Saturday night’s all-women-on-stage Loudhailer special – Vicki Genfan & Sally Barker, with support from Saffron Byass hit the right spot for the crowd at Willerby MC Hall last night. Saffron’s serene guitar style and smooth voice was a gorgeous opener for the evening. Amongst some choice covers, Saffron’s self penned songs, including the beautiful Let It Go from her album Speak Your Truth showcased her song writing, and bluesy voice.
Main event of the evening, Rich & I were delighted to introduce the super-talented Vicki Genfan & Sally Barker who dazzled the Willerby crowd with a show of superb musicianship and wordplay. New Jersey guitarist, Vicki, and founder member of The Poozies – Sally – have a winning combination – performing on each other’s songs, and telling some animated and entertaining stories along the way.
Sally’s powerful yet soulful voice and instinctive stage presence enthralled the audience from the moment she walked on stage. Kicking off with some of her finest originals – audience participation from the off, we were all singing Money’s Talking – Sally threw in some quirky covers. A splendid performance of Genesis’s I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) was preceded by Sally’s captivating tale of how she came to play it (dallying pre-children days, house on fire, melted vinyl and a determined resolution.)
Guitar virtuoso Vicki demonstrated a selection of the 35 (yes, 35!) alternative tunings she uses. We were treated to an enlightening glimpse of her guitar master-class style as she explained her guitar playing journey from three chord folk songs, through the delights of the Dropped D, to the endless possibilities of guitar slapping and finger tapping. For the climax of the story Vicki took a deep breath and performed a thrilling rendition of her composition Atomic Reshuffle which won her the Guitar Magazine Superstar award in 2008. Vicki is the only woman to win the prestigious award, and with judges including Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, that’s no mean feat. Sound engineer Tay Hoyle – who plays a main part in displaying the intricacies and detail of Vicki’s sounds – maximised the impact of both string tapping and guitar slapping beats to perfection.
The whole set sparkled with fun and laughter, a perfect combination of natural stage presence and polished performance. By the end of the night smiles all round the room shone in the candlelight. When Sally produced a bag of fruit and veg’ shaped percussion for willing volunteers to choose from everyone was grinning, tapping and shaking along to a lively and harmonious rendition of Stephen Stills’ Love The One You’re With. Fabulous!
Thanks to Opher Goodwin who took these top photos of the night. Click on an image to enlarge, and scroll through…
Visit our website – Rich & Lou Duffy-Howard
A very short clip…Love The One You’re With
2 thoughts on “Genfan & Barker Willerby Review”
Comments are closed.