We’ve been blessed over recent months with visits to Norwich Music City UK from some quality Nashville (Music City) based singer songwriters from, notably Nikki Lane, Lindi Ortega, and now the stunning Lera Lynn, originally from Texas, playing a late set at The Adnams Spiegeltent as part of the Norfolk and Norwich 2016 Festival programme. Now of course, because of Lera’s little chat, I too want to call it the ‘Schpiegeltent’.

It was a bit of a miserable English drizzly Wednesday evening to head out for a 10pm start and queue in the rain which almost certainly had an effect in dampening any boisterous whooping and hollering as the band took to the stage prompting Lera to ask “Are you alive out there?” … I think we were all just drying off and warming up, or perhaps we were a little starstruck, she has great presence.

The band were tight as anything and I thought the set was performed flawlessly, though she later told me she rather doubted that I thought it was absolutely tremendous and with a great sound. Superbly backed by bass, drums, and guitar Lera too played guitar and sang with such an emotional purity and clarity the songs having a real cinematic feel.  This was the first night of the UK tour promoting new album Resistor which carries that soundtrack feel on some rockier tracks but with a country/Twin Peaks twang and an underlying darkness. There’s some absolutely gorgeous sparseness at times, they certainly know when less is more but can rock out too and sure looked like they enjoyed doing so.

The audience were a bit on the quiet side but nevertheless very attentive and appreciative listening to Lera’s between song stories of ordering Indian food at Merchant of Spice and lessons on the pronunciation of ‘Norwich’ she was a captivating and likable, entertaining presence, I think perhaps we were all a little starstuck by her stage presence, charisma and effortless, stunning cool actually. She looked and sounded amazing all in black and with the band in matching blazers who could have stepped straight out of the 50s. The whole band, and show made quite an impression on me. Varied songs from the slow and atmospheric, the dark and brooding plus full on rock and roll. Well structured songs with memorable melodies and gorgeous chord changes … plus of course that voice. For the encore we were treated to some beautiful acapella harmonies from all of them together on a cover of The Zombies’ The Way I Feel Inside.

One of my NNF16 highlights, we were lucky to have her here and I was impressed enough to buy not only the new Resistor on vinyl but also previous album The Avenues.  I’ve not really watched any television for about four years so have never seen the HBO series True Detective but the way so many of my favourites seem to feature on its soundtrack maybe I should check it out. It wasn’t the TV series that brought me here however, it was seeing her name on the festival programme and checking out some YouTube videos. I made the right choice, I loved this gig.

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