Seven-year itch of the week: Hurricane Promotions presents Eddi Reader, The Citadel, York City Church, Gillygate, York, October 15, 7.30pm

Eddi Reader

EDDI Reader will play her first York show in seven years tonight, accompanied by her full band at The Citadel, the old Salvation Army building in Gillygate, now home to the York City Church.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” says the Glasgow-born singer, who fronted Fairground Attraction, topping the charts with Perfect, and has a dozen solo albums, three BRIT awards and an MBE for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts to her name.

“I’m excited to be playing there. I’m lucky enough to have audiences that keep turning up, and new ones turning up too. My journey has been really blessed, with lots of songs over the years, and my songwriting broadening. ”

Eddi’s Scottish folk band Fairground Attraction famously broke up after only one studio album, The First Of A Million Kisses, a year after winning the BRIT Awards for best album and single in 1989 to pursue solo careers.

That split came in January 1990 in the throes of recording their second album that instead took the form of B-sides and unreleased songs from ‘Million Kisses’ sessions on Ay Fond Kiss in June that year. Roll on to 2024 when, in the shadow of band member Mark E Nevin’s wife, Louise, having a life-threatening health issue, the group re-grouped.

“There was no pressure getting back together,” says Eddi. “We got together for only 14 days to try to get an album out, and we succeeded. I noted how things came back, like control issues that had been poisonous 35 years ago and were still there, but also how my experiences had expanded. When I thought ‘that’s not how you do it’, I sensed how diplomatic you have to be. I had to unlearn a lot of stuff.

“I think you have to accept a lot of things are just the way they are, and it’s OK to accept it, to forgive it and move on. My expectations are always very high, expecting it to be a family, but you can’t expect everyone to be a long-lost buddy, with me being the one who wants it to be happy ever after.

“It wasn’t as easy as it might have been, but I realised that with bands, you get together with another human being and you try to create something, and when you do, it’s lovely. People think it must be easy but it isn’t. You know that the love is there but you don’t know how to reach it, so all you can do is pour love on it.”

The album, Beautiful Happening, duly arrived on September 27 2024, coincidentally the day when Louise was given the all clear, making the title even more resonant.

Straddling differing musical styles and making them her own, from the traditional to the contemporary, and interpreting the songs of Robert Burns to boot, Eddi took on another role in 2023 when making her London theatre debut at @sohoplace, Charing Cross Road.

Headhunted by director Jonathan Butterell, she played the Balladeer for five months in a stage adaptation of Annie Proulx short story Brokeback Mountain, singing the folk and American songs of The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sells. Among those who attended were her fellow members of Fairground Attraction.

“I really, really enjoyed the experience, providing me with an acting role as a woman from the Mid West, leading a band,” says Eddi, who told one interview [by Caitlin Devlin, June 14 2023] that “in my head it’s Wyoming 1968”.

“I got some voice coaching for the role, had to play guitar as well as sing, and at the end I had to come on and play the dead young man’s mother.”

Eddi had previous acting experience, both on stage and screen. “I’d done a bit of that before, and I’ve always enjoyed playing a character, like in The Trick Is To Keep Breathing [as a psychic voice] at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow [in 1993]. The biggest was the John Byrne one, Your Cheatin’ Heart, playing Joleen Jowett [opposite Tilda Swinton’s Cissie Crouch in a six-part BBC mini-series about the Scottish country music scene in 1990].”

Whether re-forming Fairground Attraction last year, appearing in Brokeback Mountain, making solo records or never going on stage with a set list, authenticity drives Eddi. “It sounds like a cliché, but I don’t see any other way to do it. All alternatives are painful, because if you’re not true to yourself, you’re not authentic” she says.

“I’m just getting the dishes done, making the bed, but I did have a number one and I still enjoy singing it. I’m very grateful that it opened doors for me.”

Never under-estimate a singer’s skill. “It’s a mistake that people make when they say ‘just a singer’, because sometimes the singer hears things in music that not even the writer knows are there, so it’s like being the Columbo of music! Finding the feeling can make a song much more potent sung by a woman when written by a man!” says Eddi.

“You have to find the character in the melody as well as the lyrics; that gives the extra help to get the emotion across – and that’s different from acting, though I do see similarities.”

Eddi continues: “I’ll hear something that everyone else thinks is an old baggy hat on a coat stand, but I’m thinking, no, look at it, imagine making something with that. I see the movie!

“Like the Robert Burns songs I do. I saw him as being like a songwriter in his mid-twenties now; something of the young David Bowie about him, or Johnny Rotten or Tom Waits; there’s just something more of now about the songs, but being of then, so that didn’t matter because I could feel my way into Rabbie Burns’ words.”

Now 66, Eddi has “never felt unequal to any musician, male or female”. “I’ve never had a challenge in that way,” she says. “I’ve never noticed anyone getting in the way. I just plough my own furrow; I just do my own thing. I’m not difficult! I’m looking for jewels in the junk shop.”

What’s coming next from Eddi? “Me and John [husband John Douglas] are doing a little duo thing that we’re getting together at the moment,” she says. “We haven’t recorded it yet. We’ve got one song written so far. Eleven to go!”

Eddi Reader plays The Citadel, Gillygate, York, tonight, 7.30pm, with Alan Kelly, John Douglas, Boo Hewerdine and Kevin MacGuire, supported by Eilidh Patterson. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk.

More Things To Do in Ryedale, York and beyond Easter. Magical thoughts in Hutch’s List No 8, from the Gazette & Herald

Four sigils or “spell tokens” from the Believe It Or Not? exhibition at Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole. Picture: Olivia Brabbs

MAGICAL thinking and life 11,000 years ago, Shakespeare mischief making and nightclub trouble-spotters, a comedian’s needs and a painterly musical outweigh the delights of chocolate at Easter for Charles Hutchinson.

Ryedale exhibition launch of the week: Believe It Or Not?, Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole, until November 17, from 10am daily except Fridays

RYEDALE Folk Museum’s new exhibition turns the spotlight on folk beliefs through a selection of more than 200 objects. Believe It Or Not?’ explores the traditions and rituals of our ancestors, pondering whether whether we are still “magical thinkers” today.

Featuring heavily are stories of those accused of witchcraft, represented through their own objects, such as a crystal ball passed down by those seeking to foretell the future and four sigils or “spell tokens”, likely created as a form of “love magic” by a magical practitioner or service magician. Tickets: ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk.

Curators Andrew Woods, left, Adam Parker and Emily North with Mesolithic remains of a wooden platform and materials used for fire-making in the Yorkshire Museum’s Star Carr exhibition. Picture: Anthony Chappel-Ross

York exhibition opening of the week: Star Carr: Life After The Ice, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, York; open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm

EXCAVATED in the Vale of Pickering, the Star Carr archaeological site provides the first evidence in Britain of the beginnings of home, a place where people settled and built places to live.

The Yorkshire Museum’s interactive exhibition brings together artefacts from “the Mesolithic equivalent of Stonehenge” to give an insight into human life 11,000 years ago, a few hundred years after the last Ice Age. On display are objects from the Yorkshire Museum collection, from antler headdresses and a decorated stone pendant to the world’s oldest complete hunting bow and the earliest evidence of carpentry from Europe. To book tickets, go to: yorkshiremuseum.org.uk.

Hoglets Theatre’s Gemma Curry, left, Claire Morley and Becky Lennon in A Midsummer Night’s Mischief, visiting Helmsley Arts Centre on Saturday

Children’s show of the week: Hoglets Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Mischief, Helmsley Arts Centre, Saturday, 2.30pm

THE forest fairies are starting a fight, but which side are you on? Team Titania or Team Oberon? York company Hoglets Theatre presents founder Gemma Curry’s interactive, fun and larger-than-life show for children aged five to 11 based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Expect wild characters, raucous singalong songs, puppets, stunts and some frankly ridiculous disco dancing in the company of Curry, Claire Morley and Becky Lennon. At 3.30pm, Gemma will be running a children’s workshop, showing how to make a paper boogie-woogie puppet of Shakespeare’s donkey-headed character Bottom. Box office: 01439 771700 or helmsleyarts.co.uk.

Jessica Fostekew: On her Mettle at Pocklington Arts Centre

Comedy gig of the week: Jessica Fostekew, Mettle, Pocklington Arts Centre, April 4, 8pm

IN her new stand-up show of passion, pace and purpose, Jessica Fostekew’s son has joined a cult and her cat has learnt to talk. Nevertheless, she feels fine. In fact she is hurtling faster and hustling harder than ever for the things that she wants and needs.

Fostekew appeared in the sitcom Motherland and Sundance Festival Grand Jury prize-winning film Scrapper and is a regular co-host of The Guilty Feminist podcast, host and creator of her own podcast about eating, Hoovering, and the star and writer of BBC Radio 4’s Sturdy Girl Club. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

The four doormen of the apocalypse: John Godber Company in Bouncers, on tour at York Theatre Royal

York play of the week: John Godber Company in Bouncers, York Theatre Royal, April 5, 7.30pm; April  6, 2.30pm and 7.30pm

MEET Lucky Eric, Judd, Les and Ralph, the original men in black, as they tell the torrid tale of one Eighties’ night in a Yorkshire disco in John Godber’s northern parody of Saturday Night Fever. All the gang are out on the town, the lads, the lasses, the cheesy DJ, the late-night kebab man, and the taxi home, all under the watchful eyes of the Bouncers (Nick Figgis, George Reid, Frazer Hammill and newcomer Tom Whittaker).

“We’re delighted to be taking Bouncers back to the heyday of disco and the 1980s,” says Goober. “Looking back, there was so much wrong with the decade but also so much to celebrate; this new production dances a balance between what was great and what is cringe-worthy now!” Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Putting themselves in the picture: Pick Me Up Theatre cast members James Willstrop (as Jules), left, Neil Foster (as Soldier), Natalie Walker (as Dot) amd Sanna Jeppsson (as Yvonne), front, set the scene for Sunday In The Park With George

York musical of the week: Pick Me Up Theatre in Sunday In The Park With George, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, April 5 to 13, 7.30pm except April 8; 2.30pm, April 6, 7 and 13

STEPHEN Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical follows painter Georges Seurat (played by Adam Price) in the months leading up to the completion of his most fanous painting, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte. 

Consumed by his need to “finish the hat”, Seurat alienates the French bourgeoisie, spurns his fellow artists and neglects his lover Dot (Natalie Walker), not realising that his actions will reverberate through the next 100 years. Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

The Moondogs: Paying tribute to Fifties and Sixties favourites at Milton Rooms, Malton

Tribute show of the Easter break: The Moondogs, Milton Rooms, Malton, April 6, 8pm

PREPARE to be transported back in time to the late-1950s and Swinging Sixties as The Moondogs bring their raw energy to the hits of Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, Cliff Richard, The Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and more. Box office: 01653 696240 or themiltonrooms.com.

Fairground Attraction: Mark Nevin, left, Roy Dodds, Eddi Reader and Simon Edwards reunite after 35 years for a York-bound tour and new album

Gig announcement of the week: Fairground Attraction, York Barbican, October 1

AFTER an absence of 35 years, all four original members of short-lived late-Eighties’ band Fairground Attraction are reuniting for a 14-date British tour and an as-yet-untitled new studio album, preceded by first single What’s Wrong With The World?, out now.

Best known for their chart-topping debut, Perfect, winner of the Best Single prize at the 1988 Brit Awards, Fairground Attraction return with their country-pop line-up of singer Eddi Reader, guitarist Mark Nevin, guitarrón bassist Simon Edwards and drummer Roy Dodds. Tickets go on sale on Friday at 10am at axs.com/York.