REVIEW: BARBARA DICKSON & NICK HOLLAND AT LEEK ARTS FESTIVAL

Barbara Dickson is a rare beast. An artist who wants to turn the clock back.  Ever since the heady chart topping days of ‘I Know Him So Well’ with Elaine Paige (and a video she herself admits made them look like Hylda Baker and Cynthia!) Barbara has strived to put her career back in the niche that serves her best: performing a selection of traditional and modern folk songs for discerning audiences. Barbara’s last foray into the Moorlands market town of Leek was as a relatively unknown folk singer in the early 1970s,  her set tonight for the Leek Arts Festival would not have been out of place at those shows.

First a word about the opening act Anthony Toner.  Armed with a nice line in cheeky Irish craic, Toner is very much a songwriter of note and a performer of skill.  His voice lends itself to the stories he tells of his heritage and experiences, from the passing of ‘Sailortown’ in his native Belfast to the song hijacked by the weather reports in Ulster ‘Well Well Well’, Toner is an impressive artist. Check him out at http://anthonytoner.net/ I hope he is destined for greatness.

Barbara and her keyboard collaborator Nick Holland have crafted a musical journey, and the intimate venue Foxlowe Arts Centre (affectively just a function room of a converted pub) serves this show well.  Opening with a haunting version of The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’, we were treated to a whistle stop tour of the songs that mean something to Barbara, so much so that many of them have lasted the course of Barbara’s recording career. The first song Barbara ever performed on television ‘The Rigs O’ Rye’ sounded as fresh as if she had just discovered it  the week before. Much of the material was culled from the six studio albums she has made with Troy Donockley since 2004. The contribution of Nick Holland to the shows cannot be underestimated, both vocally and on keyboards,  he made it easy to forget there were just two musicians on stage, such was the full sound these two produced.  Barbara has championed the music of Gerry Rafferty throughout her career and we were treated to a new addition to Barbara’s live repertoire, a version of Rafferty’s Humblebums track ‘Look Over The Hill And Far Away’.  There are several nods to the songs that took Barbara to the higher reaches of the charts,  ‘Another Suitcase In Another Hall’ and ‘Caravans’ whilst her award winning theatre career is represented by songs from Blood Brothers and John, Paul, George, Ringo & Bert.  Joined by Anthony Toner for a version of The Everly Brothers ‘Sleepless Nights’, there is a real sense of unique talents combining to a gorgeous whole. 

This is my thirtieth year attending Barbara Dickson’s live shows and I can categorically state that vocally she is at the top of her game.  Crystal clear with a streak of natural melancholy in its timbre,  she is an artist who can make a poor song sound great.  But when she is armed with great songs as she is here, the result is something spectacular. There is little doubt in my mind she is one of the greatest voices produced in the UK during the 20^th Century,  a world class artist whose musical path continues to delight those who walk it with her.