Review: The Bandit Queen Of Sorrows ‘The Magnolia Sessions’
One of the most valuable things for the continuing health of music is for new or underground artists to get a platform and a chance to shine a light on their talents. Anti-Corp Music’s enduring series, The Magnolia Sessions, has achieved this in spades. It has become an institution, regarded with fondness by those who regularly stop by to see who has had the chance to sit within the intimate setting of the magnolia tree in the centre of Dan Emery’s Nashville compound. There, they bare their soul with just the sound of chirping insects to give witness.
This series has produced some fantastic moments of raw, stripped-down performances, featuring bluegrass, dark country, and folk singer/songwriter acts such as The Lost Dog Street Band, Joe Wunderle, Jade Brodie and many more. These are artists who have hit the lonely, nomadic road in pursuit of taking their heartfelt tales to the world.
Last month, in another flurry of releases that reflect the more sporadic and less intense release schedule, Anti-Corp unveiled the session from The Bandit Queen Of Sorrows, aka storyteller, ‘singer/songwriter, poet, and multi-instrumentalist’ Leslie Fox-Humphreys. Hitting the trail at the age of nineteen, the troubadour has wandered for fourteen years, occasionally stopping for the short term in the Northeast. This unique worldview manifests in her music as she combines cello, guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, percussion, and the Shruti box in her tales of hard life experiences. These stories are delivered in her rasping, smoky voice that steals the focus, full of heartbreak and knowing wisdom gained from regret.
The session represents a triumph over adversity for both the recording engineer and artist. After Emery spent ‘a few years’ trying to get Fox-Humphreys down to record, having worked on her Don’t Pour Me A Memory (2024) and Where The Brave Run Free (2023) albums, the drive to Nashville from the Northeast wasn’t straightforward. The diminutive singer was struck violently ill on the journey and spent an evening on the side of the interstate in no fit condition to perform. However, in a show of fortitude, she made the rest of the journey and delivered a performance that shows true strength when the odds are against you.
Listening to The Bandit Queen of Sorrowssession, you wouldn’t imagine that it was preceded by those events. As the familiar pulse of the summer insects introduces us to the humid evening, she opens without backing on The Ways Of Man. Her voice is soft and tender as it is joined by faltering guitar strums. Growing in strength as she settles into the song and intersperses the lilting melodies with harmonies, she strikes a strange balance of determination and wistful musing as she weaves her tale. Completely captivating and filled with a mournful beauty, Fox-Humphreys has the kind of voice that you could lose yourself in for hours, such is the weight in the stark, emotional undercurrent.
The dexterous picking on The Perfect Storm is conversational; half sung, half talking to herself, she falls out of the vocal pattern, injecting real personality. The understated exclamation of ‘Oh boy’ at the end of a line about life’s calamities and dramas feels like resignation and recognition that you need to pull yourself up and accept what life is throwing at you – like vomiting on the side of the highway during a long journey on the way to a recording performance. The steely, matter-of-fact message behind the music takes the simple patterns and elevates them, and the musing harmonic breaks feel like you are staring off into the distance, making peace with whatever comes your way.
a fascinating, vulnerable and raw performance from an artist doing things very much on her own terms…
Come Wander With Me is low, slow, and pensive. The moody intonation raises the importance of lines like ‘this world is made of shadows’, and you are invited to spend time walking in her shoes, whilst The Lockman feels more like a cautionary tale. The plodding walk of the chords at the beginning lays out the premise of the piece with sprinkles of melody in the ‘Ooooo’s’, and the sudden change into fast picking feels subversive as the story twists and deepens its meaning.
The tentative cover of 18th-century folk song/poem Fear A Bhata (The Boatman) has a groove and catchy cadence that transcends the traditional Gaelic tongue. Here, she recreates the tale credited to Sìne NicFhionnlaigh of Tong, who pines for her beloved fisherman out at sea. Powerful and yet fragile, this is one of the defining moments of the session. Her voice seems to blot out all background noise and speak to you directly, showcasing how music and emotion can reach across the void of language in a universal message.
Soil Serpentine is an intense piece of poetry. Less than a minute in length, stark and wreathed in mortality, the intense focus is all-consuming in the stillness of the evening, before the droning cello starts Down By The Glenside with a sawing, folk-like introduction. Once again, her voice barely rises from a speaking pace, lilting in a half-sung, stumbling intonation that all at once feels pleading, resigned and all-encompassing.
At just twenty-four minutes, The Bandit Queen of Sorrows might be one of the shortest The Magnolia Sessions. However, subscribing to the quality over quantity dynamic, Emery has captured a fascinating, vulnerable and raw performance from an artist doing things very much on her own terms.
As a summary of the release, Fox-Humphreys’ own quote captures it best: ‘…a mix of ballads, from originals to old folk songs… phases of grief, wandering, and seafaring folklore, a little bit of my own bitter realism, and an old Irish rebel song… There’s a strength in the grief of these songs, at least to me in writing and performing them. Forlorn, proud, and a little bitter.’
Label: Anti-Corp Music
Band Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
