Hawksley Workman at the Borderline

I discovered Hawksley Workman a few years ago at a festival in Paris, and I was blown away by his amazing voice and incredible stage presence (I have a vivid memory of the trousers he was wearing, with cherries printed on them..).
At the time I had bought his first two albums, “For him and the girls” and “The Delicious Wolves”, but didn’t really followed him afterwards.

So last night I jumped on the occasion to go see him at the Borderline. Actually I didn’t have a ticket but I was lucky enough to find people at the door with a spare. I did miss the supporting act though, which is a shame but seems to happen a lot to me lately.



My first surprise was to see that there was no drum kit on stage, and indeed the whole gig was only Hawksley on guitar and vocals, and Todd Lumley on piano and back-up vocals.
This acoustic set-up did allow Hawksley’s amazing voice to develop fully, and some of the old songs were turned into something completely different. For instance the version of Smoke Baby and Tarantulove were breath-taking.

On the other hand though, this small set-up did remove the craziness his shows used to have, and that is a bit of a shame. “Jealous of your cigarette” is not one of my favourite songs, but it is usually funny and danceable in a strange way; the acoustic version however was simply flat and odd.

Overall, it seems Hawksley Workman is trying to favour his music rather than his show, which is not a bad thing. I just think it must be possible to combine both…