I’ve missed out on a few of these regular nights, but tonight I made good on my promise to myself to shake myself out of my recent gig drought and went to Hush, a regular acoustic night at The Maze, still one of my favourite venues and one that deserves a doff of the cap for being brave enough to promote nights like this that mixes lesser known musicians with bigger names (in Nottingham at least). Like the much missed Acoustickle, Hush is an intimate candlelit affair with the performer on the floor in front of the stage. I’ve said before that not enough people come to this sort of thing, although I could see that my recent work enforced absence from the gigging scene hadn’t allowed other so-called supporters to catch up, Roger was in attendance though. He should write his memoirs or be given a radio show; I can’t for the life of me imagine why we didn’t think to have him on NottinghamLIVE at some point?

First on was Phoebe Ball, who appeared nervous to start with, especially when introducing her songs. When she sings however you realise that the music should always do the talking. She sang a brand new song, ‘Evolution’, live for the first time tonight, and did a cover of ‘Tainted Love’. I checked back, (how lucky that I keep a daily record of my life) to confirm my suspicions that ‘Tainted Love’ had been covered at Hush before, maybe every show has to feature it. I have a brilliant mental image of the lineup all standing in a circle with one foot sticking out doing the old “ip,dip, dog shit, you are not it” to work out who is covering it. I have seen Phoebe before, probably at The Maze, but her name isn’t really out there yet. It soon will be.

My distain and boredom for the amount of ‘one boy and an acoustic guitar’ acts is well documented (I am still very proud of my ‘Bugg repellent’ comment in a recent article), but there are exceptions. Those exceptions are the reason I attend gigs like this because I get to see people like Tom Ash. With an EP to promote (haven’t they all?), Tom is a likeable singer whose songs are an upbeat antidote to the usual shite that people like him play, helping him to stand out like a bag of jellybeans in a health food shop.

Robyn Hughes-Jones was the one person I had specifically turned up to see having had her name recommended to me, (I have actually played her on The Sunday Alternative podcast before so I knew of her but somehow had never seen her live). Again she seemed nervous at first but overcame it once the singing started. I was impressed with what I saw; her voice reminded me of Amy Winehouse on one of her good days. Liam O’Kane didn’t turn up, which was a shame as I haven’t seen him performing solo for ages, and the next act (whose name I can’t remember) didn’t grip me at all so I spent the duration of his set in the front bar putting the world to rights with Lisa Deville, to use her stage name.

Lisa was billed as headliner which is a double edged sword at gigs like this when people lower down the bill tend to go home early and take their audience with them. This happened, which I don’t consider to be sporting behaviour and totally at odds with the projected image of the Nottingham music scene as a big love-in. Lisa played to twelve people (I was one) and they all loved her of course. She deserves to be a massive name and as I only saw her last week, (and wrote about it) there isn’t really a lot more I can say, apart from when I greeted her with a hug, she smelled lovely.

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