Be Witch, Be Switch and Be Dazzle, or, TL;DR.
Richard Dawson + The Worm at the Cornish Bank, Fallafalmouth, December 12th 2023
Once again we sally-forth to a shower-squall Falmouth.
The Worm is an other worldly performer; an organic shamanic player of words, melody and things that sound like other things.
The Worm takes to the stage dressed in all white, something of a martial-arts elf about her. She sits on the floor of the stage among a selection of objects which we assume are instruments of some sort. Who knows? The Worm then carefully puts on a hat of vaguely Chinese appearance.
It was soon after this walk-on, that I completely lost track of time and space and was transported into the world of The Worm.
In a room rammed to the rafters with chattering-punters she silences the front of the room within a minute of her first piece starting – it takes until halfway through the second piece to silence the back of the room and the bar.
Complete silence as backdrop to the delicate sound of wonder – a feather is found, falling, and it must be heard to land, it simply must.
Delicate, fragile, melodic, found sounds and a childlike fascination with the natural world, and yet, you get the feeling that if crossed The Worm would rip you from sternum to belly with the fang of a sabre-tooth cat.
The Worm is the kind of person who would have led you by a flickering flame of sputtering fat into the innermost reaches of the cave – to where the animals come alive on the roughs and crags of the cavern walls.
Not everyone can draw a bison that looks like a bison – and then make it move.
I have wanted to see Richard Dawson live for a while.
Tonight I will change my view of him and his work – he’s not brilliant; he’s an actual, bona fide natural made genius. Some orders above mere ‘brilliance’.
He opens with an a cappella piece – the lament of a woman who has lost her son to the Great War, or is he lost? It is the most powerful bit of ‘singing’ I have heard in many, many years. Utterly incredible.
If the Worm was introducing us to our musical origins at the back of a cave, Dawson takes us way, way, forward – into the early-middle ages.
The travelling minstrel, the keeper of the folk lore. Though his themes are universal and timeless his reference points are the travails of modern life, urban living – the rich, the poor; master and servant; land Lord and serf.  The everyday.
There are a lot of these exceptional storytellers about at the moment – Crywank being perhaps cut of similar cloth to Richard Dawson. But nobody is doing, or is likely even able to do, what Dawson is doing.
Story telling, as tradition was not about sitting by the fire in a tavern that smelled of straw-beer and dung and a ‘What happened was …’
Story-telling was the realm of the player, the actor. The performer.
I cannot recommend Richard Dawson enough. He is my new Cardiacs. Get to one of his gigs as soon as you can.
(Miquest)

The Worm on Bandcamp

Richard Dawson on Bandcamp