The Hope Street Sessions: TISH LONGWORTH

For STAR's very first Hope Street Session, we proudly introduce Tish Longworth.

A third year English student at St. Andrews University, the York-native entered the empty living room on hope street with tentative excitement. She surveyed the myriad lightbulbs stapled to the ceiling, the Turkish cloth hanging underneath a homemade street sign, and a table covered in candles until a smile broke and she uttered a single word that would set the mood for the evening:

"Mint."

The first shot of the night was supposed to find Tish on the kitchen roof, sans guitar, singing under and umbrella to an audience of ivy-lined walls and open windows from the beginning 'til the end of the street, but a rainy day turned into a rainy night and the tiles too wet for a rooftop a capella take. Fighting against the sunset and weather, we still wanted to get a shot of Miss Longworth outside before it got too dark to film and too wet to bear, so we relocated to a tiny courtyard that faced the apartment windows. The three of us huddled under an umbrella, we handed Tish one of her own and hung a lantern on a old drain that jutted out of the wall. With the lights from inside shining onto our now pitch-black outdoor stage, we bit the bullet, turned on our camera, and told her to sing.

And so she did, with an amazing a capella rendition of her song "Land and Title," a peice she wrote two years ago that her close group of fans now immediately recognize. The shot wasn't done so easily though: midway through our first take, a resident who lived two floors up opened her window and told us to "please sing a bit quieter, or just stop." We apologized profusely, told her we'd only take another moment to finish up filming. Once she stopped complaining and went back into her room, we all shared some disbelief at how uncool she must be, but were determined to not let it affect the rest of the session. So Tish sang on, and gave us and her fans a whole new perspective on a song about a friendship that began to feel suffocating. Gone were the bouncy guitar riffs that propel the song; she left us with only her voice and her words, and both echoed sweetly between the stone walls that gave an intimate performance like no other.

We moved back inside to get started with the real set. As our audience trickled in and found spots on the couches and the floor, Tish took her place on the Hope Street "stage." She started off her set with a surprising medley of the Foo Fighter's hit "The Pretender" and the Disney classic "Everybody Wants To Be A Cat," from the Aristocats film. She gracefully weaved from a top 20 rock indulgence into a childhood sing-a-long that put a smile on everyone's face. Her cover didn't evoke the same imagery found in the Disney film; instead, she stole the song from its jazzy roots and gave it a voice of a lonely bar singer, left despondent in an alley under a Scottish rainshower. The result was pure magic.

The mood immediately lightened up as Tish began the next song, this time an original jam. "Growing Pains" is her newest song, driven with a Mediterranean rhythm and piercingly perceptive lyrics, that got everyone's head bopping along. Probably the best example of her songwriting skills, "Growing Pains" was stuck in this author's head for days after the session, and I'm sure it'll have the same affect on you after watching the performance. Her lyrics manage to stick with you and settle deep until you are convinced that she's singing directly to you, and there is no one else in the room but her and her guitar.

She is Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens. She is coffeehouse and picnic sing-a-longs. She is Led Zeppelin's "That's the Way," Bright Eyes' wit, Bob Dylan's passion and Joan Baez's spirit; she is a folk songstress with a rocker's heart. To each new listener she impresses, to each new fan she enraptures.

The set came to a finish with a cover of a Guns 'n Roses' track, "Dust and Bones." Performing a song often overlooked from the GNR catalogue, Tish ended the night beautifully, her rendition more lofty than Axl's, her voice more emotive. Leave it to Longworth to take a roadhouse blues/sludge rock classic and imbue it with 1960's Greenwich, NY charm; it takes something special to make a GNR song sound like poetry, and Tish gave us just that.