Richard Hawley Review

Published on 7th February 2008 in Ents

Last Saturday, the second evening of February, Hull City Hall's stage saw Richard Willis Hawley walk on with his usual sidekicks: a combination of suits, jeans, blazers and of course, the thick-rimmed, square black glasses.

He opened with the third single, Valentine, from his latest album, Lady's Bridge - a nostalgic ballad not to be listened to when one is feeling down.

The mixed bag of seated attendees showed Richard their extreme appreciation as he moved onto the second number from the same album, Roll River Roll, which has the same romantic, retro ambience but tells of the floods of Sheffield, Richard's home town.

Throughout the night we heard the typical jokes about Richard's past, his career, and his family and friends. Ballads followed upifting numbers such as Serious and Tonight the Streets are Ours. The band showed superb skill and professionalism in the way they were playing.

The response from Richard's audience in Hull was extremely warm and welcoming, although I do think the sound man could have done a little more tweaking to produce what could have been a superb sound.

The acoustics in Hull City Hall are not the best, and I do believe there was potential in the way of sound throughout the evening. Richard ended the first set on a number he introduced as "a song I wrote for our lass" and titled The Ocean. A menacing, dreamlike melody with an extremely powerful outro incorporating a tasteful screaming guitar solo to fade.

He returned for the encore to the sound of stamping feet and applause and introduced us to a friend, Clive Mellor. He met Clive in Manchester a long time ago and claims he is "the greatest harmonica player in Britain". They went on to perform a Hank Williams number he had only played live once before. Overall a great evening of music. - ME