Project Description

VIKKI THORN

@ Canberra Theatre

(Live Review)

06/03/18

Reviewer: Benjamin Smith

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Vikki Thorn has made a name for herself playing stages around the country with her sister Donna Simpson for over two and a half decades with seminal country-folk act The Waifs. Tonight, in the capital, she performs the very first solo show of her career to an intimate room holding about 120 people.

Joining her onstage are sometime bandmate Ben Franz and treasured singer/songwriter Heath Cullen. Before she takes the stage The Waifs stalwart Josh Cunningham does a forty or so minute set showing off his impressive skills as a guitarist and as a singer and songwriter in his own right.

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Thorn’s solo performance is, thankfully, not far removed from her work with The Waifs. One of the things that has led to The Waifs enduring success is the relateability of  its two principle performers. The songs are, as expected, simple folky stories about life, love, family and a sense of home. What sells the show and what makes it such a memorable performance is Thorn‘s willingness to let the audience into her own home, her private life, her family’s way of connecting to history and place and country and self. Based in Utah with her songwriter husband, Thorn bares their life together so openly and honestly its easy to feel like an old friend discussing people known intimately for years.

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It can be tempting to think that that’s the whole package- down home country girl does three-chord strum along. The truth is though that Thorn is actually an accomplished musician. Yes, the songs are simple but perfectly so. They’re sparse by choice not as a consequence of limitation. As she’s done countless times over the years, she pulls out the familiar but still awkward Dylanesque neck brace, fits it with her old blues harp and blows the doors open. Its hard to say why it is that her skill with the harmonica is still so surprising after all these years but nonetheless when she fires it up and cuts loose there are very few people who aren’t sent a little sideways.

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At one point she asks Cunningham to join her onstage and to take his pick of acoustic 6 string, lap steel, double bass and whatever else she has lying around. He settles on the double bass and, after admitting that it is an instrument with which he isn’t overly familiar, caresses the most amazing sounds from it.

Housed in the smallest and least used area of the Canberra Theatre, the Courtyard Studio the performance is a wonderfully satisfying start to Thorn’s solo career should she choose to pursue one further. Otherwise, its a treat that those present are likely to remember as something special in the years to come.

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