A few years back (2017 in fact) Dean Owens adopted the Nashville tradition of a “singers in the round” night for a tour featuring him, Robert Vincent and The Worry Dolls (reviewed here). He’s revitalised the concept for a short run of shows in Scotland after being asked by a mutual friend (Grant Lee Phillips) if Owens could help out on New Zealand artist Matt Joe Gow’s UK tour, recruiting his erstwhile buddy, Kirsten Adamson to complete the songwriter circle.
This was their first show. Indeed, Owens and Adamson had only met Gow earlier that day for the first time, allowing only for a short sound check and a quick bite in the adjacent Italian restaurant to get their act together. Seasoned performers that they are, little of this was evident when the trio took to the stage. Okay, at first each sang their songs pretty much on their own but by halfway through (and with much hilarity and confusion regarding the various chords required) they began to gel with Gow in particular adding some sweet guitar lines to the songs. By the end of the evening they were vamping all the way together, a fine measure of the power of music to connect.
Owens was centre stage, the ringmaster if you will, somewhat appropriate given his ancestor’s life as a circus entertainer. He opened with ‘Sometime’ from his most recent release, “Pictures”, a song he had written during the pandemic lockdown. With its yearning hope for a new dawn it captured the essence of brighter days ahead and its pandemic birth was echoed when Adamson later sang ‘Let Me Live’, another song sparked into existence via lockdown. Passing the song baton along throughout the night, all three had the opportunity to set their wares out while explaining the genesis of the songs to the rapt audience.
Owens and Adamson had the advantage of the home ground, the audience well aware of their songs while Gow was new to most of us. Nevertheless, from the moment he launched into the darkly mesmeric ‘I Let You Be’, his first song of the night, he was rightly accepted as one of the circle. His slow burning blues rendition of ‘House Burning Down’ was immersive while ‘Flowers In Your Heart’ was a breezy upbeat number. ‘Between Tonight And Tomorrow’ tugged at the heartstrings with Gow explaining this was the last song he played to his late mother.
Gow’s dark gravity was lightened somewhat by the more chipper tones of Adamson who sang a new song, written when she was clearing out her grandparents’ house, a song which revolved around her late grandfather’s accordion which she delivered with echoes of early Joni Mitchell in its lilting delivery. Another new song, ‘The Heart’, with the audience coached to sing the chorus with her bodes well for her future but it was two songs relating to her late father which drew the biggest cheers of the night. ‘My Father’s Songs’, co –written with Owens, had the diehard Big Country fans in the audience lapping it up while a later rendition on ‘In A Big Country’, transformed into a moving folk melody, was the hit of the night. A song, written with some assistance from Adamson’s mother, ‘Sweet Summer Rain’, found Gow adding some fine mouth harp colouring.
The ringmaster himself, Owens, was in grand form, revisiting his Calexico collaboration on ‘Hopeless Ghost’ and previewing his forthcoming album (recorded in Italy with Antonio Gramantieri) on ‘My Beloved Hills’. Another beloved hill, closer to home, was featured in a stirring rendition of ‘Up On The Hill’ while ‘Strangers Again’ found Adamson singing harmony in lieu of Karine Polwart who sang on the recorded version. His award winning song ‘Southern Wind’ never fails to impress and, of course, there was the “obligatory” delivery of ‘Raining In Glasgow’, the audience word perfect as they sang along.
By the time ‘Raining In Glasgow’ rolled around, the trio had gained the measure of each other with Gow adding some fine guitar licks to the song. Much of the joy of the night was in seeing these three musicians gel together over the two halves of the set. There was an encore and it was obvious that they had anticipated the possibility of such a happening as they launched into a true three part collaboration on Tom Petty’s ‘Learning To Fly’, swapping vocals and, pretty much, flying high. A grand close to a great night and, oddly enough, on the same song which had closed that 2017 Roots In The Round show we mentioned earlier.
