Roxanne de Bastion brings her intimate tour to Southampton

Roxanne de Bastion played a captivating intimate show in Southampton, UK, the eighth date of a ten show run, before continuing the tour in Germany. The shows support the release of her album You & Me, We Are The Same: The logo in large print across her black t-shirt dress. Roxanne was accompanied by Zoe Konez, who opened the show with her own support set, and Jay Chakravorty, multi-instrumentalist, sometimes within the same song.

Although the seated, mid-week crowd was modest in size (indeed she joked that if we all bring a friend next time maybe she could try some stage diving); they were all captivated by Roxanne‘s storytelling lyrics in her indie-folk-rock songs, as well as her anecdotes and stories which were funny, honest and moving. She told us all the songs on the album were written and recorded at an intense time, when she knew she didn’t have much time left with her dad, the emotions captured in the music. How love and grief are related, “if it really hurts, it means it was really good”.

One highlight was Roxanne’s solo performance of “London, I Miss You”, moving from piano to guitar within the song. She finished her set with the short, rousing, punk-inspired song “Red and White Blood Cells”, asking the crowd to join in the chorus, which they enthusiastically did, if perhaps not quite in time, and much laughter was had. Indeed, she appeared to be having so much fun that she delivered a two song, unplanned and unrehearsed encore. The first of which was a song written by her dad, Richard de Bastion. A heartfelt and emotional end to a lovely, intimate show.

Support came from indie-folk musician, Megan Linford, a very talented singer songwriter, accompanied by the very impressive piano skills of Ben Reid. Megan played some songs from her forthcoming album, including “First Day of Spring” and “Autumn”. She also sang her beautiful, emotional song “Lessons”, about seeing hard times as blessings that shape us into the people we are now. Her performance was full of emotion and really enjoyed by the crowd.