Libby Koch and Chuck Hawthorne at The Green Note

Texan American artists Libby and Chuck have been touring round Scotland, England and Ireland for a month, ferried by that ramblin' promoter Rob Ellen in his mobile studio/home The Moose. They have played house concerts, festivals, radio shows, you name it; there are only a few more dates to go until it's time to fly back to Austin on Monday.
Rob invited me along to The Green Note last night to play a couple of toons, and then to watch the show. It was an invitation too good to miss, and after my slot I settled down to watch Chuck's short set (he is doing his own show there tonight).
He sings the Texan landscape, invoking space and drama as soon as the music starts. The life of an itinerant musicians is conjured up in our imagination; starting with Leaving Amarillo, he sets the scene and takes us to the Southern states. 'That might be the best I've ever sung it', he told us.
Well, it's a perfectly crafted song and he delivered it impeccably. He sang about the Silverline train that slices through the mountains, and Libby joined him on backing vocals. At this stage of the tour, they are both tired, but you couldn't tell and they were very much in a groove with each other; they sang as one with voices blending an a particularly country favoured timbre. Chuck has a strong, powerful voice and you're in for a treat if you go along to hear him tonight.
In a short interval, we looked around the basement of the club. There is something really 1960s Camden about it: metallic patterned wallpaper that you can see all sorts of weird faces in if you look carefully enough, red velvet curtains, little stools around wooden tables with candles. It is a charming baby version of the upstairs room, ideally suited to an intimate evening like this.
Libby was the headline artist tonight. Trained as a lawyer in Nashville, she sat at her desk one day and wrote her song of freedom: and here she is, free (and occasionally broke). She's not straight-laced country. Some songs have a laid-back swamp feel, others are immensely powerful and in-your-face.
There were some real stand-out songs and me and my chums all picked different favourites, which is surely a good thing. Her gospel-tinged song about the bid for freedom was loved by all of us: 'I'm gonna walk this road and see just where it leads', well, that definitely chimed with me because that's exactly what I am doing. I loved the idea of setting her grandfather's stories to music, and best song of all was the song about time passing, Stakes, which showed off her flexible and lustrous voice beautifully and struck an emotional chord; it was a real woman's song. I'm looking forward to listening more to their music, and big thanks to Rob for inviting us along. What a thrill to meet real Texan musicians! I think they was a reciprocal thrill (from Chuck especially) at meeting real punk rockers!

Big thanks to Rob Ellen for introducing us to each other. I hope the rest of the tour goes well, I hope we all meet again, and long live travelling music men and women!