This is my first time attending one of these intimate record shop gigs, and what a delight it was.
Elles Bailey, with her acoustic guitarist and best friend Demi Marriner in front of an audience of around fifty people. It was like walking into a kitchen at a party and finding somebody playing a few songs to a captive audience in a very relaxed atmosphere.
Elles has a new album out, ‘Can’t Take My Story Away’. An album ten years in the writing and honing of the personal and intimate songs contained therein. The set was started with the very confessional title song, and she was immediately in top gear. Her voice has been described as gritty, earthy, and smoky, but there is also a vulnerability to it which isn’t often reported,
Before the second song Elles and Demi got quite giddy over the fact that it, ‘Growing Roots’, is the most played song on Radio 2 at the moment, and that they had eventually heard it just before the gig. She managed to get some audience participation, which for a second song of an acoustic gig is pretty dammed good, and testament to her fanbase.
‘Constant Need To Keep Going’ was a favourite of mine, with it’s alt.country melody and feel. As she is always put forward as a blues artist, I didn’t realise she had this side to her songwriting and I loved it.
It was a delight for me that she played ‘Better Days’ next. If any of you have read the review I did for ‘With A Little Help From My Friends, A Tribute to Matt Long’, you will have read that she did this song with The Cinelli Brothers for the album, with full brass section. So to hear it stripped back to vocal and acoustic guitar was so special. During the introduction it became clear how close she was to Matt Long, both honing their craft on the same festival and gig circuit and being lauded by the UK Blues fraternity
‘Tightrope’ was up next, a song about mental illness, which apparently Elles has had her fair share, and really brave of her to confess this to the crowd, and also really helpful I would have thought, to anybody going through mental anguish which they feel they can’t talk about.
She also advertised a bit of merch she had on sale, which was a device attached to lanyard, which when tapped on your phone immediately downloaded the album plus bonus tracks, with all the proceeds going to Musicians Minds Matter charity. She was saying she always picks a charity to donate to when doing a tour. What a girl.
A little sort rockabilly poppy number was up next with ‘You Best Believe’, which again invoked some audience participation. At this point it wasn’t hard as she had the audience eating out of her hand, and if you didn’t love her by then, you were never going to.
To round the night off, they finished with ‘Take A Step Back’, although with this set of songs and her enthusiastic personality I rather think she is taking a giant step forward.
Thanks Elles Bailey and Demi Marriner for an unforgettable up close and personal, nights entertainment.
Review by Andy Sharrocks
Album review (Can’t Take My Story Away, 2026)
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BREITLER Sentinel (El Puerto Records)
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The middle part of the set was a mixture of the remaining material from ‘Don’t Point Your Finger’ and the band’s other landmark album, ‘Live at the Marquee’.
Other favourite moments were the rolling blues of ‘Don’t Point Your Finger at the Guitar Man’, the charming ‘Helen’, and set closer, ‘Got My Mojo Working’ with enough snatches of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ to push pulse rates a little higher.
