June 27th, Cambridge Junction: Tonight, Josienne Clarke confides that the layers of her connection to the music of Sandy Denny run deep and are far more nuanced than a mere similarity in singing voices, as undeniable as that comparison is. She addresses this directly in the introduction to the song ‘Solo,’ a song with a very personal connection for the singer, relating it as she does to her own emotional journey into solo performing and recording these past seven years. But Josienne is prepared to share more with her warm, appreciative audience in Cambridge tonight, drawing parallels between her career and Sandy’s, whom she rightly asserts was also underappreciated during her lifetime. That Josienne should feel a lack of credit from the music world might seem at odds with the evidence in front of her, for here she is playing to a well-attended room full of people enthusiastically receiving and responding to her empathetic interpretations of Sandy Denny’s music, but you take her point, Josienne Clarke deserves to be far more widely known than she currently is; many more nights like this however and I see no reason why that could not all change significantly.
While Sandy Denny’s story is not quite the same tale of tragically belated recognition as Nick Drake’s, there is certainly an argument that establishing her high place in the legacy of great twentieth-century music did not evolve soon enough. By the time of her 1978 death, Sandy was undoubtedly in a frustrated place in terms of her career, feeling like it had entered a decline, but she had nevertheless enjoyed some exposure over the previous ten years; Fairport Convention did appear on Top Of The Pops with her after all and she was a winner in best vocalist votes in the weekly music press not to mention guest appearances on Led Zeppelin and The Who albums, Sandy had, in fact, nearly broken through in a big way. Sadly, those four solo albums in the seventies undoubtedly failed to elevate her status to the level someone with such a sublime voice and identifiably unique grain of songwriting deserved. I have been listening to her recordings for well over twenty-five years now and know that this is music with timeless grace and depth. It needs to be performed today, and we are lucky that in Josienne, it appears to have found the perfect interpreter.
The good news is that even though tonight is the last night of the 2025 ‘Josienne Sings Sandy’ tour, she tells the audience that plans are in place to continue this project in the future. Anyone familiar with her solo career needs to know that these shows do not feature Josienne playing an acoustic guitar. The Denny material covered was all originally recorded with a band. These performances utilise their four-piece backing of guitar, drums, keyboard, and bass, freeing the singer to concentrate on the exacting breath and posture required to do justice to the songs. Between numbers, Josienne is jokey and self-mocking, which is in itself a very Sandy-like trait, laughing at how the time signature changes in ‘Autopsy’ keep the band on their toes, which indeed they truly are, locking into that classic, beloved electric folk sound with authenticity and a modern touch that serves Clarke’s delivery to perfection. And when they partially sit out for the mainly acoustic ‘Fotheringay’, Josienne seizes the moment to prove to her crowd she is indisputably the woman born to deliver this material. It is audible there in the purity of her tone, then the fragile delicacy of the quieter passages that can switch in an instant to piercing, aching power. By the time of the evening’s yearning closer, ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes,’ I am already resolving to return whenever this songbird flies across the evening sky once again.