Sunday 25th August 2024

Bluebird Bakery, York, England

If I could sit down and write a long review it would have everything in it. The Bluebird, a working bakery converted into a music venue at night, with black sheets covering the windows to keep out the plainness of the road outside; a sign saying closed tonight except for ticket holders; the low, warm light from the candles which are lit in glass jars on the tables; the beautiful, dark-haired woman at the door. It would have the cool breeze that comes in when the door is opened to admit latecomers and it would have the bottles of wine and beer on the tables and the applause between songs and the guitars waiting patiently in their stands on the stage before the music begins.

It would have, if it were possible to write about music without killing what is good in it, the sound of Kassi Valazza as she sings of a “castle of stone” in ‘Roll On’, a mile from the ancient walls of York. It would have her crystal-clear voice as it sings of canyon lines and spinning circles and the small town of Chino, Arizona, and it would be able to describe the way she blends the lyrics with the melody so each song sounds purer than the silence it replaces. It would have Lewi Longmire’s slide guitar making ethereal chirruping noises as the song ‘Birds Fly High’ builds to open the night and it would have Tobias Berblinger silent behind his keyboards as he closes his eyes and constructs the soundscapes that allow Kassi and Lewi to roam. It would have Kassi switching between her two acoustic guitars and plucking a deep, mantra-like rhythm on the willing strings, and it would have her tapping out the rhythm in her thick-heeled leather shoes. It would have Lewi’s harmonica strung around his neck as it blows out a yearning, lonesome note on ‘Room in the City’ and it would have the classic Californian folk-rock sound coming from his electric guitar; a gorgeous vibe that no one seems to want to make anymore and which in every resounding note makes you wonder why.

It should make clear the chord changes and the fragile texture and composure of the songs and the way they fit into the gentle ambience of the night; and it would also show how they don’t simply belong to that ambience but also move it and shape it, as Kassi, ten years removed from her job in a bakery in Portland, finds herself in another bakery taking the material she has and kneading it with her fingers and making it rise. And alongside the music as it swells the review would also have the small and banal things; the white t-shirt Kassi wears bearing the face of her friend Chris Acker, the black t-shirt Tobias wears bearing the name of their tourmate Vincent Neil Emerson. It would find a way to mention in passing that I plan to see Kassi again a couple of days later alongside Emerson in Manchester, where I live, and that I drove over the hills of the old enemy to York only to hear her music at every possible opportunity, just as I travelled down to the Biddulph valley to hear it last year in a church in Staffordshire.

But above all, if it were good writing it would be able to describe the final song of the night when Kassi Valazza takes the stage for an encore and, singing alone, provides the purest moment. As her two travelling friends sit and look on in admiration from off-stage, Kassi strums her guitar and, closing her eyes, sings ‘One of These Days’ by Neil Young. One of these days, she sings, she’s gonna sit down and write a long letter, to all the good friends she’s known. And she’s gonna try and thank them for all the good times together, though so apart they’ve grown.

And the review would be able to explain only at great length what the singing of that song is able to communicate intuitively in a single moment. It would explain the hushed silence in the room from the audience; silence in the room, for the sound of Kassi and her guitar comes from another place. The writing would be able to press into the mind of the reader the thought that comes to the writer of the review with vivid clarity in the moment he hears the song, pressed as gently as Kassi presses it; the feeling of gratitude from the artist at the troubadour life they’ve chosen to lead, and a weariness tempered by sweetness, and a feeling of gratitude from the listener also as you experience the special moment that draws you to these artists in the first place, where they provide you with something you always wanted and perhaps needed but did not even know existed until they shone their light on it.

The writing would be able to evoke all the various memories which flood effortlessly through the mind as this song, lasting a few minutes, spreads itself out over an eternal time. The various memories made possible only because of the sacrifices these artists make, most of whom play small venues to a few dozen people and earn little to no money for the effort, and still decide to leave home for weeks and months and travel across an ocean to play and sing for people simply because people wish to hear them play and sing. And it would mention all those memories made in choosing to follow these artists to York and London and Staffordshire, and to hear them play at home in Manchester, and it would not just be memories such as Kassi playing in St. Lawrence’s Church in the darkness under pools of light, her song ‘Rapture’ soaring high into the eaves, but memories made possible by the decision to go at all, such as cresting the Biddulph valley in my car in the dark of the autumn night and seeing the town lit up in lights below; and finding my way to the church and walking up its path into the welcoming porchlight; or through the window of the train back from London the day after hearing Tyler Childers when I saw a red horse turn in a field and begin galloping, that I intended to put in a story somewhere; or spending the day today in York, walking its close, cobbled streets up to the skyscraping stone marvel of York Minster. And if it were good writing it would not invent anything but would mention how by the time I arrive in the late of the afternoon the cathedral would be closed to visitors, but that I would hear through the open doors the Minster’s choir sounding like angels beckoning to a better place, and yet I would know it would not be the sweetest music I would hear before the day was finished. And it would mention how I could not see the choir, only the darkness of the door and the candlelight within, and it would be able to show how truly this was enough.

If the writing were able to hold it all, it would recall in that moment Sierra Ferrell in Birkenhead with flowers in her hair, looking like she had stepped out of an Alphonse Mucha painting, and it would have Nick Shoulders with a head cold playing in a pub a few days after Hallowe’en, laughing at the toy spider decoration still spinning on a ceiling fan. It would have Charley Crockett leading his band into a blistering version of ‘Trinity River’, and it would have Billy Strings finding his way through ‘Hide and Seek’ as the song builds and builds and then breaks, the crowd thrashing like sharks around blood. And it would have space for the opening acts who are sacrificing more, perhaps, because their day is yet to come; for Tommy Prine singing a song about Gandalf all in white that I’ve not been able to hear again; for James Shakeshaft opening for Kassi tonight with a polished croon in his voice and a setlist of mostly unreleased songs which suggest his own best is still ahead of him; for Josh Beddis who opened for Sierra and for Mike West who at first I thought was a roadie gone rogue when he opened for Nick Shoulders in that pub in Bolton but who surprised me with his songwriting. It would have Mike and the Moonpies, who call themselves Silverada now; the metal shutter on the bar of the cellar where they play coming up like an ambush; the bassist Omar Oyoque leading the claps in ‘Beaches of Biloxi’; the two young bartenders dancing together during ‘Dance with Barbara’. It would have the crowd spontaneously singing the entirety of ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ to a bashful Oliver Anthony the moment he steps on stage at Manchester’s Albert Hall; the London crowd singing along to ‘Shake the Frost’ with Tyler Childers; Tyler swearing as he calls out a fight developing during ‘Country Squire’. It should have him refusing as he is heckled yet again for ‘Whitehouse Road’, and it should have the look on the hecklers’ faces if they could have known, then, that he would play the song in Manchester the following year. And though I would wish it didn’t, it should have those who drowned out Tyler’s songs with their chatter in Manchester, and it should have John R. Miller if those same ignorant people that night had allowed me to actually hear him. It would have 49 Winchester and the Red Clay Strays showing that rock music was not dead but was instead being sheltered by country; it would have Isaac Gibson singing ‘Russell County Line’ and Brandon Coleman leading the audience in ‘Hey Jude’ simply because the Beatles once played there.

And what else should it contain about the music you have heard and which you love? It should have Charley Crockett’s amp blowing on stage and it should have the paper planes Oliver Anthony sent flying into the crowd. It should have John Hall of the Red Clay Strays getting a piggyback off the stage and Sierra Ferrell throwing flower petals as she steps onto it. It should have Billy Strings flubbing his lines on ‘Heartbeat of America’ and somehow making it work. It should have all those other people who went to hear the music with me, the forty or so tonight for Kassi and the thousands of others, who roared and clapped and sat quietly, and who all took away different memories from those nights and found a chord struck with a different song. It would have Billy Strings speaking to my friend after his show as she tells him what his song ‘Secrets’ means to her and it would have Kassi speaking to me after hers. It would have Billy and Kassi and Mike West reaching out later to thank me for what I wrote about them, though they had made the writing of it easy by doing it so well, and it would have the promoter Nick Barber referred to as a staff member because I didn’t know any better and I would correct it later. It would have Mike West carting his gear down a quiet road after opening for the Moonpies and the close heat of the Charley Crockett gig during a heatwave, so warm you forgot it was warm and just accepted it, and it would have the coolness of the evening at night’s end when a car turned out of a sidestreet in the Northern Quarter and a man played a trumpet through its open window. It would have the many drives home afterwards when the music I play through the car stereo cannot replace it and when I hear the songs afterwards they are always enhanced by the memories of hearing them live. And it will have these moments because it will never be the same again, even if the song or the setlist you hear the next time remains the same.

But above all if the writing were good it would have Kassi Valazza singing it won’t be long, it won’t be long, it won’t be long, because that moment contains in it all the other moments, and if the writing had that then you wouldn’t need to write it at all. The music would be it already. You would let the music play and you would listen to it and hear it and write about it if you had to, but the music would survive even if you didn’t write it and the moments would continue to be made by the musicians who travel the world for their daily bread. And because of that, you will feel it deeply as Kassi ends with that Neil Young song, even if you cannot describe it, and having felt it all you will always look to go and hear it again. While the writing cannot say all that as simply as the song plays it in that one pure moment, you can still sit down and write a long letter and then you can be sure it has been said.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing and written by Kassi Valazza, unless noted)

  1. Birds Fly High (unreleased)
  2. Room in the City
  3. Rapture
  4. Johnny Dear (from Dear Dead Days)
  5. Watching Planes Go By
  6. Canyon Lines
  7. Song for a Season
  8. Roll On (unreleased)
  9. Welcome Song
  10. Early Morning Rising (single)
  11. Weight of the Wheel (unreleased)
  12. Wildageeses (Michael Hurley)
  13. Chino (from Dear Dead Days)
  14. Encore: One of These Days (Neil Young) (unreleased)

My concert reviews, including all of the gigs mentioned above, can be found here.