Bywater Call & Lauren Housley

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Foxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, Staffordshire - It’s a cold autumnal night in the middle of October, but instead of heading down a motorway and to the bright lights of one of the big cities, I head across country on the A53 and don’t even leave my home county. I’m heading to Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands and a venue I know well.

The Foxlowe Arts Centre is known for hosting the headliners at the Leek Blues and Americana Festival which only finished a couple of weeks ago - 30 gigs in 13 venues over 5 days and well worth a visit, just so you know for next year – and is the biggest venue in Leek for this kind of gig. Tonight, it plays host to a four, but normally a six-piece band from Yorkshire, which Bob Harris holds in high esteem and a seven-piece band from Toronto in Canada, who are held in very high esteem by anyone who’s heard them.

Tonight’s headline is Bywater Call with Support from Lauren Housley and the Northern Cowboys - and the gig is sold out. I ask you, what better way is there to start a weekend ?

The first thing you notice when you enter the venue - apart from the bar - is the fact that the stage is rammed with gear. Guitars, keyboards, drums, space for a brass section, and a myriad of pedal boards that are almost the size of the keyboards, have all been squeezed into a space that’s less than a couple of dozen feet wide, by a dozen feet deep. I wonder where the actual players will fit and if Ms. Parnell, who does like to ‘bust a few moves’ in her time will manage to do so tonight. We will watch with bated breath, to see how things turn out over the next couple of hours.

First up tonight though is a band I’m not too familiar with…

Lauren Housley and the Northern Cowboys - The press release says that Lauren is ‘an award-winning singer and songwriter hailing from Yorkshire and a young female artist and recent mother of two’. Fair enough.

Lauren normally performs as part of a six-piece band but tonight we only have four including Lauren. Thomas Dibb will entertain us on guitar, Mark Lewis on bass, both long time members of the full band apparently, and we have Hohner ambassador, Clive Miller on harmonica or ten ! Clive, it appears, has come prepared for all eventualities.

A bit of research shows that Lauren is quite established and has released three albums independently already, she won the Best Song at the UK Americana Music Awards 2024 for ‘High Time and was also nominated for Live Act of the Year. All this beggar’s belief that her name hasn’t registered on my dial before now. Where have I been living ?

The band opens with ‘One Step Closer’ and then the aforementioned ‘best single’, ‘High Time’, which itself has a great melody and hook to go with it. You can see why it won.

‘What’s Troubling You Child’ was written during lockdown and is taken from her latest album ‘The Girl from the North’. Housley adds to the sound with an acoustic as well as vocals and the other two chaps add harmonious bv’s whilst serenaded at the back by Millers harmonica. This is all very pleasant stuff and is being very well received by the people of Staffordshire.

‘The Waiting Game’ and ‘Three Wishes’ follow the same theme with a slow, gentle pace before Lauren decides that they’re going to up the ante and give us the chance to dance the night away – this will be a challenge as the place is already full and space is at a premium. ‘This Ain’t the Life' is faster paced, but not too much, and “our only chance to have a bop” says Lauren. This proved to be a little ambitious, this early for Leek, but there was plenty of swaying going on. Baby steps, eh ?

Before you know it, we’re at the last song ‘All You Need is a Friend’ and Lauren, not one for being discouraged by the lack of audience participation in the dancing stakes, invites us to sing along, which everyone is quite happy to do.

Now as Supports go, this was really nice and comforting. We weren’t exactly whipped into a frenzy in preparation for what was to come from the Canadians, but it was very pleasant and most enjoyable. I’m sorely tempted to look out for the full band experience soon enough, as a recent nomination for ‘Best Live Act’ says they have a lot more to offer when they’re not paired back for a support slot. Bob Harris of BBC Radio 2 fame says of Lauren, “She’s one of my favourite UK artists. I really love her sound”. On this showing, Bob, so do I now.

Lauren Housley and the Northern Cowboys are (for tonight, anyway): -

Lauren Housley (vocals)
Thomas Dibb (guitar)
Mark Lewis (bass)
Clive Miller (harmonica x 10)

Bywater Call – Now that Lauren’s gentle persuasion is over with, we have a band who define themselves as a ‘powerhouse seven-piece Southern soul, roots rock band’ and based on a previous experience, that ‘rock’ part is very underplayed.

The band arrive on stage and start as they mean to go on. This is loud and fast paced. ‘Sweet Maria’ is a thunderous tune from their latest album ‘Shepherd’ and it sets the tone for the whole evening. With the intro set up nicely, Meghan Parnell appears stage left and proceeds to belt out the tune like there’s no tomorrow. This is what this band is known for and what we’ve come to see.

‘Forgive’ and ‘Arizona’ from the first album follow, with no sign of the pace slowing down. The brass section are on form, justifying my impression from the last time I saw them – that there might only be two of them, but at times it sounds like there are six – and the back beat from McCarthy on drums and Meusel on bass is a solid as ever.

‘For all We Know’ starts off slow with Meghan’s soulful voice putting shivers down your spine before the tempo picks up once again. She didn’t even get the chance to ask for audience participation and hand claps for ‘Falls Away’ as they came in force, because you just couldn’t help yourself. For a band that’s never set foot near the Staffordshire Moorlands before, their reputation has travelled well. Every song is so well received.

If Leek hadn’t bought into this already, the band were about to seal the deal in a big way. The Stephen Stills classic, ‘Love the One You’re With’ shows the sheer talent and ability of every band member with Meghan’s vocal wrapping around everything for comfort. The song goes on for what seems like ten minutes and is epic in every way. The interplay between sax and trumpet was a pleasure to see and hear, especially when they blazed in for the middle eight before taking it down a notch for the sax to take over with a jazzy, funky, Latin groove style solo. By now, Parnell has sat down at the front of the stage to let the band take over, and just when you think she’s about to return, Dave Barnes ripped into a very bluesy solo of his own, with absolute dexterity backed up with a wonderful Hammond sound from John Kervin bringing everything together. You couldn’t help but be blown away by this. Parnell returns to finish it all off with a rousing vocal at the very end and says… “the band ladies and gentlemen”. That’s all she needed to say. Everyone knew what she meant, and the applause went on and on.

By now, they’d put everyone on a high and there was no letting up now that they’d got us there. ‘Holler’ is a vivacious delta blues-based stomper, kicked off by Barnes and Parnell before the band hits you hard again, but it’s in the middle where it really gets you as it comes with the rudest segway change you’ll ever hear when two songs are mixed together – if you can’t blend it naturally, smash into it and blatantly admit it – Barnes’ guitar launches into the classic riff of Led Zep’s 'Kashmir', taking everything in a completely different direction for a while before heading back from whence they came.

Oh. My. Word.

The crowd was still a bit raucous after all that power and the conversations carried on a bit too long for the band who were eager to get on with things. That’s when Parnell took things into her own hands with an introductory vocal for ‘Left Behind’ without the use of the microphone that stopped everyone dead in their tracks and silent - there’s a time to chat and a time not to. Parnell has such a powerful voice projected with such clarity and without a waver in sight, you can see why she’s held in such high esteem.

‘Colours’ saw keyboards player John Kervin take over the vocals, everyone else in the band stopped, bowed their heads and let him get on with it. They all came back into play with ‘Song of Peace’, a huge gospel anthem before the band pay homage to fellow Canadian rockers ‘The Band’ and their version of ‘Weight’ with a really funky groove from the drum and bass boys and some cheeky percussion grooves from the brass section added for good measure.

The final song was 'Everybody Knows' but not before Meghan announces that drummer, Bruce McCarthy, was celebrating his birthday today, but to save him from the embarrassment of being sung Happy Birthday to - he wasn’t eight, after all – she suggests we all yell happy birthday to him. So, we did.

After this, the band take their leave, which is a bit of a precarious thing to do with so much gear on the stage, but they do it all the same before returning for an encore. Meghan says it’s been a great night, but there’s a hint of surprise in her voice. Did she not expect Leek to be up to the task. Did Cardiff set the bar so high that Staffordshire wouldn’t be able to reach such high standards ? The encore was ‘Talking Backwards’ and it finished the night off perfectly.

You know, this band exudes such energy delivered at a high-octane pace that culminates in one hell of a performance that has to be seen to be believed. There are still some nights left on this tour and I would urge you to go. Just go.

The only downside of all this, is that we have to wait another twelve months for them to tour over here again – unless they decide to hit our festival scene in the summer ? Here’s hoping anyway.

Bywater Call are: -