Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Television may have brought the name of Vonda Shepard to the vast majority of British music lovers but the genuine appeal of her touching song writing and piano playing is the truth of why she has retained that adoration from her audiences and the abundance of spirit in her recording career. Vonda Shepard is remarkable, a woman of clear and precise musical beauty and to whom the smile never seems to fade.
On a day when the music in the city was perhaps at its zenith, when almost every bar and venue was hosting music, setting free the possibility of a true and meaningful experience, Vonda Shepard made her way to the Epstein Theatre and produced a show of beautiful arrangements, the flowering of a musical conversation that bloomed and flourished with an audience keen to witness a musician’s virtue being positively adored.
Television may have brought her to the attention of the British fan but the music, the delicate couples with the rocky groove and the sentimental lyrics are what have made her the incredible spectacle she has rightly become; television may have exposed her subtle robustness but it is the keys that have given her voice life and as other venues in the city paced themselves handsomely on an October night, this was a moment in which the lungs filled with strength and the audience boomed out with pride.
Opening the night with a couple of songs off the last album Rookie, the inspired I Just Don’t Get It and Walk On The Water, Vonda Shepard took the audience through 90 minutes of songs without a breath out of place or a heart not being affected by the quality of the delivery by her or her band.
With a fantastic version of Luther Ingram’s and Mack Rice’s Respect Yourself bring the sense of drama to the fore, Roll In The Dirt, the story of someone else’s Time in the shadows but being turned into a song in Another January and Baby, Don’t You Break My Heart Slow all making the evening swim with the flow of a raging but tameable river, Vonda Shepard made the evening sweet, divine and cool.
A fantastic night of music, delivered with charm by a very sincere musician, one who grasps and shows the audience that music is not just to be admired but to be smiled with.
Ian D. Hall