Review by John and Janet Datchens

“Christmas Hats” at the Stroud Subscription Rooms on Thursday, December 8: An evening with Hattie Briggs featuring The Black Feathers, Natalie Holmes and Asha McCarthy

WELL we knew we were in for a treat, but what a lovely evening it turned out to be when Hattie Briggs invited some of her musical friends and her band to join her on stage for the official launch of her Christmas EP, “A Winter’s Day”.

The Subscription Rooms has hosted Hattie several times now - the crowd were in, the piano was ready in position on stage, we knew the sound would be good, and then Hattie appeared to introduce the evening.

We’re sure that most of the audience also felt, like us, that they were among friends as Hattie has such a nice way of making an event feel like it’s taking place in someone’s (admittedly very large) front room.

She sounded delighted to be back in front of her home fans after her extended tour of the USA.

First on stage was Natalie Holmes who began with three of her own reflective compositions and then sang and played a stunning two guitar/vocal duet with Hattie, “Christmas Bells” based on a poem by Henry Longfellow with a melody written by John Gorka.

The evening continued with various songs from Hattie’s two albums combining with further contributions and collaborations with Natalie (guitar and harmonies); Asha McCarthy and Jasmine Scott-Neale (cello and backing vocals); Matt Park (pedal steel and guitar); The Black Feathers (Sian Chandler and Ray Hughes who create a genre defying sound, combining elements of folk, roots, Americana, and southern rock); and Plymouth based singer songwriter Jack Cookson (guitar, harmonica and vocals).

The Black Feathers sang three of their own songs from their new album and then combined with Hattie to play a wonderful version of Elvis’s "Blue Christmas", including a ukulele solo from Hattie.

Christmas Hats were all donned for the second half with Matt sporting a very fetching pink one.

It opened with a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Jack and Mick Clarke - artfully combined to make Mack. Jack performed two of his own songs followed by “Sound of Silence” and then the band returned.

We were treated to new songs and some of what we now see as Hattie’s standards, with “Autumn Leaves” being amongst my favourites.

These included some highly personalised numbers that Hattie was commissioned to write – “Ricardo's Coming Home”, (ukulele) celebrating “Richard’s” retirement, a quite bluesy one called “Time”, (guitar) and then the emotional rollercoaster of “A New York Winter's Day”, with Hattie on piano, telling the romantic story of a marriage proposal made under the Statue of Liberty and yes, that proposal was accepted and the now married couple were sitting in the row in front of us.

That she wasn’t in floods of tears, but merely dabbing at her eyes, was a major achievement!

What a lovely thing to do, and have such a personally focused song written for a special occasion and a special person.

A very new experience for us was when Asha sat cross-legged on the stage and delighted the packed audience with some classical Indian music on her Indian cello - a piece called "Nat Bhairav".

We had never before imagined the range of sounds that a cello can produce and were certain that we heard the strains of a sitar playing as Asha’s fingers plucked, pressed and zoomed up and down the neck of the cello as she stroked the bow across the strings.

The main performance finished, with everyone on stage together, in a rendition of “White Christmas” enthusiastically accompanied by the audience.

But we weren’t going to let them get away with that, so we had an encore of Hattie and Asha singing the poshest ever version of “Fairytale of New York”, accompanied by Jack, Matt and Jasmine.

So, that leaves us just looking forward to the next Hattie Briggs concert.

Bring it on!