Venue:
Union Chapel, Islington
Date: 12/10/2023
This was Thea Gilmore’s only band gig of the year and, she announced on social media and from the stage, her first since 2017. She was wrong about that. I saw her with a band in the same venue in 2019 on the Small World Turning tour. As we subsequently discovered that was the ‘divorce tour’. She and ex-husband Nigel Stonier shared a stage, although Thea had called time on a relationship which she had come to realise was abusive. It’s no wonder she has managed to let that one pass from memory.
She has played some completely solo gigs since, but it was still a brave choice to open the show by taking to the stage alone to perform This Girl is Taking Bets, possibly her best known song, in a radical new arrangement of loops and samples. The lyrics wrapped around the newer songs/spoken word pieces Niece Normal Woman and Friendly Little Heart Attack. In the ornate space of Union Chapel the effect was stunning and met with huge applause.
The rest of the show was heavily based around her latest, self-titled, and as yet unreleased, new album. Vinyl shortages are to blame for the delay apparently, but it should be out next month. Several of those songs are already available to stream in the EPs Was and Is and were greeted like old favourites by an adoring crowd. As she had promised there were some real old favourites too, and it was a treat to hear Mainstream again (with special mention to Jim Kirkpatrick on guitar).
At the show’s close, as Thea once again stood on stage completely alone but with her sparkly blue Gretsch electric for company this time, she mused that if there was a theme to the new album it was love in its various forms. There was a second theme though, and that was women and their treatment. An earlier audience singalong of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was dedicated to Sarah Everard, and once again it was made explicit that The War is about the murdered MP Jo Cox.
Still, love was to be our parting thought as Thea led the audience through another singalong and another new song, and possibly the sweariest one the sacred bricks of Union Chapel have ever been subject to, as several hundred congregants gently crooned along to the chorus of That’s Love, Motherfucker.
The audience:
Thea’s audience has always typically been 10 to 20 years older than her, and that shows no sign of changing. The younger people were mainly kids accompanied by parents.
It made me think..
The 2 solo shows I saw by Thea were slightly nervy affairs, and it was wonderful to see her looking so confident and assures while rocking out with a band.
Sounds great! Have just bagged tix for her show at Celtic Connections, in Glasgow. Haven’t seen her live before.
I tried to tot up how many times I’ve seen her earlier and got to 18 (including an in-store appearance and a couple of guest slots, but probably forgetting some too). The only person who would compete as my most-seen artist is Richard Thompson, a fan of Thea’s as it happens.
Your point on the audience is interesting. Former fRoots editor Ian Anderson was observing/lamenting elsewhere yesterday that folk club audiences are people approaching 80 watching, typically, thirty-something performers. He was saying it must feel odd to be a performer in that context – and digging out a piece he had written in 1979 warning everyone in Brit-folksville that he’d noticed audiences at that time were kicking around the appallingly advanced age of 30…
Hitchin folk club solves this by booking largely the same people year after year. It’s not really a folk byclub, more a regular folk gig. We could do with a proper folk club.
Which is why folk festivals are so enjoyed by performers, as it gives the players a chance to see audiences that include more people of their own age.
But if an artist can attract and successfully perform to a younger audience at a festival, why on earth don’t those younger punters then go and see them at a venue like the Union Chapel?
Has it got a reputation as an oldies venue? Are the ticket prices too high?
Folk festivals are not the only festivals where artists, both young and old, get a chance to play to an audience which may have never heard of them,
For example, Lloyd Carner really knocked me for six at Roskilde this summer.
I don’t think I belong to his normal fanbase. To put it mildly!
Union Chapel has the most uncomfortable seating you definitely need to take cushions.
Def. I find it generally uncomfortable. No leg room, hard seats, London.
We’re old hands there, but even with seat pads from dining chairs, and later those seat pads doubled up, the pews are hard on your backside after one hour or so. And I’m 5’ 9” and can only just fit my knees in. I hope the vicar doesn’t go in for long sermons. A stunning room though, and the sound is good upstairs.
Indeed @Gatz I met you there once, luckily for the sake of our bahookies it was an afternoon and relatively short concert.
Towards the end of a concert you’re hoping the band aren’t going to play for much longer and please no encores.
I was there earlier this year the couple sat next to us at the end noticed our cushions “You’ve been here before”
The woman doing bag searches said the same to us on Thursday.
I saw her last year and was mesmerised. Looking forward to the new album.