Content Warning: Professional Northerner at Work
Richard Hawley
The LCR, UEA, Sunday, 16th June 2024
My response to Mr Hawley’s latest album, In This City They Call You ‘Love’ was Comme si, comme ça. The guitar work, the love Hawley has for his early guitar heroes in his tribute songs to Sheffield and the respective playing styles and indeed singing, is interesting. It is a nice album, but doesn’t pull up any trees for me, so I was wondering how the tour might be going, ticket sales-wise.
Despite taking nearly an hour to set up, tune all the guitars and for the band to appear once England v Slovenia’s first half had finished, the auditorium was full of anticipatory anxiety, (the good kind). These people had come from all over East Anglia to catch a Richard Hawley gig. I parked my prejudices and settled against a wall to take it all in.
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Richard Hawley and band giving it some welly. |
Guitarist, Shez Sheridan, led the crocodile of musicians weaving past the five floodlights, drum kit and guitar racks, cheered by the crowd. Richard Hawley, confidently quiffed, indicated to the seated audience to stand up, but they declined the offer. He kind of shrugged before opening his set with Two For His Heels, the new album's first track.
Later, Hawley half-apologises for mainly playing his new material. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asks rhetorically. There is no kick-back from his fans, for he is backed with two additional guitars, a bass, keyboard and drums, who power up and give his new songs considerable oomph. Maybe I had not been playing the new album loudly enough to fully appreciate it? The live set is strong and bleeds energy. The sound in the LCR at UEA is definitely the best I have heard. A full house certainly helps soften the reverberations from the hard walls.
With his new tunes it is possible to play a spot-the-influence game. Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and possibly, Tony Bennett, although he sounded suspiciously like a crooning Cinerama-era David Gedge, on Do I Really Need To Know.
There felt to be irony in UEA having a weighty reputation for Creative Writing, while Hawley is singing some distinctly lightweight lyrical lines. Heavy Rain is musically fine, but ditch water springs to mind, as the song repeats the title ad infinitum, for example.
To be fair, early rock’n’roll era songs and ballads do not particularly stretch literary critical faculties and Hawley here, is paying homage to some brilliant recording artists of that time.
His “Welcome to Sheffield” road-sign, held up to the audience like a Fourth Official signifying time added for stoppages as half-time approaches, is met with a few flat-toned cheers and a comment from a rabid West Ham stander-by with “At least he supports Sheffield Wednesday, a proper club.”
Hawley's comment, “Haven’t you got holiday homes to go to?’ is greeted with some good-natured grumbles, proving that being from Sheffield still gives northerners someone to look down on – I jest.
To be fair, Richard Hawley sings about his home town with affection and frankness, recognising it has light and shade, successes and failings. So he is just playing with the Angles of Eastern England, in a friendly, bantering kind of way.
He is a passionate man and not afraid to lay his opinions out there. The forthcoming General Election is addressed, with a heart-felt plea to "...kick these @*?!ing people out!" which leads into the romantic, Tonight the Streets Are Ours and the loudest cheering of the night so far. Cue a few waving arms, but thankfully no Watford FC swaying mobile phone torches, not that I could see any, at least.
We get about 80 minutes of songs, played with a confident swing and swagger, before the first punters head for the packed car park. We have seen and heard an impressive selection from Hawley's famous guitar collection, efficiently swapped and plugged in by Hawley's Aide-De-Camp. It's been fun. The fresh air and the moon setting over Easton Park added a further spring to my step. I enjoyed the set.
Hearing the new songs live, with a trio of guitars played to full effect, with fulsome keyboard-originated strings, was very pleasant. Hearing a song written in his teen years (an enduring number from his back catalogue) and some more recent favourites gave the audience plenty to whole-heartedly lap up. Hawley is an engaging stage presence and he has many fans, who clearly had a good time. Richard Hawley and his band have had a good time too, playing material that has singularly poppy foundations. Despite the dourness, the gritty, Steel City content, this is pop music, popular with a certain, suburban demographic.
For a man who claims to "...have always been miserable", he writes catchy tunes. He is Yorkshire's dour musical cousin of Morrissey. I found myself humming Prism in Jeans, the Buddy Holly / Everly Brothers' soundy-likey number, as I made my way back into the Fine City. Will someone, one day, write the definitive Norwich album, I wonder, or did The Farmer’s Boys do that back in the early 1980s, with Get Out And Walk?
The England game wasn't very exciting in the second half, apparently, so Hawley missed nothing and his fans had been suitably served. Funny how these things all work out in the end.
Spencer Ide
The LCR, UEA, Norwich
16th June 2024
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