Lady Maisery

It’s always a joy to see and hear the marvellous Lady Maisery live, although it’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to, what with one thing and another…

Tonight, M and I were due to see them at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Music Room but we’d booked the tickets before we knew the dates for M’s radiotherapy treatment and - wouldn’t you just know it? - the dates turned out to clash. So, very sportingly, M passed her ticket over to my friend Mel who accompanied me to the gig in M’s place. Thanks very much to both of them.

The band, (l-r) Rowan Rheingans, Hannah James and Hazel Askew are all phenomenal multi-instrumentalists whose voices harmonise (apparently) effortlessly, and who each write brilliant, thoughtful songs. 

Here’s Hazel’s ‘Order & Chaos’ by way of example. A song which looks at life and death through the lens of physics https://youtu.be/k8bvy1Xo5MM

They also play a carefully selected repertoire of traditional songs and covers by writers including Lal Waterson, Tracy Chapman and Björk… check out their gorgeous version of the latter’s ‘Hyperballad’ https://youtu.be/Q_GEAC2V5bw with their own body-percussion as accompaniment! 

I love their voices, their instrumental skills and their politics. Plus, they’re all absolutely lovely, funny and very approachable. Rowan even roped me in to take some pictures, for social media purposes, of them clutching freshly available vinyl copies of their new album, ‘Tender’. See ‘Extra’. Apparently, pressing the vinyl caused the pressing machinery to break and the plant was forced to replace their equipment - an unintentionally “record breaking album”, as Rowan said!

Thanks to the band for a superb night out! 

I’m back over to Manchester tomorrow for the week to help M out while she has a busy run of appointments including daily radiotherapy, another round of chemo and a procedure to insert a port in her chest through which she’ll receive her chemo over the next year rather than via cannulas - which she hates! I don’t blame her. Onwards!