Gemma Hayes – Liberty Hall – Live Review

Gemma Hayes @ Liberty Hall – 08/11/23 – as part of the Dublin Folk Festival

Conchúr White is a busy man. Not only is he releasing his debut album in January, but he’s also supporting the Magnetic Fields on tour and getting married! That last one was according to Gemma, who may have been joking, but the other two are definitely true. He was on stage a little after 8pm last night, to preview some of the songs off his new album.

He opened with Rivers off his upcoming album Swirling Violets, with intricate guitar and his falsetto voice. The Armagh-based singer-songwriter had a tale of woe, as his pedal board broke earlier in the day, so this was a more stripped-down version of the songs than normal. Despite these limitations, it was an interesting set with tales of visiting Iain Archer’s toilet, where he keeps his Gold discs!

Gemma Hayes and her band appeared on stage at 9 p.m. There were three other musicians on stage, with guitars, keyboards and drums, while Gemma largely played acoustic guitar, with the odd song on electric. They opened with a taster of her new album, “A Reminder of Another”.

There were plenty of older songs to keep the crowd happy, with ‘Shock to My System’ and one of her biggest hits ‘Back of My Hand’ following next.

She told the story of her first gig in London, in Spits, a beautifully named venue. The gig didn’t go according to plan and she left the venue quickly after the performance to hide out in a pizza joint and plot what to do with the rest of her life. After a few minutes, she was approached by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who congratulated her and told her he particularly liked ‘Ran for Miles’ as he liked running!

Another trip through her back catalogue included her first song, 4.35am, a tale of wandering home from Whelans in the dead of night when no one else is around. A song about a horse followed in ‘Palomino’.

“Ride with me, boy, on my palomino
Racin’ through grey skies, lookin’ for the yellow”

She then made an unusual decision to cover the Kate Bush song Cloudbusting. You need to be brave to allow your vocals to be compared to Kate, and while this version would never replace the original, it was an admirable attempt.

The next tracks included High and Low, and Iona, which has a hint of the Cure about it.
We were then treated to a new song called Hard Wired, which by her own admission was not finished yet! Her last song of the set was “To Be Your Honey” which included some intricate guitar work.

The three-song Encore featured her well-known cover of the Chris Isak song ‘Wicked Game’ which was used in the Pretty Little Liars. The story of how it came to be included in the series, is that she was given less than 24 hours to record the song, so she dropped everything and worked on it with a friend. The song now has over 20 million streams on Spotify, so it was a good afternoon’s work!

There was a heavy guitar version of ‘Let a Good Thing Go’ before the final track for the evening “Happy Sad “, which is “As happy as I get” according to Gemma. The nature of fame is a fickle thing, and why Chris Martin is filling stadiums and ‘conscious(ly) uncoupling’ from Hollywood stars, is unclear. What we can thank Chris for, is that moment in a Pizza joint in London when he inspired Gemma not to pack it all in! She’s one of our best singer-songwriters, and on this performance, she deserves a lot of love.