The rain stops, the sun comes out and London shakes off an interminable winter like a lion emerging from the river. It’s not over yet, but it’s a different beast altogether when there is hope for spring ahead. Hope captured and held gently by two songsmiths from across the pond.
Gravedancer
While on first glimpsing Baker of Gravedancer, the assumption could be made that perhaps an acoustic metal set was prepared, we were treated not to heavy riffage and subterranean growls, but to what can only be described as an extremely heart-warming set. One man and his guitar and folk tunes, songs inspired by both his native Arkansas and adoptive Scotland, nostalgic, deceptively straightforward while secretly preparing a punch, often funny, interspersed with Baker’s delightful storytelling, like that one time the venue double booked him with a lady’s funeral wake. We had fiddler Sage jump on stage for a quick dance number and the crowd pick an immediate favourite with ‘Pyramid of Titties’ (ladies, I promise you it’s worth a listen). His latest album Doghouse Flowers is testament to this dual sensibility, of a man who has seen too much in his Army days and has chosen kindness and humour as the way to his art. Check it out on Bandcamp: https://gravedancerarkinsaw.bandcamp.com/album/doghouse-flowers
Shawn James
Undeniably one of the best vocalists touring today, Shawn James has been preaching the folk’n’blues for 14 hard-earned years of incredible songwriting. Velvety-voiced and looking as comfortable on stage as he does chatting to fans after the show, his music moves through genres, intensities and stories, but always with a heart kept wide open for the world to peer into. It’s not an easy vulnerability to share, but what it allows for is people’s stories to connect. How many tears have been shed to ‘The Curse of the Fold’? How many to ‘The Guardian’, with its haunting “There’s a noose ’round my neck and the further I get / It’s harder and harder to breathe / … / I’ve been waiting for dawn, but the light is all gone“? Specificity and honesty like that make for a mighty sharp scalpel to wield in those moments impossible to carve into words.
Many people don’t know this about me, but my father was an immigrant and he taught me to work hard, he taught me to earn everything from the ground up.
Shawn himself shared “I used to play these bars late into the night and I’d try to play these heartfelt songs, spill my guts on the floor, and the four guys at the bar didn’t give a shit. So I figured, how do I get these guys? So I started playing covers, picking up the tempo, and suddenly they were interested. I stopped playing those sad songs for years“. Until of course that fateful day in 2020 when the trailer for the feverishly-anticipated video game The Last of Us II dropped, to the tune of Shawn’s ‘Through the Valley’. It was a career-making moment.
One sweep around O2 Islington shows it: the packed audience, the buzz of anticipation, the cheers of recognition from one guitar strum, the hands lifted like in church and voices singing along. It must be intoxicating to play to such keen ears – and gracious hosts. His Jazz Cafe set in 2024 was intimate and quiet, while tonight a fan jumps the barricade to offer Shawn a beer, leading to a moment with security (all solved very amicably). The whole band looks uplifted by the boundless quasi-stadium energy of the crowd (we’re praised multiple times and I have to say, it was refreshing to be in a crowd that present for its artist. Good job, us). We were thus rewarded with the rarely-played ballad ‘Brother’, with its RnB beat and aching call, “I wanna be loud and clear in that I miss you“.
But while his name entered the mainstream with a softly-sung folk-like song, he took the other lesson from his dive bar days to heart. With the power of a full band behind him, the energy of the set is unstoppable. Bursting with Shawn’s voice of preternatural depth and supernatural resilience, each and every song is elevated by his larger-than-life partner-in-crime, Sage Haskelchi’i Cornelius, on the fiddle, him of the glorious hair (and who wasn’t rocking gorgeous hair on that stage?) and punk metal vibe, by Rob Kennedy holding it down on drums with some delicious grooves, Caoimhe Hopkinson multi-rocking on electric guitar, keyboard and violin (it felt like a game, what instrument can she play next), and the amazing Zack Sawyer on the double bass and bass guitar.
Baker touched on it earlier, it’s an embarrassing time to be an American. So I want to make two things perfectly clear: fuck ICE and fuck Trump.
It’s a sign of the times that I have been listening to one song specifically ever since the gig. ‘Burn the Witch’, released in 2019, remains sadly relevant today, “Their hearts full of hate / What they don’t understand, they condemn / What they can’t comprehend must meet its end“. We could all cathartically scream in unison “Burn the Witch” and breathe in deep the Wild West feel of it, but it’s a true song, hauntingly so.
And it was Baker of Gravedancer who wrote ‘Eating Like Kings’, the heart-wrenching song inspired by his military tour in Afghanistan, that Shawn James has covered extensively in his tours and has always credited back to his friend. The crowd, wide-eyed and riotous through the night, rose to the somber occasion. Baker, Shawn, the band and all the voices of Islington lifted together to sing “‘Cause tonight, boys, we’re eating like kings / ‘Cause we’ve all tasted death too much it seems“.
Paralysis in the face of ceaseless bad news is hard to overcome, which is why the artist’s greatest duty is to give us back our voices. In that room, we were together, united by one man and his powerful voice. Claiming the voice, you claim the body and you can claim back your freedom.
Shawn’s tour continues in Europe, check out remaining dates here: https://www.shawnjamesmusic.com
Shawn James
Set 1
- Icarus
- Six Shells
- The Curse of the Fold
- The Thief and the Moon
- Burn the Witch
- It's Alright
- The Guardian (Ellie's Song)
- Through the Valley
- Brother
- Eating Like Kings
- Burn
- Flow
- I Want More
- Like a Stone
- My Juliet
- Orpheus
- No Blood From a Stone
- Delilah
- Haunted
