Jenny Mitchell – Kumeu Live June 18, 2022

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Jenny Mitchell was told earlier this morning she has just won the APRA award for Best Country Music Song for 2022. So, she was in Hank William’s Home on High heaven when she started her maiden show at the boutique West Auckland music venue.

Jenny comes from Gore in the Deep South of New Zealand, that most fertile area for Country music artists. She is a prolific songwriter and would best be described as Folk Americana. Her sophomore album Wildfires (2018) won a Tui award for Best Country Music Album, and also garnered a nomination for Alt-Country Album of the Year in the 2020 Australian Golden Guitar Awards, a first for a Kiwi artist.

Jenny MitchellShe was one of the headline acts at the last Auckland Folk Festival, before the pandemic world put everything in suspended animation. Had an immediate presence there amongst a stellar line-up. This was a chance to see this fast-rising star in a home lounge setting, solo with acoustic guitar.

There is a new album in the pipeline and she starts with one of several new songs, Tug of War. Singing about seeing those eyes in smoky haze of some bar late at night. Voice is Folk   Americana with a slight husk in the voice. She sounds like a young Norma Tanega. Have a listen to her mid-Sixties album Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, available on Spotify.

Jenny MitchellTroubadour comes from the award-winning album. Written around the life of a wandering musician, a songster if you like, and the tone is a melancholy fading of the light.

Equally so the new Make Peace. Does she toss and turn in her sleep? She has the subtle chokes in her voice.

Wildfires, where… your lies fall like honey. The voice has a warmer R’n’B tone with a slight adenoidal drop of a Country yodel.

Blackbird is a great take on the Beatles classic from the White Album. Written as a tribute to Black American activist Angela Davis, as was the Rolling Stones Sweet Black Angel.

Mitchell draws from her own life freely in creating her music, and she has a tough inner core of activism as well.

Trouble Finds a Girl is her award-winning song, co-written with Tami Neilson, Chris Wethey and Tali Jenkinson. She is addressing the predators and hustlers that women need to negotiate, having the music industry in mind but more generally as well.

Earlier in the day, I watched Mitchell perform this with Neilson at the at the Winter Best Festival at the Corban’s Art Centre in Henderson.

Tonight, she is joined by Jamie McDell and they give it a rousing R’n’B Country workout of empowerment. There is a connection to the female leads of Sixties Motown Soul with the lyric Burn it down, Sister! 

McDell of course is a well-regarded Folk-Pop singer-songwriter who also has ventured down the Country Americana path since she arose with a burst about ten years ago.

She does a handful of her songs solo. Poor Boy is one written around her father. There is a Springsteen style to the lyrics and in the phrasing, with little leaps of Joni Mitchell high Folk tones.

Daddy Come Pick Me Up and you can hear the influence of John Denver, a favourite of hers, in the Country Pop-accented vocals. The sly tongue-in-cheek humour that the Rolling Stones did with some of their Country songs, like Dear Doctor.

Mitchell addresses her namesake and certainly a deep influence, Joni. Big Yellow Taxi is wonderful as a duet and they give it a little Country tweak. Took all the trees an’ put ‘em in a tree museum.

Finishes with new single, Snakes in the Grass. Country with an R’n’B swing and lift. Love is a torment by definition.

Jenny Mitchell was in a deservedly triumphant mood for this show tonight and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to experience a great young singer-songwriter this close.

Rev Orange Peel

   

 

Rev Orange Peel
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