Sandy Denny Project

SANDY DENNY PROJECT

Musician Pub 16th June 2024

This was a simply wonderful afternoon at The Musician Pub with the return of The Sandy Denny Project

Sandy Denny was a very special singer... songwriter... performer... lady... possibly the best we have ever seen and this superb band do her legacy really proud. This is not a tribute band.. this is a wonderful creative band who share a real passion for her music,, and deliver their own interpretation of her songs.

The set covers the whole of Sandy's all too short career, featuring material from Fairport, Fotheringay and her solo work... both her own songs and others she is closely associated with.

At the front handling many of the vocals is the wonderful Sally Barker (who was a part of the revised Fotheringay). She has a glorious voice and sings beautifully, her voice suiting Sandy's songs perfectly.

Also singing lead on many songs is Marion Fleetwood. Marion is an equally fine singer and delivers her songs with equal conviction and beauty... Sally and Marion both play acoustic guitar, and Marion also adds fiddle.

Keyboard player Gemma Shirley also has a couple of lead vocals, and proves herself a third great singer in the band.

PJ Wright plays beautiful electric guitar throughout, understated and perfectly suited to the music. He also contributes some really beautiful slide work and a couple of vocals.

At the back, Mat Davies stands quietly playing bass superbly and adding the rhythm while Mark Stevens plays the drums with great rhythm and subtlety...

The classic songs come one after another... all so familiar but given the full Project arrangement... always different to Sandy's but in total empathy... opening with "The Banks of the Nile" from the first Fotheringay album including the likes of "Listen Listen", "John the Gun", "Come All Ye". "London", which is a Sandy lyric fitted to music by Thea Gilmore and many others.

For me the highlights included Marion's simply gorgeous rendition of "The Lady", accompanied solely by keyboard and a delicate trumpet solo by Mat in the middle eight and a beautiful delicate performace of "Fotheringay" (possibly my favourite Sandy song apart from the obvious!) by Sally.

"Matty Groves" was a revelation... the 15th Century ballad of infedelity, betrayal and murder as featured on "Leige and Leif" positively rocked along in fine style, Sally delivering the song with real edge and power.

Maybe the best was yet to come.. up next was an acoustic trio version of "Quiet Joys" which set the hair on the back of the neck tingling. After that Marion introduced the last song saying "You know what its going to be, and as the first chords of "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" sounded the eyes started to fill... Marion took the first verse, Sally the second and Gemma the third and it was totally wonderful

The band gave us an encore a song written by Swarb, "White Dress" which is written about Sandy... this piece was almost totally acoustic, no microphones just very low key bass and guitar and accompanied by Mat on trumpet and Gemma on fiddle... and that was it... a couple of hours of beautiful Sandy Denny songs delivered by a simply magnificent band... true lovers of the music

Beautiful music... superb band and a wonderful gig.

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