Sunday 12th October 2025
Review, photos and review by Keith Belcher
Sunday 12th October. The Live Room, Caroline Street Social Club, Saltaire. The 5th visit of Bronwynne Brent from Greenville , Mississippi. This visit as a trio comprising Bronwynne on lead vocals and acoustic guitar with Texan Chris Maresh on bass and Graeme Stephen, Scotland on electric guitar.
As one might gather from a 5th appearance Bronwynne is a firm favourite at The Live Room. Bronwynne did, however, ask for a show of hands on who hadn’t seen her before and there were quite a few souls who were in for a quite unique experience. Bronwynne is , without doubt, a one off. I can’t think of anyone like her. Her voice and songs and overall sound and approach to performing are very distinctive.
Her album , Stardust, saw her voted Female Performer of the Year twice in a row by Americana UK and called up for television and radio appearances on the BBC. Listening and watching Bronwynne (and I have seen Bronwynne far more than 5 times) I thought of some words of the late, great Kris Kristofferson. Joni Mitchell had played her album Blue to Kris and staggered by the extreme vulnerability and openness displayed on the album. He said “God, Joni, save something of yourself”.
In a similar fashion Bronwynne’s songs are very intimately personal and her on-stage dialogue is basically brain to mouth with no filters in-between. If a train of thought occurs, she follows and shares it with the audience. You don’t really get “well rehearsed and relatively safe ad-libbing” as song intros, it’s what she’s thinking at the time and it’s shared in real time. It’s sometimes very funny , always very honest sometimes the threads and train of thought are lost but it is quite unique and her vocals are superb.
There were explorations of all the back albums tonight and a few new songs from the next one . Some quite different arrangements of the songs very ably played by Graeme and Chris. Some guitar and bass runs that drew spontaneous applause mid song. This was one of the great nights of 2025 at TLR and I have no doubts that Bronwynne would be very welcome to do a 6th visit at the club.
