Lucy Hall - Live Lines
I’m not exactly throwing the windows wide to shout ‘We Did It’, but live music is beginning to return to our shores. I myself went to a gig again recently for the first time since March 2020. It was strange, surreal and beautiful, but above all, it was like coming home. This is the story of Lucy Hall’s ‘Lines’ EP and the accompanying release show at The Water Rats in London.
Image Credit: Coco Jackson.
Musician Lucy Hall has been singing and playing guitar since she was thirteen. As well as this, she also plays piano, clarinet and saxophone. Her diverse taste in music (from soul, pop, folk, jazz, classical and musicals) has led to her performing in theatre shows and with the BBC Elstree Concert Band. Recently, Lucy has been teaching in the RAF Training Corps as a band and choirmaster.
Her ‘Lines’ EP is a culmination of many years of writing and performing at pubs and open mic nights. As with many artists, Lucy took to artistic endeavours during lockdown, diving headfirst into recording her debut EP with housemate and fellow musician Tom Powell. The five-track release was preceded by the single of the title track in June. The full EP would arrive on the 16th of July, followed by the gig on the 22nd with support from lilo and Oliver Wood.
EP artwork by Charlotte Handley.
The Water Rats in London’s King’s Cross is a 19th century building, historic for many reasons, but famous for hosting Bob Dylan’s first ever U.K. gig in 1962. Other big names to play the venue have included The Pogues, Oasis and Katy Perry.
When I rounded the curtain on the venue side, lilo had already settled into their set on the stage. lilo are a duo formed of Christie Gardner on acoustic guitar and Helen Dixon on keyboard, with both taking lead vocals and harmonising together. Their banter about Love Island with the audience eased any tension that might’ve been in the air about being in a crowd during the pandemic. The room was laid out with tables, masks were encouraged when not seated and by the end of the night every seat was filled.
I jumped into one of these seats in time for Oliver Wood’s set. The jazz pianist, guitarist and vocalist had brought a band with him in the form of Harry Denton on drums and Dermot Gillespie on bass guitar. As well as showcasing his own material, he performed a piano cover of The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ and impressed with his excellent guitar skill on John Mayer’s ‘Neon’. Between sets, Lucy was natural in her role of compère, just as excited to present these acts as she was for her own music.
The Oliver Wood band would also serve as Lucy Hall’s backing for the duration of her performance, the applause was encouraging when the musicians returned to the stage. Wood played introductory piano as Lucy Hall stepped up to the microphone and addressed the audience:
‘Thank you for coming, this is mad! Have you all listened to the EP? I really hope you have! You might recognise this one.’
Hall added acoustic guitar to the sound, the first song of the evening was also the first on the EP – ‘No One Has To Know’. Oliver Wood dropped in on backing vocals, the crowd cheered as Hall reached hard in the chorus. ‘Hello everybody. How are we doing, we all good?’ Lucy introduced the band, giving each member a spot in the song, first with Harry Denton elaborating on the beat, then Dominic Gillespie taking a bass solo, clean and soulful. ‘Go on Oli.’ Wood jumped into a jazzy piano lead before the lyric returned - ‘So take me home…’
The band’s style on No One Has To Know is harder. Inevitably when live drums are used in a small space, the volume is bound to go up, despite Denton’s dampening of his kit. Both the studio and live counterparts of this EP have passion in different ways. The EP is quiet and contemplative, allowing the more nuanced notes in Hall’s delivery to really shine. Whilst drums are present throughout the live take, they make an appearance later in the studio. Whether it’s the closeness of the live band, the presence of an audience, or really feeling the lyric in the moment, Lucy Hall absolutely sang her heart out in her opening piece.
‘How amazing are these guys? Right? It feels so good to play with a full band, I’ve never had that before. For those of you who know me from pub gigs and open mics and stuff like that, I had a very good friend of mine, Ian on bass, but he’s moved to Sheffield so he can’t be here tonight! I love him. I love him. But as a trio, it’s the biggest I’ve ever heard my music, so now I get to have these guys behind me. Welcome to my merry band of gentlemen who are joining me this evening. This is Midnight Light.’
‘Midnight Light’ is more intimate than the EP’s opener and features some of my favourite lyrics from this collection of songs. ‘In our midnight conversations, before we fall asleep, tell me what’s this space in the in-between of you and me. And how did we end up here? Tell me what’s on your mind. It’s just between you and I, in this Midnight Light.’ The straight piano chords on Hall and Tom Powell’s studio recording are embellished with a jazz sensibility in Oliver Wood’s performance. The sparse bass playing is faithfully recreated by Gillespie, supporting the vocal about a relationship on the edge of doom.
Image Credit: Alex Tatner.
Somebody hands Lucy a glass of water. ‘Thanks, it’s really hot up here.’ Lucy said her friend Martin wanted her to wear a green jacket so that when she took it off, they could wolf-whistle. Someone proceeded to wolf-whistle and shouted ‘Get that t-shirt off!’ to laughs from the audience. A good segway into merchandise.
Lucy Hall was selling white t-shirts with her name and logo on them at the back. ‘Actually whilst we’re talking about t-shirts. Sophie Parker here in the red dress in the middle, wonderful, wonderful dear friend, she is the most creative person I know, she does all sorts of-’ Sophie Parker, who was sitting right in front of my table shouted ‘I love you!’ ‘She made the t-shirts, so it’s her time and effort that went into them, so.’ This was followed by hearty applause from the audience.
Harry Denton and Dominic Gillespie. Image Credit: Alex Tatner.
‘But if you’ve been to gigs before, and there are a few familiar faces here, thank you very much for sticking around. It’s been a year and a half off of any form of live music, which is mad but welcome back to enjoying music safely! But for those of you who may have been to a gig before of mine-’ Someone asks, ‘Is it Wonderwall?’ No Wonderwall tonight. Lucy Hall began strumming her guitar. ‘If you’ve been to a gig, you’ll also know I’m a massive ‘80’s and ‘90’s and ‘00’s soul and pop fan. So I’ve put a few surprises in the middle of this one. This one’s Solo.’
‘Solo/So Low’ is a Lucy Hall composition, featuring sprinklings of other popular music. The first clip I recognised was ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyoncé. Then Lucy turned the clock back with ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ by Whitney Houston, which the crowd were all over, clapping along without prompt. A little snippet of ‘Believe’ by Cher took us into Motown classic ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. In the same breath, Lucy switched to Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’ to big cheers and singing along from the crowd. The song seemed to change mid-sentence into Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’. My favourite reference was ‘Never Too Much’ from Luther Vandross which surprisingly had little reaction at The Water Rats. From here, Hall went back into the song proper. When I spoke to her later, Lucy told me she’d once had R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’ as part of the track, but since he was rightly confined to the bin, she’d removed it. A good decision.
Lucy tuned her guitar and mused on the fact that Drop D was typically a metal tuning. Lots of great music has been written in Drop D, and it does always seem to be heavy.
‘It’s a Sunday morning, you’re waking up next to the person you’re in love with. Woo. And that someone has made you breakfast in bed, you’ve got the coffee going, don’t laugh, I know you love it as much as I do! But, but, but, but, there’s a feeling involved. Ooo. And that is that, you know however much you love that you’re there physically, and you love the sun and the coffee and the breakfast and all that that goes with it-’ Someone pops a cork. ‘Chin chin. You have that kind of underlying feeling that you shouldn’t really be there. The relationship isn’t what you want, you’re not getting what you want out of it.’
Oliver sat back from his piano in favour of guitar for this one, though the piano on the studio cut of ‘City Sirens’ is some of my favourite in these songs. With both guitarists playing, Lucy called it a ‘Tracy Chapman vibe’. Hall played the rhythm parts while Oliver injected some melody as well as singing backing vocals. Recordings made by Lucy of atmospheric city sounds can be heard on the studio recording. Though the entire lyric of City Sirens is tremendous, these lines stand out to me: ‘Just tell me if I ask too much of you, ‘cause no one makes me nervous like you do.’ Of all the songs on the Lines EP, this is the one that is most faithfully recreated by the live band.
‘We’ve actually come to the pièce of the set, the pièce de résistance.’ Someone in the crowd says ‘Jeez.’ It’s impossible not to hear when the audience vocalises their thoughts at this venue. ‘Ooo jeez. Or did I hear cheese? This was the single that came out four weeks ago now? Thank you for all listening to it or downloading it. But this is the first piece of music that I released in about seven years? I only did one single when I was about eighteen, there was a few here that were at the gig. I hired a space at The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, not far from here for eighty quid and just invited my friends around, it was great, but it wasn’t this! I’ve got t-shirts now!’ Big cheer. ‘And I’ve given it a lot more time and attention, that it needs. So thank you also to Tom Powell, I can’t see you-’ Someone shouts ‘He’s here!’ “It wouldn’t be recorded without him, he really was the driving force. He just heard me tinker about on the piano and he’d be like ‘You really need to record that’. He’s put an organ on every single song on the EP.”
Tom replied, ‘Love an organ. Churchy vibes.’
Lucy Hall also gave Moths and Giraffes their first shout-out at a gig, so thank you Lucy! She introduced the EP’s title track, not playing an instrument for the only time in the set. She likened a part of the piece to a Michael Bublé song. This piece is about drawing a line in the sand. Lucy sang really passionately here, building the song up, which was reflected by the performance of the band, especially Harry Denton. This song got the biggest cheer of the evening so far. The studio recording is more sombre, I particularly love the subtle strings left low in the mix which lift up gently as the band did in their performance without them. Certainly representative of the sound of the EP, it makes a fine choice as a first single.
‘So I’m gonna bring the volume down a bit and do a song on the EP that is just piano and vocals, one that I didn’t really know what to do with, erm, it didn’t suit the soul-pop vibe we’ve got going - I’ll just go over to the piano.’ Once there, Lucy struggled to reach the pedals. “He’s got really long legs, Oli. This song is called Compliments and Kisses. You know when you’re first single and there’s people that you’ve really liked for a while, like platonically, come out of the woodwork and saying ‘Can we go for a drink?’ and things like, you know, ‘Just us’.”
The audience laughed. There was definitely some solidarity there. ‘Compliments and Kisses’ is the last song on the EP and the most passionate Lucy Hall performed all evening. It was also lovely to see her playing the piano as it seems some of these songs began that way. Hall and Powell embellish the track in their home studio with the same level of strings used in the title track. Despite the lack of acoustic guitar and a rhythm section, there’s still unity with the rest of the Lines EP in this song.
Lucy’s tracklisting on the EP was carefully chosen, with one of the hardest hitters selected to be the closing number. Her decision to play these tracks in the same order is no accident, the live set takes you on the same journey, except the audience were privileged to feel that emotion generated in real time in the same room.
Oliver Wood, Lucy Hall and Harry Denton. Image Credit: Alex Tatner.
‘We can’t end on a sad song. Nah that’s not gonna work, boys come up, we’ve got one more.’ The band returned to the stage from the audience. Oliver Wood spoke into his microphone: ‘My word you have such short legs.’
‘How are we doing? Are we enjoying ourselves? Me too. This last song, a few of you have known me since I was yay high, and when I was yay high I was playing in pubs. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have been allowed in. They let me play, because I think in hindsight, because I’d pestered them a lot, and they paid me in packets of crisps and Coca-Cola. So I started playing guitar when I was 13 I think? And I only started playing it because my brother also played the guitar and he was really good. And I’m a Leo and I’m really competitive. Turns out he’s still much better than I am, he had the skills and I was just playing sad Joni Mitchell songs. And this song is- we’re bringing it full circle, going back to my teenage years. This is one of the first songs I learned and it still holds a great place in my heart. It’s Ed Sheeran’s Cold Coffee.’
Oliver Wood had switched to the softer tone of an electric piano sound and harmonised on some vocal parts with Lucy. The audience were clapping along, whistling as Lucy reached in her vocal. This was a celebration of a job well done, of an evening Hall had clearly put a lot of thought into. The place was full, the audience were supportive and the EP was well and truly launched. Everybody loved her and her music. At the end, she thanked the audience and the band, hardly audible over the thunderous sound of applause.
Continue reading for our Q&A with Lucy Hall. We ask about the recording of the EP with Tom Powell, we learn more about ‘City Sirens’, the EP artwork and Lucy’s work outside of her own music. All this and more below!
Image Credit: Coco Jackson.
1. You recorded your debut EP 'Lines' at home throughout lockdown, how long have these songs been floating around in your mind for?
Hi Teri! Yes, oh the instruments were amazing to have during lockdown - a real saviour. Netflix nights quickly got tedious but I luckily had another outlet. This project has been on my mind for a couple of years actually, it’s been a really long process. I started 2019 trying to write a song per month, as a form of self-reflection, a sort of self-care, but with working full time, a commute, teaching, general life, I just never had the time to get them recorded. Being at home for most of 2020 changed that! Here we are in July 2021, and we’ve finally made it to the release.
2. The recording was done with your housemate Tom Powell. Were you constantly throwing ideas around even when you weren't recording? Were you ever able to switch off from it?
Great question. Oh it was a constant source of discussion - neither of us are known for our ability to switch off. Music comes naturally in our flat - he’s a musician himself too, so it’s not unusual to spend lunch breaks or evenings practising or playing around with covers. We also did Facebook livestreams on Saturday nights during lockdown, to try and keep people’s spirits up, so a lot of lockdown was spent getting songs together for those - we took requests on the night and played them on the fly, so my back catalogue of covers grew very fast, very quickly! So many ideas for the EP came very organically - we’d just be having dinner and chatting about the introduction, or chorus, or middle 8 of a song and what we could do with it. I’d go over to the piano and try it out. It was so great to work on this with another person, having another perspective was so helpful.
3. Were the live drums done at your home too? How did the neighbours feel about that?
Believe it or not, they’re all electronic! I wish I had the space for a kit, but I’m not sure the neighbours would.. I’d never played or heard my music with drums before - it had always been Cajon that we’ve used at gigs before. Hearing how they could bring a kind of groove to my traditionally ‘sad and slow’ songs, that was a real ‘aha’ moment for me.
4. I'm always curious about the inspirations behind an artist's songs. What inspired 'City Sirens’?
Phew, tough question that. It stemmed from a Sunday morning, waking up slow with someone that I loved. You know those mornings with a coffee, sun shining through the window, and in typical London style, the sound of the traffic outside and the world waking up - and I felt amazingly happy in that moment, content, peaceful, but I didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel like I should be there, in that relationship, and I realised that I was incredibly scared of being in love again - I wasn’t ready for that.
5. There's a lot of beauty in 'The Lines EP' artwork, who created that?
Thank you. The wonderful artist who helped design it is Charlotte Handley and she goes under @lotts_draws. We were actually in a saxophone quartet back in high school, and at the start of lockdown she started selling some of her original prints on Instagram, and doing things like personalised cards. I got in touch and she was up for the task - she has a beautiful watercolour style that I adore.
6. It's great that you plugged your support acts ahead of your gig at The Water Rats! How did you first find out about Oliver Wood and lilo?
Thank you. They’re the most amazing musicians and I’m so happy that they were up for joining me. Oliver and I met when I played for a theatre show back home in Ipswich a few years ago. He was the Musical Director and just the kindest, most talented soul. Helen and Christie of lilo, we met through mutual friends and got on when we quickly realised we have very similar music tastes! I’ve always loved both of their original music, and it was an absolute pleasure to have them all on board.
7. This gig served as the launch event for the EP, what was your favourite moment that evening?
Oh man, what a night. Can I only pick one?! I don’t think for me it was a moment, I think it was the overwhelming sense of love and kindness in the room. Everyone was there to enjoy the music, show their support and have fun. During the set, I would say it was during ‘Lines’. There’s a moment where the whole band stops after the middle 8, and solo vocal takes us in to the final chorus. There was just a second where I paused, looked around the room and saw people that I loved, enjoying the show, and I don’t think that’s a feeling that you can recreate very often. I was on such a high.
8. With your diverse musical taste and talent, who were the artists that inspired you growing up?
Ooh, there were so many that I loved. Growing up, so we’re going back to around 13 when I first started playing guitar - that was a time of James Morrison, Colbie Caillat, Paolo Nutini, Duffy, KT Tunstall. A few years later I had growing obsessions for Jamie Cullum, Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading, and Cat Power - I had ‘Lived In Bars’ on repeat for about three years.
9. Some of your other work has involved performing for theatre shows, what was your favourite production to be a part of?
Great question. I’ve always loved musical theatre and I’m so glad that shows are starting to open again. Favourite production, I’d have to choose the first, I think, that a friend who led a theatre group asked me to be involved in - it was Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Assassins’ in Colchester where I was at Sixth Form, and I played Clarinet and Alto/Tenor Sax. I’ve always loved Sondheim and the music in that is amazing - tough, but amazing.
10. You also teach in the RAF Air Training Corps as a band and choirmaster, how did you become involved with that?
Yes, I’ve always been interested in Military Music - I had ex-army music tutors growing up, and we’d spend lessons doing a lot of watching the Edinburgh Tattoo, and they got me involved in days playing with The Parachute Regiment Band in Colchester and The Central Band of the RAF in West Ruislip. When I moved to Woolwich a few years ago, I was looking for a musical community project to get involved in to help lay some roots - I think I just Googled something like ‘young people music Woolwich’ and up popped the 56 (Woolwich) Squadron Air Training Corps. I had no idea what they did at the time, had no history of being a cadet myself, but dropped them an email to see if they needed a hand, popped down one evening and it turned out that they were looking for someone to help with the marching band and prepping them for events and competitions. The young people involved are fantastic and it has been amazing to be involved.
11. With your writing and recording throughout the pandemic, has there been more music prepared that could be for a future project?
Yes, The Lines EP came very organically through a year of self-reflection, but I have songs from before that I would love to reimagine now with a full band. I played one of my older songs at the launch gig ‘Solo/So Low’ - it brought so much depth to it that I had never heard before, and I’d love to see how we can make them sound. This launch has given me so much drive to keep this momentum up, the response has been amazing and I’m so glad that it’s all come together. It was a huge team project, and I’m so grateful for everybody that’s been involved - I couldn’t have done it without them and I’m very, very lucky.
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Lucy Hall’s ‘Lines’ EP is available to download and stream in all the usual places.
For more information about Lucy and her music, visit her official website.
Follow Lucy Hall on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @lucyhallmusic.
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