A couple of weeks ago I went to a house concert to see American singer-songwriter Hannah Aldridge.
So what is a house concert I hear you ask? Well it does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a gig/concert in somebody's house.
For many years I attended an excellent monthly music club entitled Grapevine. I have mentioned this before. When myself and my mate started going to Grapevine it was in an upstairs room in Bedfords in the centre of Norwich. It then moved to the Britannia Cafe in the historic Guildhall, again in the centre of Norwich.
When that cafe closed, so did Grapevine and then came lockdown. Organisers Steve and Jan Howlett are unlikely to regenerate it but they zoomed back into action by promoting a gig by Hannah Aldridge at their home. It was an excellent gig. There's nothing better than a house concert to bring artists and their audience close together. Artists need a certain personality to carry this closeness off and Hannah managed to bring us into her world with consummate ease, talking about her upbringing in America's deep south Bible belt. Her songs were often dark and dense.
But I just can't go to a gig like this without coming away with a whole host of things to follow up on.
Hannah mentioned her father Walt who has written hundreds of songs. She slightly underplayed his role in American Country music. He has won numerous awards and is an inductee in the Alabama Country Hall of Fame.
Then she mentioned a country singer by the name of Ashley MacBryde who I need to search out. And she also talked about a major American prison in the deep south by the name of Parchman This sounded like an appalling place and I will write some more about it in a coming blog after doing some research.