Richard Hawley

Richard Hawley knows his audience. He may even know them personally. He asks the crowd in Koko who’s there from Sheffield and a roar goes up. “Oh great,” he says, “I do all this fucking work just to bring my audience down here with me.” Whether it’s true or not, his native south Yorkshire hangs heavy in the air. Talking between songs he is like John Shuttleworth’s rockabilly twin, but when he unleashes his tremulous croon all thoughts of ‘Pigeons In Flight’ are banished.

His many years as a session player have given him the self-deprecating but cynical air that goes with that territory. He cannot resist undermining the epic element to his music. Before playing tearsoaked ballad of the year ‘The Ocean’_ he hands the audience a Hoseasons brochure, pointing out the beach where it was written. With ‘Cole’s Corner’ he explains that it’s where his parents met, then after a suitable pause, “and they had a shag and here I am.” But he isn’t the speak-as-I-find ordinary bloke he wants us to think he is. How can he be when he writes songs as emotionally majestic as those?