When two sensations like Fancy Hagood and Ashley Monroe join forces for a UK tour, you know you’re in for an absolute treat. Blending country, soul, and emotion into every track, the pair announced a string of UK dates following on from The Long Road Festival. Their first pitstop post-festival – Saint Luke’s in Glasgow.
Fancy Hagood is an artist who has been on my radar for a while – known for having an audience locked into his music and also roaring with laughter between songs with stories and anecdotes, seeing him live just brought it all together. Following almost a year since his last Glasgow gig, Fancy took to the stage to a packed out venue on a Monday night playing a variety of original tracks and quite frankly the greatest cover of Robyn’s Dancing on My Own I’ve ever heard.. Someone contact this woman IMMEDIATELY and ensure she’s heard Fancys’ version.
Nobody tells a story quite like Mr Hagood. What was nice about this show was the sheer mix of ages, backgrounds, and communities, but everyone was just there for top-quality country music.
“I was too queer for Nashville, and I was too Nashville for LA” Fancy tells us as he explains the stories behind a lot of his tracks – Don’t Blink being his first independent track – hearing his background and how he has rebuilt a career in the country world is nothing short of impressive and how over the last year, he told the crowd how he fell in love with himself again and it helped him right one of the most brilliant live sets I’ve heard, Ever Really Ready which is the first track on his latest release American Spirit: The Last Drag. Honestly, I could have listened to a Fancy show all night.
It wasn’t long before Ashley took to the stage – returning with the same band that Fancy performed with, “Hey, when you tour together you share everything!”.
You could honestly hear a pin drop in Saint Luke’s – the crowd was locked in to hear Ashley – Ashley’s voice is note perfect on any record – but hearing it live in a converted church? Now that was a different level. The acoustics complemented her voice perfectly, and the audience was captivated in awe – truly – not a single note out of touch. Hands on You is a favourite Ashley track of mine – and paired with a live band, it was like something out of a film.
Just like Fancy, Ashley has a brilliant way of carving stories in between each song – with Heart Like Mine by Miranda Lambert coming from the pair of them going to Dollywood to write – and sat on the porch one night, they thought they heard a bear – Miranda runs inside for a knife and it becomes a funny joke between the pair. The song went on to become Lambert’s 2nd number 1 record on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Ashley Monroe is no stranger to writing an absolute smash hit – with a catalogue spanning creations with Brett James, Gordy Sampson, Steve McEwan, Vince Gill and more – the list truly goes on – but in Glasgow we were treated to several more covers including Jason Aldean’s The Truth and Fancy re-joining Ashley on stage for the classic Kenny and Dolly duet of Islands in the Stream.
I do have to hand it to Ashley. There were moments in the show where she forgot a few lyrics – at one point even stopped the band to question why they hadn’t played another chord – when in fact they had played correctly, she had got mixed up, and I wondered if everything was ok. But bless her, she came out on the encore alone to say that before the show she got the call to say her gran was in the ICU and probably wouldn’t make it and was going to sing a song by her cousin (Carlene Carter) – now, I don’t know about you, but if I had received that news, I would not be able to sing a song, never mind get up on stage and perform to a brand new audience so I take my hat off to Ashley, what an absolute powerhouse and the whole venue just wanted to give her a big hug.
Closing with The Blade, it was an emotion-fuelled evening with two powerhouse vocalists showing Glasgow that country music is still very much alive.
Review by Lauren Page
Photographs by James Edmond Photography
