Last Saturday night I had the immense pleasure of hosting the 5th Songwriter Evening in my local village hall. Songwriter Evening was set up to be a place devoted to listening to songwriters in a lovely building in front of an audience that came to listen, not to chat, order drinks or spend half the time scrolling through their phone. We provide first class sound controlled by a trained sound engineer who is also a recording studio owner, producer and mixer – the wonderful Jermaine Nelson-Williams.
Crucially there are no covers, every song is an original work performed by the artist who wrote it.
During those 5 evenings we’ve had a huge range of both musical styles and performers age, ranging from 16 to 92 – and everything else in between. We’ve had seasoned performers and people making their singer/songwriter debuts. The evenings have all been interesting, uplifting and wonderful not least because every audience has actually listened and appreciated the time, effort and shear guts it takes to stand up in front of people and sing your own songs.
Last Saturday, the 6th June, took it all to another level. Performer after performer delivered unforgettable renditions of their songs to an audience that had not heard that music previously. Quite simply it was magic.
It is no exaggeration to say that it was one of the most magical musical highlights of my life – and that feeling was shared by everyone who was there. It wasn’t note perfect, there were mistakes, false starts and bum notes, even technical hitches, but honestly that just added to the humanness of the evening. In some strange way it made it all the more honest and real.
Before we started the evening we had already taken the decision to have a couple of months off over the summer and then start the monthly Songwriter Evening again in September, but what was obvious was that we have started something that is very special and despite all the work and effort it takes to put these evenings on I can’t wait to start them up again.
We’ve had a lot of praise for Songwriter Evening from both audience and performers alike, here are some of them from social media:
Mick Hoyle: Such a great atmosphere, venue and sound
Hazel Sian: A lovely evening and so much talent!
Alan Thompson: Great venue, superb sound, attentive audience and some truly top talent
2 Yorkshire Folk: What a fabulous night…fantastic artists and songwriters
Mark Robinson: The sound system is out of this world
Mand Harris: There should be more nights like yours, so glad we made the trip
Personally I want to thank everyone who came to help, perform and listen over these 5 evenings, especially the one last Saturday. It was genuinely one of the musical highlights of my life.
Click here to visit the Songwriter Evening website
Click here to visit Jay Reigns Music Studio
Have a listen to some of the artists who have performed on the Songwriter Evening Spotify Playlist below.
See you all in September.