MAGGIE HOLLAND – The Music Institute, Guildford – 18th November 2011

The return of Maggie Holland to this area always brings the old lags – sorry, distinguished members of the local folk scene, past and present – out in force. Indeed you could have put together a very respectable ceilidh band plus sound engineer, song spots and choice of callers from the gathering.

Maggie has a proper job and doesn’t play many gigs these days – far too few, some would say – and although she can hit the top note of ‘Waiting For A Train’ as powerfully as ever she initially seemed short of match practice, not helped by an injury to her left hand middle finger. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem but when you’re fretting strings it’s a different matter. She was luckily in a position to recruit Andy Johnson, a regular collaborator over the years, to play piano on ‘A Place Called England’ which closed the first set and give the hand a rest.

After the break Maggie was firing on all cylinders and gave us a tour round her favourite songwriters: Bruce Cockburn, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Robb Johnson. There were some regular favourites like ‘Coshieville’ and the Tucker Zimmerman/ Derroll Adams medley of ‘Oregon/Portland Town’, the first outing for the banjo. Later she paired Martin Carthy’s ‘Company Policy’ with her own ‘Perfumes Of Arabia’ as she did on Down To The Bone. There were some songs I hadn’t heard before including Butch Hancock’s ‘Give Them Water’ and a song by Camille which may be called ‘Comme Je Marche’. Or not.

Maggie’s encore was the song that really established her as a writer, ‘A Proper Sort Of Gardener’, which can still, or perhaps more so now, bring a tear to the eye. It’s a song of lost innocence, lost youth and the lost country that ‘A Place Called England’ set out to find. Yes, it’s always good to see her back again.

Dai Jeffries

Artist Web Link: http://www.maggieholland.co.uk/


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