At the end of a short European tour, appearing at Festivals and supporting Bonnie Prince Billy, Dawn Landes entertained us below deck on the Golden Hinde (a reproduction ship, sitting in dry dock behind Southwark Cathedral) in an intimate setting where at least 50% of the audience were nursing bruised heads by the time the concert started, due to the very low beams!
Landes is an interesting singer-songwriter, operating under the radar for the most part, but with an interesting backstory (and indeed current story) in which she has been operating musically in the folk, country, musicals and stage productions and roots genres as well as recording EPs which are mainly for her two children, engineering and producing albums with the likes of Surfjan Stevens and Justin Townes Earle, and performed with ballet companies and even the Boston Pops. Married for a short while to the singer-songwriter Josh Ritter (her 2014 album Bluebird was loosely about their divorce but without the bitterness often associated with such albums), she is now married to Creighton Irons, a musical composer, with whom she often performs, and with whom she has two children (referenced throughout her performance)
Appearing on stage without introduction, Landes has a welcoming presence, a light-hearted and humorous approach to performance (especially when it comes to forgetting certain lyrics), and great interaction with her audience. Accompanied by just her acoustic guitar and an interesting foot tambourine attached to her shoes for certain songs, she kicked off with a trio of songs from her most famous album, Bluebird: the title track, Oh Brother and Bloodhound, all enthusiastically received by a rapt audience. She then branched out into some of the alternative musical styles that she has adopted. On “For Crying Out Loud,” a track from an EP she made with Piers Faccini in 2016, the audience was encouraged to sing back the title line, which they did with gusto. Landes’ country album Meet Me by the River from 2018 introduced What Will I Do, with a story about Landes auditioning the song at the home of producer Frank Foster, then in his 80s and reluctant to work again – until he heard the song!
She then ventured into a delightful run of songs built around her children, who often apparently had disputes about the songs she chose to write and sing for them! The a cappella I’m Your Mama (from 2016’s My Tiny Twilight) was an evening highlight, with just the mini-tambourine for accompaniment on a somewhat gospel-styled song that demonstrated her vocal ability. She introduced a new digital-only EP (Catch a Little Sun) – Teach Us How to Wonder was a lovely highlight of this session: “Listen to the grandmothers they know a thing or two / They harvested this space for us with hope and fortitude / Listen to the raindrops falling from the sky / Shapeshifting and singing nature’s lullaby”
A move away from the folksy songs was two tracks from her album ROW, written in support of the musical about the travails of Tori Murden McClure, who was a transatlantic rower (the first woman to row across the Atlantic in 1999), Mount Everest and Oh Amelia (Landes likening the McClure adventure to that of Amelia Earhart). The first half ended with audience participation in Dolly Parton’s Longer Than Always, before a short comfort break (a trip above deck to enjoy the cooler air and lovely London views for some people).
In the second half, Landes focused on her recent side venture, The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, where she recorded 11 tracks written by activist female writers from 1830 to 1970. Hard is the Future and One Hundred Years were the earliest of these songs, both with relevance today. The Housewife’s Lament (from 1866) had similar resonance. Life is a Toil, Love is a Trouble was the lovely chorus, while the delightful There Was a Young Woman Who Swallowed a Lie provided another opportunity for the audience to join in and applaud very enthusiastically at Landes’ ability to keep repeating the choruses at speed and a cappella. Liberation Now was sung with some force, and the whole section seemed to be very close to Landes’ heart.
An a capella version of Peggy Seeger’s Different Therefore Equal (which she had sung with Seeger at her Barbican concert a few years back) followed. Joined by a couple of good friends, they sang an a capella version of the Hallelujah Chorus, in a fashion conceived by The Roches. She ended the night appropriately (given the 250th Birthday of the USA) with her version of Paul Simon’s America.
Landes has a warm, melodic voice, which can whisper and soar, and she has a fascinating vocal quiver whereby she loosens the sound of her voice on some notes. It’s as if she sings to engage with her audience rather than to impress, and it makes the interaction with her audience all the more intimate. Her face-to-face communication at the break with a very young girl at the concert, with her parents, was symptomatic of her inherent warmth. With her many commitments back home, who knows when she might visit again, but she is a class act and should be welcomed back. In the meantime, seek out her albums; you’ll find much to enjoy there.
