By Kevin Donnellan
Review of Gemma Hayes at Crawdaddy, Dublin on January 15th 2011
Singer-songwriters. They’ve always being something I think of as a GOOD THING without ever actually feeling motivated to go see them that often. It’s a definitive blind spot when it comes to my musical taste. Sure, I love the idea of someone transforming a room full of people with no more than a guitar and a footstool. But just don’t make me stand in that room. They’re for girls who get excited about tablecloth patterns and guys who tell you about their backpacking trek whilst rolling their own smokes. Not for me, I want noise and any overtly emotional lyrics to be cryptic and drowned out for the most part in said noise. No touchy feely stuff for me thanks.
But here I am at Gemma Hayes. January is a slow month gig wise and it seemed as good a way to spend a Saturday night as any. But I’m walking into Crawdaddy with the same level of expectation as I would walking into a Jennifer Anniston rom-com. Will be happy to get distracted, but expect to be completely unmoved. And then Gemma begins to talk and sing. And then sing. And then talk. And I join the rest of the room in falling in love. The place is packed but Gemma may as well be sitting with her family at Christmas having a catch up. It’s like on of those ‘An Evening with..’ TV specials, only good.
And every anecdote is perfectly random, never shoehorned in to explain a song. Just stories thrown out there to put the room at ease. She’s wearing high heels at a gig for the first time she explains “because it’s sold out”. An encounter with Louis Walsh is ran through with the timing of a skilled stand-up. Her cousin almost decapitating Gemma as a child gets the same treatment. And all of this serves the songs brilliantly. Because it means when she sings you believe her. Maybe everyone else would have believed her even if she’d just muttered obscenities between songs but I think I needed the anecdotes. For all the great, loud gigs I’ve seen, this is the first time I thought I’d really got to know an artist through seeing them perform.
It got me thinking of a story from Niall Quinn’s autobiography (yeah, I read it, and it was good). His relations were from Tipperary, same as Gemma is. His uncle, or possibly great-uncle, was due to play a league match for Tipperary’s hurlers and was waiting for a lift. It might have been the 1940’s, I learnt the book to someone so I’m not sure. Anyway, he was waiting for a lift (not many cars back then etc) when he spotted a squirrel (stay with me here). So he walked towards it and of course it hopped away. So he followed it again and continued to follow it until he’d traipsed halfway across Tipp. He never made the match, but had a grand afternoon of it. According to Quinner he had no regrets and lived a happy life.
Where does that fit into a Gemma Hayes review? Nowhere. But her stories had little relevance to her songs and it still worked so I’m giving it a go to. Anyway, where were we? Yeah her set. Well it was perfectly pitched. Ably assisted by Ann Scott, on a plethora of different instruments, she showed a proper musicians craft in her approach to each song. The emergence of her band for the last few songs beefed up the sound without jarring at all. The whole show was little more than an hour-long. One hour of standing on the stairs at the back of the Crawdaddy feeling content. Like being in front of a warm fire. Content at a gig? A revelation.
So I’m not going to be heading backpacking anytime soon but Gemma Hayes has definitely opened my mind up a bit more to the possibility of going to see more singer-songwriters. As long as the rest of them have just as good anecdotes, I’m in. Oh and it mightn’t have been a squirrel that Niall Quinn’s uncle chased now I think of it.