With its basement bar, low ceiling and intimate setting, The Blue Arrow on Sauchiehall Street is the perfect jazz venue for which Ian Shaw is the perfect fit.
Though given his forced purchase of a pair of skinny slacks after losing his evening wear to a Virgin (train) – a senior moment which provoked a tongue in cheek quip about “a sackful of dreams” – perhaps fit is the wrong word.
Either way, his ninety-minute set as part of the 2018 Glasgow Jazz Festival lived up to the title of his latest album which he and his terrific trio of musicians were here to promote – Shine Sister Shine, a collection of self-penned soul-stirrers and new takes on old songs in celebration of womanhood.
The highlight of which was his incredibly moving humanitarian hymn Keep Walking (Song For Sara) inspired by and dedicated to an Eritrean friend who along with thousands of other refugees and asylum seekers whom he supports through his “day job” as trustee of Side by Side Refugees has had the misfortune to face the barbed wire fences and brick walls of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” immigration policies which, as Ian Blackford stated at this week’s PMQs, makes the UK “the only EU country to detain people indefinitely”.
Politics aside, Shaw’s voice has never shone so bright. His heart as open as Glasgow Green, his range as wide as the Clyde. Allied to which is his wonderful ability to take old standards such as Peggy Lee’s I Don’t Know Enough About You and contemporary classics like Alicia Keys’ Empire State Of Mind (New York) and turn them upside down and inside out and make them his own.
A challenge which he and pianist Barry Green, bassist Mick Hutton and the explosive Dave Ohm on drums rose to with great gusto as evident in their life-affirming finale This Beautiful Life by Julie Matthews which contains the lyrics “Hard times are going to get better / Bad luck won’t last forever”. Given Trump and Brexit and all that jazz, here’s hoping!
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