Morganway / Robyn Red - Drygate Bar, Kitchen & Brewing Co, Glasgow Saturday 5th April 2025

On my first visit to this venue, I was very impressed. Drygate is a hipster micro-brewery on the Eastern edge of Glasgow City Centre. It sits further down the road that runs behind Glasgow Cathedral, adjacent to the huge Tennent’s Caledonian Brewery and is literally in the shadow of the iconic Necropolis hill-side cemetery. The modern re-fitted former industrial building hosts various bars dispensing food and their own home brew over two floors and also features a 350-500 space performance area where this gig took place.

The gig venue is largely a functionable box with a low stage and twinkly lights in the ceiling to disguise the various pipes in the roof but it is roomy and there are ample areas outside the room to chill out and enjoy a beer in comfort. There is a good-sized gated car park and ample free on-street parking too, so overall it is a tidy addition to the Glasgow gig scene and comparatively handy for a quick getaway back to Edinburgh, provided there are no slip road closures or diversions (but there always are – every f*cking time).

The support artiste tonight is local lass Robyn Red and it was nice to see SJ from Morganway step up to introduce her on stage with a positive endorsement. In these tough times for independent artists, it is good to see performers supporting each other and young Robyn was also later invited to jam with the band on a song and join the obligatory post-set photo with the crowd.

Robyn is starting to build a good profile as a country singer-songwriter in these parts and she certainly looks the part with a glamorous image, a signature red hat, a strong voice and an increasing cache of top-notch story-telling songs. This was a solo acoustic show (she also has a band) and showcased a handful of songs that will comprise her debut EP due in May. A couple of those songs have been released as singles and we got to hear personal tunes like ‘Between the Two of Us’ and ‘My World is Yours’ along with ‘Luke Jackson’, which Robyn was at pains to point out is not a true story as it would also double as a confession to murder if it was.

Robyn is originally from Airdrie but most of her material is more suited to North Carolina than North Lanarkshire, other than the excellent drinking song ‘Just Need the Wine’ which is a pure gallus Weegie tale and was released as a single just a few days before the show. My wife and I spent a bit of time hanging out on Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee last year but we both felt that what Robyn has to offer is every bit the equal of what we heard there and she’s only going to get better and better.

Robyn is very excited for an EP release show with her band at Glasgow’s famous King Tut’s venue on 7th June 2025 and she will also be appearing solo in Edinburgh with Kezia Gill on 19th April and Arbor North on 6th July, as well as dates in York, Manchester, Wales, London and Chesire, if anyone fancies painting the town red with her.

Morganway put on a very enjoyable show. Not to be confused with country artist Morgan Wade, who I saw play in Glasgow 6 days previously, they are a very likeable band – all six of them – and with variety of instrumentation and shared vocals, they play a veritable compendium of styles so there is never a dull moment. They are hard to classify. Modern, indie, Brit-Americana might cover it but there is plenty there for fans of rock, pop and country and isn’t it just nice to have a band playing out of the boxes and without genre-based cliches? There is something good here for everyone.

With the release of their astonishingly good third album ‘Kill the Silence’ earlier this year (still on heavy rotation in my household) they now have more than enough world-class material to choose from when compiling a headliner set. The bulk of tonight’s songs come from that latest collection, and why not? It’s “all-hit-no-shit” and full of already classic tunes.

‘Hurricane’, an older one from their self-titled album, opens the show but it is billed as ‘Harry Kane’ on the set-list as they like to play around with the song titles for their own amusement. Right from the start, SJ Mortimer imposes herself vocally, but with great backing from the rest of the band. ‘Feels Like letting Go’ is a great showcase for the violin skills of wee Nicole J Terry and that sound is one of the band’s unique selling points and integral to their signature style.

Bass man Callum Morgan steps up to lead with a male vocal on a couple of songs, initially the euphoric ‘Boy on the Train’ which he wrote for his son and later on the good-time romp of ‘Goddam Time’. With the variety of vocal styles and song-writing skills, you get a Fleetwood Mac / Eagles vibe but the fiddle adds a bit of Mellencamp and there is plenty of guitar and keyboard action too.

SJ is back on vocals for a sexy booty-call song called ‘Come Over’ from 2nd album ‘Back to Zero’, followed by ‘Devil’s Canyon’ and a brand new “groovy angry” song called ‘Machine’ which laments the difficulties of being independent artists and being “f*cking broke”!

About halfway through their 15-song set, the band step down off the stage and form a huddle with the audience for an extraordinary and effective acoustic rendition of the uber-melodic and joyous ‘Halfway Tonight’. Robyn was invited into the virtuous circle and with everyone in the crowd involved in this up-close and personal moment, it really sealed the bond between the artists and their audience.

The rest of the set is also a triumph. There is a dramatic, almost tango-esque intro for the emotive ‘Wait for Me’ and the highlights keep on coming. Kieran Morgan gets his guitar freak on during the even more dramatic ‘Kill the Silence’ which is, of course, the title of their most recent third album.

We were getting near the end now but ‘Don’t Turn the Lights on Yet’ captured the mood of the crowd perfectly and it is one of the band’s finest songs, featuring the violin and all the other instruments kicking up a storm – they’re never not going to get an encore after that wee beauty.

Apparently, the band wrote ‘DTTLOY’ in the van when they were snowed in at Inverurie in the North of Scotland. On this latest round of dates in Europe and the UK, poor Nicole went down with food poisoning bad enough to cause hospitalization. That can’t have been much fun in the band van either and we probably don’t need another van-tale song about that – “Shiteing Through the Eye of a Needle”?

There was still time for another number before one final SJ tour-de-force vocal on ‘I Feel the Rain’ to reinforce what a quality night of music some of us had been fortunate to witness. There is a real joy about this band and they are a very likeable live presence. They might not get paid what their music deserves yet but with three albums in the bag they have all the ingredients for a very tasty career indeed. The gig might have been over but the feelgood factor was still felt a few days later and the songs will be living rent-free in my heid for a few more weeks yet.

The second leg of the tour runs from 9-26 April and includes Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Bristol and London. Check out the band’s Facebook page for details and don’t miss them if you live close to one of the venues.