Joanne Shaw Taylor 3/3/2020

This was a first for me for both artist and venue - Komedia in Bath. It was a nice place with some seats in the balcony that were preferable to me over the standing area downstairs. Support was from Sonia Leigh from Nashville who had some nice songs but a rather harsh tone to her vocals, maybe partly due to the acoustics or the sound set up. One thing I was impressed with was that her guitar was one she'd bought that day from a Bath guitar shop and it was not a standard electric guitar either. It takes some balls to try it out on a big audience as the support act. Joanne's set was comprised of the most recent album, Reckless Heart, in full followed by some songs from the back catalogue voted by fans as the ones they wanted her to play. The album starts off with the uptempo rocky blues 'In the Mood' including a storming riff. She does those rocky riffs really well with ultra fast chord changes and the whole album has an energy about whether it is charting a break-up or a make-up with both types of song on the album. There was a guitar change to one with a great tone but she only used it for a couple of tracks. I particularly liked 'Creeping' and 'Break my heart anyway' but the album is all of a good level, bluesy, raunchy with a sort of 70's feel. She reminded me a little of Stevie Ray Vaughn in the general tenor of the music, lots of great riffs and heartfelt solos. The requested songs were great as you might expect as they were the best of her back catalogue. I don't know their names but I liked the bluegrassy one in particular. All in all an excellent outing.