Katie Doherty

King's Hall, Newcastle

25 October 2018

Let's just get this out of the way at the start: Katie Doherty makes me cry. I've seen her many times now, and she always has the same effect. I don't know what it is. She writes simple melodies, and ordinary words about ordinary things, but her songs always make me cry.

She starts the concert at the back of the hall, singing A Rose In Winter (I would have sworn it was traditional, maybe Burns or someone, but no, I'm looking at her new CD and it says she wrote it), walking through the audience, her voice unaccompanied and unamplified, and the sound is so perfect I almost wish the whole concert had been like that. When she sits at the piano and delivers the second song (I'll Go Out) through a microphone, the amplified sound sounds wrong.

But the combination of piano, fiddle (Shona Mooney) and melodeon (Dave Gray) is perfect, and her voice is perfect, and her songs are ... I don't know ... I'm trying to think of a word that's better than perfect.

I don't have any more to say than that. I scribbled some more on the metro home, but it's not important. All you need to know is that this was the best concert I have ever seen, and I've already got a ticket to see her again in January.