantastic 2hours plus of music old and new on Lock Down Buddies. The whole Barbour and Smith family took turns to sing a few songs. As myself and others had commented to Diane a few weeks ago she should try a few tracks from Cam and Lauren Alaina, Diane took the mantel and certainly did not disappoint with her covers of Burning House and Like My Mother Does. Over the weekend The Wandering Hearts did a night each about Woodstock as this is where their upcoming album was recorded, and this weekend would have been the 51st anniversary of the gig. Tara was joined in an online chat with her dad who attended the 1st event. To say that man has a great knowledge of music would be an understatement and some of his stories and recollections from that 1st festival had me in utter stitches.
My weekend ended with a super stream from the lovely Laura Oakes who covered some of her favourite songs from 2020 which included her own Better In Blue Jeans and one which she co-wrote with the lovely Deeanne Dexeter called 4AM, Absolutely beautiful song. Gary Quinn and a few others are heading over to Liechtenstein at the end of this week and had the ideal chance to get back into his songs with a livestream on Lock down Buddies and along with a couple of new tracks and covers he performed his crowd pleasers On Your Way Out and He Don’t Show Her Anymore. His final song was called Broken Things by Juliet Turner and Gary gave a very emotional song as a tribute to those affected by the Omagh bombings 22 years ago.
As normal I am going to sign off for another week and say Keep Safe and Well.