I couldn’t help thinking that listening to Nick Yarris, standing on the stage of the Globe Theatre, talking about his 23 years in solitary confinement in a prison, was probably almost as moving as anything written by Shakespeare himself. Ok, I know that like Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, which works on behalf of people facing the death penalty all over the world, Nick spoke for a bit too long and was a bit repetitive, but that didn’t blunt his, or their, message.

Nick Yarris

Of course we’d come along mainly for the music, and the opportunity to enjoy it in these most incongruous surroundings, the wonderful replica of the Elizabethan theatre that staged many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, built only a stone’s throw from its original site. And so had Whiskyfun favourite Ron Sexsmith, whom we spotted with some of his band members in the pit, and who was happy to discuss the merits of his fine new album, Time Being, and things Vancouver Island, with the Photographer during the interval.

The Photographer with Ron Sexsmith, Karine Polwart, Allison Moorer, Steve Earle

I could see that Ron, like us, was very taken with Scottish singer songwriter Karine Polwart, who came on stage to join David Knopfler and guitarist Harry Bogdanovs and sing her song ‘Sun’s comin’ over the hill’, quite a whisky soaked tragedy, the prolific Knopfler (yes, he’s the other Knopfler who co-founded Dire Straits) having happily performed a few songs of his own (‘Deptford Days’ and ‘The King of Ashes’). Finishing off the first half of the evening were the hugely infectious Proclaimers, loved by all I think, for simply being such great and genuine blokes. They stormed the audience with ‘Letter from America’, ‘I’m on my way’, ‘Scotland’s Story’ (a sort of Sunday Post history of immigration in Scotland), ‘Sunshine on Leith’ and “I’m gonna be (500 miles)”. Phew! The sun’s starting to go down, the moon’s rising, it’s getting bloody cold (how did the Elizabethans manage I wonder) and it’s time for a cup of tea. Allison Moorer has just released a new album, Getting Somewhere. It’s her sixth, but I confess she was barely known to me before this evening. Believe me she has a voice to die for – it filled the cavernous open space of the Globe, and I bet you could probably have heard it over the river at St Paul’s. She sang ‘Farewell fairweather’, Soft place to fall’, ‘Getting somewhere’ and ‘Long time coming’. Hmm I thought, almost a lady Steve Earle. Do the research. She married Steve a year or so ago and he produced the new album. But her voice is fantastic – all her own work and well worth looking out for. And then we had Steve. By this time of course we were running late (de rigueur for these sort of gigs) and Steve wasn’t in any rush, but he managed seven songs and some chilling reflections on capital punishment (“I’ve witnessed an execution and I wish I hadn’t, but how can you refuse a man’s last request?”). He also invited us to return the following evening and join him for Titus Andronicus (“this is the only theatre in London where I know where the front door is; I mean I can’t tell you many times I’ve played at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, but I couldn’t tell you how to get in”).

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