A few notes of accordion, a shifted chord, a tentative approach to a microphone, and a roomful of people are held silent and entranced with long years of memory, pleasure and fragile mortality. The peerless voice, like a fond caress, starts thus: "It was on one April morning just as the sun was rising" and a past that we might have known is evoked, more real than any present that we currently stumble through. Birds are singing "Lovely Nancy" and JUNE TABOR's hypnotic art has us each in the Devon of our imagination, in the yearned for memory of physical youth and affinity with people we might have been or are now shamed to have forgotten.
No written history, no video, no digital image or wiki page can compare to the physically emotional presence of memory, communicated in song from singer to singer and offered to an audience, beguiled into complete attention, by the best there is.
From Devon in April she takes us to The Shetland Isles in the month of sweet July, before the sun had pierced the sky, down between two rigs of rye. Lovers are talking, and the audience are teased through dreams of parting, and loss, through ties of family and the fear of hardship and ruin. June (she has already noted her own name between the two songs) is carried through with the gentlest and strongest of double bass and cello. The trio throughout the performance are masters of nuance and sensitivity. Mark Emerson plays piano, violin and viola. Andy Cutting switches between diatonic and standard accordions and Tim Harries bows an upright bass. JUNE TABOR's voice is every bit as expressive and mysterious as I remember it from more than 40 years ago. There is sureness and depth across the whole range, the control through whisper to full voice is steady and confident. She sets the length of a phrase to suit its meaning and weight, and the musicians defer with grace and delicacy. There is virtuosity in the seeming simplicity.
Between the great stories of each song, June tells us a story from her own life, or from the lives of her songs' characters: Gypsies (the unthanked carriers of so much of our culture, pride and wisdom) seafarers and their families, mill workers, soldiers, musicians, poets, blacksmiths and dancing teachers. Such stories are denser than many can hold on to, heavier than many can carry. But if one singer in England can be trusted with them, for this generation, then it's JUNE TABOR. As I assert this, an echo of my own clumsy words reminds me of the UNTHANKS and I wonder if they have been knocking at her door and pestering her for apple pie, for fairy tales and for songs from her huge repertoire. I mull over the impertinence of emailing them to insist.
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We are treated to songs by Burns: "Speak Easy" with its mourning for the drab failures of our own leaders and opinion mongers; and "Lie Near Me" with its sensuous and tender eroticism, curled up in such a fine tune that its innocence slips by unquestioned. There is 25e Octobre, a familiar tale in an unfamiliar language, with an unexpected history, an everyday lament for war "Standing in Line" and a prayer for safety from the sea "Send Us a Quiet Night". And we have a song of the audience's demanding fantasies for the itinerant fiddler, in the Swedish song of the "Spelman".
The themes of the evening are many. One is the dancing. We have the song of that name from the "Apples" album (prominently featured tonight): "The Dancing" as the brightness and physical release of Saturday night in the mill town. It's a waltz in three quarter time and light footed-romance, a cure for the week of machines and drabness. We have gypsy dances with scat singing to supply the skips and jumps. And we have the trio to play one of their own subtly skewed adaptations of a John Playford tune from "The English Dancing Master" (featured on their own CD album "Cast a Bell" under the name 1651, on Beautiful Jo Records).
At the end we have echoes of the great Ben E, King as an encore: "Save The Last Dance For Me", written by Doc Pomus (with his pretty, dancing wife in mind) and Mort Shuman. It's a delightful, gentle return to something like the world we left as the concert started. The artist has given us a story behind the song, and we can feel the truth within the song. You can ask for no more.
The next day I was asked if I could recommend anyone else who could be asked to play in the fine, newly restored Howard Assembly Room (part of lavishly-refurbshed Leeds Grand Theatre). I still can't think of anyone who could have filled the room with such magic as we had that night.
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