Her Make Believe Band is a talented acoustic duo made up of Cy Winstanley and Vanessa McGowan. Formed in the UK, the band have been touring the country recently – I was lucky enough to catch their Lyttelton performance.
Winstanley moved to London in 2004, writing and performing around the UK. This included support for the Violent Femmes at The Forum, he also played at the Royal Festival Hall, The Borderline, Cornbury Festival and Toast Festival. In 2007 Her Make Believe Band was formed when Vanessa moved to London after studying jazz bass at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. There she had performed with an impressive array of America’s jazz musicians, performed in New York and also toured Costa Rica.
On this tour they played as a three piece (featuring David Khan) with each of them singing at some stage; Winstanley on guitar, McGowan on double bass and Khan on banjo. This line up cut back from their recorded four piece – Sebastian Weiss and Tom Greenhalgh also feature on their album AM Radio (Vanessa orchestrated this album release on their own label Old Oak Music).
Their music is a soft soulful mix of country/jazz/folk, all genres I think of as being “live”, so it’s no surprise that they had that somehow silky quality to listen to. With one mic set up between them, singing backing vocals over each other’s shoulders (which worked really well!), their voices all sounded absolutely amazing.
It felt very suited listening to their grounded, heartfelt songwriting in the shelter of the Harbourlight ….the audience at tables… the fairy lights…. it was all rather touching really; one of those melting experiences you get with good live blues/folk music.
I really loved this gig, if you get the chance you should definitely see these guys – you’ll be glad you did!
