Forest Arts Centre, New Milton, Hampshire
7th October 2026, 19.30
SEE ALSO: Eleanor McEvoy- 2024 review
SET ONR
I’m On A Mission
The Spanish Word For Heart is Corazon
Good To Be Here
I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Harbour
Why Don’t You Be The One?
Fragile Wishes
The Way You Wear Your Troubles
Zombie
Scarlet Angels
SET TWO
Sophie
Deliver Me
You’ll Hear Better Songs Than This
Jolene
South Anne Street
The Parting Glass
Wrong So Wrong
Fiddle Reel
Milord
Only A Woman’s Heart
ENCORE
People Get Ready
Big Yellow Taxi
This is only the fourth date on her Autumn 2026 tour. We had tickets for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s Viva Las Vegas Elvis tribute the same night when we heard this was on. No choice. We got a refund on the Elvis tickets and came to see her. Same venue as 2024. It’s hard to describe her solo shows. Her records are beautifully produced with a full group, horns, strings, accordion, flugelhorn, yet somehow nothing beats her in concert on her own. In this the only comparisons I can make are Judy Collins and Joan Baez, both also marvellous between songs raconteurs. Then she’s is a first rate songwriter, so dare I say, the next comparison is Joni Mitchell.
Her songs are female in theme. You can’t see many sung by men. Then she excels on guitars, piano and violin so there is plenty of variety in a solo show. That’s instrumental variety, but then you get singer-songwriter, straight rock, folk, electric blues, soul, country, Irish traditional and Edith Piaf.
She also understands the position in music. If you’re Joni Mitchell, or Paul Simon or James Taylor, you base the entire show on your own songs. She knows that while her reputation is growing, she also gets first-time listeners, so she makes it a rule to do at least three covers in a show, though she has so many of her own original songs, that she doesn’t have to. She gets the audience singing at several points. I can’t remember Karen singing along so enthusiastically before!
Tonight she wore a green dress, with a near-orange electric guitar. It subliminally shouted “Ireland!” She has acoustic guitar, electric guitar, ukulele, piano and violin all ready. She said she was delighted that Forest Arts found her a real piano, a Yamaha upright, as she usually uses a keyboard. The piano sounded superb.
The show starts with acoustic guitar for a rocking I’m On A Mission. It’s a new one, released this summer as a streamed single.
The Spanish Word For Heart is Corazon comes next, still on acoustic guitar. It’s from Gimmee Some Wine album. I already had the CD, but I hadn’t seen a vinyl version before, so bought one from the merch stand and got it signed. It displays her ability to do languages!
Good To Be Here sees a switch to ukulele, and is another virtual single, this one from 2025. I missed its release. It gives its title to the tour and you’ll have no problem picking it up, and it was the first invitation to singalong with a spoken prompt every line. It’s on YouTube.
The first cover is I Heard It Through The Grapevine, and she rightly name checks the Marvin Gaye version. We wrote an ELT course and video series called Grapevine and used a sax led instrumental version as the theme. A great version here, but what impressed me most was managing the record fade out by dropping vocal volume and moving slowly back from the microphone. Still acoustic guitar.
She moved to the piano for Harbour, a song popular at weddings for obvious reasons. Its from I’d Rather Go Blonde album. I think it was that great album title that first led me to her work.
Why Don’t You Be The One is another new song. It was piano again. Surely an album must be imminent? It has a great lyric that everyone can relate to. Lines include It’s not hard to charge your phone and Can’t you figure it out on your own?
Fragile Wishes is the parent song, or for us now, the grandparents song. It never fails to bring a tear to the eye for me. The piano part is gorgeous.
She picks up the electric guitar for The Way You Wear Your Troubles. Impressive electric blues, with great guitar playing.
The next cover is from The Cranberries, Zombie, written by Dolores O’Riordan. Still electric guitar. It was an international hit in 1994. Grunge? Alt Rock? Another variant.
I’m avoiding spoilers on introductions, because they’re so much part of her act. She referred to the midterm US election this week in the introduction
Wiki has this on the song, so I’ll use her instead:
Dolores O’Riordan: There were a lot of bombs going off in London and I remember this one time a child was killed when a bomb was put in a rubbish bin – that’s why there’s that line in the song, ‘A child is slowly taken’. [ … ] We were on a tour bus and I was near the location where it happened, so it really struck me hard – I was quite young, but I remember being devastated about the innocent children being pulled into that kind of thing. So I suppose that’s why I was saying, ‘It’s not me’ – that even though I’m Irish it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it. Because being Irish, it was quite hard, especially in the UK when there was so much tension.
Scarlet Angels is a masterpiece. Electric guitar. She gets the audience doing the La la la la part, then soars over it.
THE INTERVAL
Sophie with piano open the second half. It’s another moving song, this one is about a girl with anorexia, and we had family experience too.
Deliver Me is acoustic guitar. It’s from Stuff. I’m not spoiling her introductions, but I hadn’t actually realised what the song was about – abusive Catholic priests. Listening to it today it makes so much more sense. There was a second midterms reference.
You’ll Hear Better Songs (Than This) is an old song from Early Hours. A wonderful title. Go and see her. A nice story with it.
Jolene is a tribute to Dolly Parton’s recent passing. A great raucous version on acoustic guitar.
South Anne Street is probably my favourite of all her songs. On the album Gimmee Some Wine the horn part is absolute magic, but with just electric guitar instead, it’s just as powerful because of the sincerity of the vocal.
The violin came out of her case and we had a tribute to her friend whose funeral was recent. It was a solo The Parting Glass. It’s a favourite tune. Karen is addicted to The Dubliners version, and once called me a music moron for playing The Clancy Brothers version. OK, any version will do, as long as you don’t change the words and call it Restless Farewell, as Bob Dylan did, and he learnt it from The Clancy Brothers. We both loved her violin instrumental which removes the argument about lead vocals.
Wrong So Wrong was violin, but she used the violin bow for a percussive effect instead of bowing it normally. It was guitar on the Naked Music.album version.
I’ll call it Fiddle Reel, and it’s the sort of thing folk fiddlers call a”tune” as there are no vocals. It reinforces that a fiddler can fill a dance floor with no other instruments in sight.
Edith Piaf was named for a rollicking piano version of Milord, a total change of style. It’s sung entirely in French too. It dates from 1959., and it’s been a party piece of hers for years (It’s on the Stuff album).
She picked up the electric guitar again for her most famous song Only A Woman’s Heart with superb singalong from the audience.
ENCORE
She asked for matchboxes. I saw this in 2024 when she got them and used them as shakers for an unaccompanied version of Oh! Breathe Not His Name from her 2017 traditional album The Thomas Moore Project. No one had any. She asked for Tic Tacs, any other boxed sweet? No takers. So she decided not to do it. She thought for a second, picked up her electric guitar and announced Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready. She stressed the I Believe, I Do Believe part and repeated it until everyone was singing along, then she improvised singing over the top of us. We got back home and started looking on YouTube. That actually is her arrangement. The Impressions (with Curtis Mayfield) never did that. Aretha Franklin started with that I Believe part on Lady Soul. It’s used more heavily on Aaron Neville’s solo version. Anyway, her version is astonishingly good.
The second encore was acoustic guitar, she unplugged it, walked up through the audience for a rousing version of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, just using the natural acoustic of the hall.
We agreed. It’s the concert we have most enjoyed this year. She said ‘Spread the word.’ Well, look at the tour list at the start of this review. Try and get to see her if she’s anywhere near you. Check out the albums. I suggest Gimmee Some Wine as a starting point.
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