The weather was playing only minor chords outside, dull, cloudy, wet and cold. A palate with one colour, gray.
The same could be said about the jazz standards we all know with its tales of sorrow, unrequited love, violent partners, money and drink problems, sexual passion or the lack thereof.
That’s what I was expecting at Dana Masters’ gig at the Black Box yesterday as part of the 2016 Out to Lunch festival. Dana’s reputation is spreading like wildfire after a … ach look it up on her website. Suffice it to say, she has a voice that can take those old standards and sing them with such tenderness and intimacy that you’re drawn into the lyrics and the world and characters they portray so that, by the time it is over, you feel a little catharsis.
The Charlie Chaplin-written Smile produced a collective lump in the throat to a full house and Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child was another stand-out.
But the surprising thing about the gig was the songs Dana wrote herself (and which will appear on an album coming out in April). It is true to say there was no dip in quality between her songs and the tried and tested soul and jazz canon she and the band treated us to
Originally from South Carolina now lives in Lisburn (via Minneapolis and Los Angeles), Dana possesses a voice that tugs at your heart, taps your feet and engages your imagination.
She sang a self-penned song about Lisburn - I kid you not - and how a friend of hers was in a bad way after losing her husband but how a big group of friends and family came together to help her out, something, she said, wouldn’t always happen in her native America.
A fabulous song, I felt like getting up and giving it a one-man standing ovation!
But the gig wasn’t a tear-fest. There was enough funk, jazz and soul to keep feet tapping, heads swaying and hips gyrating. A great gig as you would expect from Dana and the people she spent six months gigging with at McHugh’s Basement.
Mention must also be given to Holly Rose, an astonishing 15-year old singer/songwriter from Derry who sang her own beautifully crafted songs accompanied by her own guitar.
Outside. the weather was playing boogie-woogie.
