Two nights in Welwyn Garden City: Johnny Parry @ the Green Room, 28th Oct 04

The Green Room is the venue for Hertfordshire’s best acoustic night – it’s just a shame that it’s above a pub, the Doctor’s Tonic, which plays the most horrible chart-dance booming through the floor. Above the boom-boom-boom from below, an audience sometimes has to concentrate hard on the music they mean to be listening to. It’s just as well, then, that it’s usually worth a bit of concentration. Host and, tonight, guitarist Tom Stallard sets things rolling with his usual quality ‘dark and moody’ songs. It wasn’t a bad comparison when someone once described Tom’s music as being like Tom having a conversation with himself.

New to the area, Johnny Parry tries to have a conversation with the audience when he sits down behind his big electric piano, but it mostly consists of him mumbling that he’s not sure how things are going to turn out. The audience, though numerous for a wet night, are unsure too. Nobody claps when he’s finished his first song. I wasn’t sure that he had finished, since he had already left so many gaps. He would play a little, a grand little flurry of music, then look at his hands, turning them over as if looking for what might come next; and he would sing, at first in delicate breaths, then in more sonorous and affected tones, and words which I was unsure of too, since they didn’t always seem to make much sense. I loved it. The most refreshing solo musician I’ve seen in a long time – I certainly liked what I think he was aiming for, a romantic, whimsical blend to my ears of Tom Waits and Hawksley Workman, and I liked the fact that he was aiming for more than perhaps he could achieve on his own this night. Always a more noble goal than settling for working over songs you and your crowd know inside out; and if a few people smirk at your attempts, then why care? “This is a love song, if you know what one is,” complains the skinny young man in the vest on the stage, and maybe it was the jazzily-played song about being a bear, and holding a glass in his paws, or maybe it was a similarly different song. A few people warm to him. Look out for more of him. Apparently he usually plays with a six-piece band, and back projections, hence tonight’s uneasiness; but with songs so lovely there’s no need to be shy.

Johnny Parry's album, reviewed! / More in WGC, the following night, plugged in

www.johnnyparry.com / www.welwynmusic.com

home / reviews index