Emily Barker live in Dumfries: “We’re all complex and wonderful and difficult”

22/01/2025: Emily Barker live in Dumfries at The Supper Club

In a region that’s not exactly awash with international touring musicians in any given year, let alone on any given night, it should have been straightforward to find the venue for Emily Barker live in Dumfries. Super easy, barely an inconvenience? Not entirely. After sourcing three different addresses and two different venue names but still no sign, it was a case of finding one of the only places on the near-deserted high street lit up brighter than the town’s iconic Robert Burns statue.

This intimate show was part of the Big Burns Supper festival in Dumfries. It’s an eclectic collection of arts, music, theatre and food events (including a Burns supper served underwater at the local swimming pool!) in the weeks around Burns Night.

As a music photographer in an area that’s off the standard tour circuit, this listing in the festival programme was met with considerable disbelief. Not just someone I’ve vaguely heard of, but someone whose career I documented closely for the best part of a decade while we both lived in London. We’re talking dozens of gigs in pubs, churches, concert halls, arts centres, theatres, coffee shops, a railway engine shed, awards ceremonies, outdoor festivals, at an Embassy, and inside a pitch-black neo-gothic box.

Nonetheless, this was definitely the first at a disused River Island store! The property had recently come under community control and so was an obvious choice of pop-up venue for the festival. This decor was simple but effective, with a curtain wall of twinkling lights giving way to an array of modern bare bulb pendant lights in an otherwise darkened room. The stage itself was illuminated by two huge purple lights flanking the singer.

This intimate setting was perfect for Barker’s solo set. The sound engineer evidently understood the assignment, helping to deliver a crystal clear, captivating performance.

Given there’s around a 30 degree Celsius difference between the current summer temperature in Barker’s home and this winter in Scotland, it’s a good thing she remembered to bring her big coat for this lengthy UK winter tour.

She started out with the first two tracks from her most recent albums, Fragile As Humans (2024) and A Dark Murmuration of Words (2020). The songs With Small We Start and Return Me both explore aspects of real and imagined relationships with places and people.

The lyrics of the latter refer to the Blackwood, a river that winds gently through Barker’s hometown and her musical back catalogue. Take, for example, the next song she played, Dear River, from the 2013 album of the same name. The competing impulses of “show me bright city lights and streets I’ve never seen” and “take me back to where the river bends, that’s where I long to be” hit differently now that she has indeed returned to her homeland, within driving distance of her beloved Blackwood.

Unfortunately for Barker, that move took place at the height of Australia’s COVID lockdown, necessitating two weeks of strict quarantine in a hotel. That time wasn’t wasted because she recorded an album of cover songs. Classic Barker. She also released a studio album at the height of the pandemic, which is how she discovered it was “a very unfriendly year to release a record.”

She showcased The Woman Who Planted Trees from that album. It was written in honour of Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai who was responsible for at least 55 million trees being cultivated.

Next up was the title track of Barker’s newest album, Fragile As Humans. It passes through swathes of personal history, examining different relationships and influences from her first crush onwards: “his sepia skin and his night-ocean eyes used to flood every shore of my mind.” As Barker explained when introducing the song, we’re “shaped by those people we love and have loved regardless of whether or not they’re still in our lives.”

Barker explained, with tongue-in-cheek pride, that her hometown was described in a guidebook as “a great place to get your ute [utility vehicle] serviced” and tools maintained. She riffed on that workaday reputation, perhaps to undercut the life-altering significance of uprooting to return to her true roots. The reality came out in the song Call It A Day, though: “It’s not enough, this house we painted in colours fit for a home/Oh dear friends who’ve been my family.” The jaunty melody belied the mixed feelings permeating the narrative, but the hard stop underscored the decision made.

Did you know that a direct flight from the furthest part of the other side of the world allows plenty of time to watch three long movies? Sticking to that theme (since there’s a Bob Dylan biopic currently in cinemas), Barker performed her version of his Buckets of Rain. Part way through, she paused. “The problem of doing Dylan covers is there are a lot of lyrics” she muttered. She racked her brain, shrugged, grinned, and continued with the bit she could remember. Evidently no-one was overly familiar with the song, so she could easily have covered it up…but it was charming that she didn’t!

Having explained how Fragile As Humans grew from an effort to encapsulate a different person’s story in each separate verse, Wild To Be Sharing This Moment continued the impulse to weave fictional vignettes with lived experience. She shared how, fuelled by many G&Ts at a child’s birthday party, she was inspired by observing the range of people separately sharing space at a train station. Connecting that with the idea of us all sharing the same time with all its crises and conflicts, she realised “we’re all complex and wonderful and difficult.” This song also ends with a hard stop to underline the guiding principle: “truth is a hope to hold onto and where it blooms we will go.”

The only song of the night that wasn’t contextualised with a rich story was Feathered Thing. It spoke for itself. The track explores how to live through, and with, grief. Striving to avoid internalising blame and trusting in the north star of a future – “remembered how the trees withstood fires before” – while holding space for the pain of the imagined, impossible future. The raw lyrics were punctuated by targeted stomp box percussion and a moment of acapella precision.

“I don’t know who Kenneth Branagh is but I’m going to say yes.”

EMILY BARKER

Barker turned to popular culture to reintroduce levity to the set, as she queued up “the first of my crime thriller theme tunes.” She explained in some detail how she came to record the theme tune for the English language version of the popular TV series Wallander. Of course, the significance of the offer was somewhat undercut by being unfamiliar with Kenneth Branagh because she didn’t have a TV at the time.

She didn’t play the other TV song (from The Shadow Line), but she did play Anyway Away from the film Hector. This venue’s acoustics combined with a silently observing crowd set this tender song off particularly well.

After this was a pause for a reading of the eponymous poem from Barker’s first poetry volume, Where The Black Swans Swim. This was a charming retelling of a cross-cultural catch-up with an old friend, Jon The Boatman.

Barker also treated us to a Scots phrase she learned from King Creosote and his band (including Hannah Fisher, who was in Dumfries with Roddy Woomble just before that tour started). I must confess that the only word I recognised was ‘bridies’ so I’ll have to take Barkers word for the authenticity of the rest of it!

Cognisant that this was more of a general arts festival audience than a group of fans, Barker opted for another cover to maximise the chance of song recognition. This led to her achingly vulnerable version of Bruce Springsteen’s Tougher Than The Rest.

Finally, came the old favourite Disappear. Accompanying herself on guitar, harmonica and stomp box, Barker delivered the rowdiest song of the set. Making the most of the full sound in the snug room, the set thus ended on a high. Notes were still ringing out as the audience rushed to buy Emily’s records and her new poetry book.

Even supplemented by so much storytelling, the 13 song set flew by, especially as it started at 8 p.m. prompt with no support. Probably just as well, since Barker had an early flight to catch for a show in Dublin the next day. Classic Barker!

She’s back in the area (broadly speaking) later in January with a show for Celtic Connections in Glasgow, plus a range of other tour dates across the UK and Europe in January and February 2025. Visit emilybarker.com for a full list of shows.

Emily Barker Live in Dumfries: Setlist

1. With Small We Stay
2. Return Me
3. Dear River
4. The Woman Who Planted Trees
5. Fragile As Humans
6. Call It A Day
7. Buckets of Rain [Bob Dylan cover]
8. Wild To Be Sharing This Moment
9. Feathered Thing
10. Nostalgia
11. Anywhere Away
12. Poem: Where The Black Swans Sing
13. Tougher Than The Rest [Bruce Springsteen cover]
14. Disappear

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