Fringe 2025 Lorna Reid I Will Tell Your Story The Jazz Bar August 21st 2025 Review
Lorna Reid – “I Will Tell Your Story” at The Jazz Bar Chambers Street this afternoon was a relaxed hour of music in the company of some of Scotland’s most experienced and well-known jazz and blues musicians. The title of this show is taken from Lorna’s latest album “I Will Tell Your Story” which was released in February 2025.
This is one of three shows that Lorna has at the Jazz Bar this Fringe, the other two being on 22nd and 24th August, and surprisingly there were only a few songs from the new album. I say surprisingly here as I think that this new album has some of the best songwriting to date by Lorna on it. Instead, this show is a mixture of old and new songs written by Lorna plus some standards by great writers of the past, including Cole Porter and Rogers & Hart. Even though the set list for this show may change a little for the remaining two shows, I have no intention of giving this one away, merely picking a few favourites of mine to highlight.
Lorna Reid has always had the talent to attract some of the best musicians in her field of music to her band, and today that band comprised Campbell Normand (piano), Jim Drummond (drums), Andy Mitchell (upright bass), Konrad Wiszniewski (saxophone) and Neil Warden (guitar and Weissenborn lap steel guitar). All of the musicians in the Lorna Reid band today have worked together many times before, they know each other so well musically, and that was showing in the tightness of the music. They are also all friends, simply enjoying playing music together in a venue that they all have played in many times before, and that was an important part of the overall atmosphere of this show.
The show opened with one of Lorna’s earlier songs, “The Tried and Tested Nature of Love” and then moved onto a song from the new album, “Paris in 95”, a song about an unexpected re-connection with someone 20 years later. Both songs gave Konrad the opportunity to display why his playing on saxophone always gives additional colours, textures and depth to any music that he plays.
Also from the new album was one of my favourite songs from it, and my first opportunity to hear it performed live, the title track, ”I Will Tell Your Story”, an at times dark, but very emotional song about unexpectedly losing someone long before their time should have been up.
On this set list was “Sweet Baby Blues”, a song co-written by Lorna Reid and Darden Smith. Always one of my favourite songs from Lorna, this one gave Campbell Normand the showcase to deliver some really distinctive and sensitive playing on piano.
Always a very distinctive part of the sound of the Lorna Reid band on stage was Neil Warden. Neil is a musician with many years of live stage performance to his credit and here is someone who is, when required, happy to step back a little and let someone else take the stage spotlight whilst always providing exactly what is required, when it is required, for any song on the set-list.
This show, with its old and new songs, was an opportunity to see and hear just how much Lorna Reid has developed as a singer, songwriter, and stage performer over the years. It is interesting to note how Lorna is now comfortable both with self-enclosed stories like “Paris in 95” and using more abstract lines of lyric which somehow fit together, as on “Souls For Sale”, a song co-written with Neil Warden.
Lorna has found her own comfort zone not only in her writing, but in her vocals and the best way to deliver those songs live to an audience.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
This is one of three shows that Lorna has at the Jazz Bar this Fringe, the other two being on 22nd and 24th August, and surprisingly there were only a few songs from the new album. I say surprisingly here as I think that this new album has some of the best songwriting to date by Lorna on it. Instead, this show is a mixture of old and new songs written by Lorna plus some standards by great writers of the past, including Cole Porter and Rogers & Hart. Even though the set list for this show may change a little for the remaining two shows, I have no intention of giving this one away, merely picking a few favourites of mine to highlight.
Lorna Reid has always had the talent to attract some of the best musicians in her field of music to her band, and today that band comprised Campbell Normand (piano), Jim Drummond (drums), Andy Mitchell (upright bass), Konrad Wiszniewski (saxophone) and Neil Warden (guitar and Weissenborn lap steel guitar). All of the musicians in the Lorna Reid band today have worked together many times before, they know each other so well musically, and that was showing in the tightness of the music. They are also all friends, simply enjoying playing music together in a venue that they all have played in many times before, and that was an important part of the overall atmosphere of this show.
The show opened with one of Lorna’s earlier songs, “The Tried and Tested Nature of Love” and then moved onto a song from the new album, “Paris in 95”, a song about an unexpected re-connection with someone 20 years later. Both songs gave Konrad the opportunity to display why his playing on saxophone always gives additional colours, textures and depth to any music that he plays.
Also from the new album was one of my favourite songs from it, and my first opportunity to hear it performed live, the title track, ”I Will Tell Your Story”, an at times dark, but very emotional song about unexpectedly losing someone long before their time should have been up.
On this set list was “Sweet Baby Blues”, a song co-written by Lorna Reid and Darden Smith. Always one of my favourite songs from Lorna, this one gave Campbell Normand the showcase to deliver some really distinctive and sensitive playing on piano.
Always a very distinctive part of the sound of the Lorna Reid band on stage was Neil Warden. Neil is a musician with many years of live stage performance to his credit and here is someone who is, when required, happy to step back a little and let someone else take the stage spotlight whilst always providing exactly what is required, when it is required, for any song on the set-list.
This show, with its old and new songs, was an opportunity to see and hear just how much Lorna Reid has developed as a singer, songwriter, and stage performer over the years. It is interesting to note how Lorna is now comfortable both with self-enclosed stories like “Paris in 95” and using more abstract lines of lyric which somehow fit together, as on “Souls For Sale”, a song co-written with Neil Warden.
Lorna has found her own comfort zone not only in her writing, but in her vocals and the best way to deliver those songs live to an audience.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com