Po' Girl live

Po' Girl; Hullaballoo Community Choir
Venue 1. Ropetackle Centre, Shoreham - by - Sea on Sunday 9th May, 2010
Venue 2. Ralli Hall, Hove, Sunday 16th May 2010

Both of these excellent Brighton Fringe Festival gigs deserve a mention because of the contrasts in what the, pretty much, full houses witnessed.
On the performance side the wonderful Po' Girl were their usual spellbinding selves at each of the gigs, but huge credit should also go to the hard work and perfect blend of voices by all concerned in the Hullaballoo choir at Shoreham. The event kicked off with the Brighton based choir of approximately eighty local people singing songs, written in the main, by members of the Natural Voice Practioners Network. Their entirely accapela singing was as good as anything that I've heard and it was easy to get lost in the emotional impact they generated.
Po' Girl arrived on stage after a short break and as with Hullaballoo played a half dozen or so songs. The two womens voices are entirely different, with Allison Russells beautifully exuberant vocals dominating the hall. Awna Teixeira's vocals, on her self penned songs, have less power but just as much impact with the feeling she is able to generate. Add this to their multi instrumental talents, beautiful harmonies, Benny Sidelingers brilliant playing of his own manufactured dobro & guitars plus Mikey August on drums and you have a band that anyone with a love of American Roots music would happily pay to see several times in a week; which was exactly what I did! Following Po' Girls short set the Choir & they got together to perform four more songs, two of which were written by members of the aforementioned NVPN. All in all, an evening of beautiful uplifting music.
The Hove gig didn't have a full choir but it played with the emotions just as much. Opening was Alexia Chellun with her beautiful pure vocals on self penned songs and with her own acoustic guitar backing. She really has talent but is in a field where so have many others also have and it really needs something different to grab public attention. This duly happened when Rhi Johns arrived on stage to play three songs with her. Of the songs they played they had each written one and there was also the Moustaki/Monnot penned (for Edith Piaf) Milord. The whole gig was transported to a different level with their beautiful harmonies and sheer pleasure in singing. Their performance of Milord almost made you forget anyone else had ever sung it. Maybe they should give serious thought to continuing their dueting?
Finally, Po' Girl arrived to give an emotion filled performance of songs taken mainly from their gorgeous new album, FOLLOW YOUR BLISS. As with the previous week they gave another fine performance of their roots music. It is difficult to fit them into a particular genre covering as they do blues, old-time country, jazz & folk themes, all in their own inimitable style. Highlights were the beautiful love song Kathy, the gorgeous harmonies of Montana with Alli's clarinet taking a solo and the soaring Western skies underpinned by Benny Sidelingers mastery of the dobro. Anyone that is a fan of any of the aforementioned roots genres should see Po' Girl, they won't be disapointed.
A final word of praise for Rhi Johns, not only for her singing (she is also a Hullaballoo member) but also for the enterprise shown in putting on the last two Brighton area Po' Girl gigs. Last year she was disapointed to see that her favourite band weren't playing in Brighton so she contacted them and said she would put them up if they would play Brighton. They responded by saying if she put the gig on they would accept! The rest as they say is (local) history! Mike Morrison