Reviewed on Thursday September 10 (photo by Ashley Mar)
From the moment she joined support act The Tambourine Girls for a beautiful duet of The Everly Brothers’ ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, Megan Washington demonstrated her authority. She alone was pulling the strings, including those of the heart.
An audience member beside the stage who’d mistaken an intimate gig at The Basement for a 3am stumble into Ding Dong Dang was given a stern look and an “I’ve got my eye on you” gesture. The spectator didn’t dare sing another note all night. When she returned for her own slot just after 10pm, with just a piano (and occasionally her guitarist) to share the stage with, Washington’s command of the audience was even more obvious. Stripped-back arrangements paved the way for her deeply personal lyrics and jazz-trained voice to not only touch your heart, but rip it out.
Although her friend Simon Relf – alone this evening as The Tambourine Girls – had performed it earlier, Washington took on his ‘Townes Van Zandt’, blowing Relf’s version out of the water and briefly suggesting the ex-Deep Sea Arcade guitarist should give up his day job and tout his talent as a serious songwriter. “I got a lot to be happy about / That I want to start being happy about … I saw the distance in your eyes like you lived a thousand lies / I wanted to live one like you.”
During a gig in which death and guitar were, as Washington admitted, the main themes, the (relatively) light-hearted ‘Teenage Fury’ and ‘The Hardest Part’ stopped the crowd getting too introspective. The showstopper was ‘Begin Again’, a song that finds its power in its raw emotion and honesty. The best singer-songwriters bare a bit of their soul in every performance. You can count Washington among them.
