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24 - 26 August 2012
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MARTYN JOSEPH
The Centre Stage, Bournemouth
June 26, 2011

It hardly seems fifteen months since Welsh singer/songwriter Martyn Joseph made his Centre Stage debut in front of a packed house. Playing to another standing room only gathering and still sporting his four guitars, he put on a stunning performance to end this current tour. After a quarter of a century of prolific writing, recording and performing, his enthusiasm has never waned and tonight was no exception. With a new album, UNDER LEMONADE SKIES released since his last visit, Martyn chose to showcase several of the songs and kicked off with You’re the Moment before slowing things down with the mellow ballad No Peace. Just as the next number was being introduced to a hushed audience, a mobile phone rang and the owner walked past the stage talking loudly as he went. Not to be fazed by such rudeness, which is totally out of character for devotees of the Bournemouth Folk Club, Martyn just hoped ‘that his gig didn’t interrupt the conversation too much!’ It was quickly back to the music as Martyn continued with Dic Penderyn (The Ballad of Richard Lewis), a poignant tale of a man hanged following the Merthyr workers rising of 1831 for the crime of injuring a soldier which he clearly did not commit. Even worse, a witness was persuaded by the Home Secretary Lord Melbourne, to lie under oath so that a conviction could be secured. The scene could almost be pictured as Lewis’ pregnant wife yells ‘lift me up boys’ so that she can see her husband for the last time. ‘Hey, Lord Melbourne, how did you sleep then’ illustrated graphically that dark period of English/Welsh relations. The mood then changed dramatically with a new song Still a Lot of Love which, for Martyn was surprisingly optimistic and which had the BFC regulars in full voice on the chorus. ‘Perhaps a song for Take That’ he mused. A couple of concert staples, Wake Me Up and Always Will Be were followed by So Many Lies, another from UNDER LEMONADE SKIES. As this amazing first set drew to a close, Martyn switched to his electric guitar for People Crazy as Me before finishing with Invisible Angel taken from one of his more recent albums, VEGAS and which faded as Martyn retired to the dressing room for a well earned break.

Continuing the theme of championing the underdog, the second set got underway with Working Mother and a very countrified Six Sixty Six before Martyn slipped back into his more familiar melancholy mode with The Good in Me is Dead (‘for the Syrian refugees’). Written with Tom Robinson, Let’s Talk About it in the Morning hit the British top 50 chart and he followed this with two more from the latest album, There’s Always Maybe and the powerful Lonely Like America, interspersed with the inevitable audience request for Cardiff Bay. In 2000 Martyn toured with Shirley Bassey but left after eight shows when there were obvious artistic differences and a lady from the audience complained that he was wearing denim on stage! With unexpected time on his hands THE SHIRLEY SESSIONS was spawned and Martyn did a great rendition of one of the stand out tracks, Kiss the World Beautiful. With curfew time approaching, there was time for another ‘staple’, Love Is before he closed with On My Way, another included in UNDER LEMONADE SKIES and which had Martyn mingling with the audience who were again in fine voice.

The packed BFC clamoured for more and were not disappointed when Martyn returned with the never ending Change Your World and following a terrific guitar intro, Brothers in Exile. An experienced campaigner, Martyn always enjoys a great rapport with his audiences. His stories and anecdotes are interestingly amusing but do not detract from the excellent music on offer. Tuning was kept to a minimum so the audience could enjoy around two hours of continuous top quality music, not to mention some amazing guitar work. Well done BFC, this was awesome stuff. When’s he coming back?

John Roffey