Gig review: Judy Collins, Glasgow

MUSICJUDY COLLINS ORAN MOR, GLASGOW***

I WANT what Judy Collins has been drinking. This glamorous, gracious and generous septuagenarian has not only retained her striking clarity of tone and fluid range, enhanced here by liberal – to the point of distracting – use of echo, but was such disarming company with her storytelling and neat line in wicked asides that the piecemeal nature of this performance became part of its charm.

This "American Idol of 1957" had the audience in the palm of her hand as she conducted a whistle-stop tour of her career which was part musical history lesson, part celebrity memoir, with snatches of songs woven into her narrative. The audience was encouraged to sing along with her as she dipped into the mostly pre-rock'n'roll folk and pop standards which had inspired her, the most beguiling of these being a full-length rendition of Barbara Allen with sensitive piano backing.

Collins also accompanied herself on resonant 12-string guitar, all the better to deliver Mr Tambourine Man by a certain contemporary who had not impressed her on a first listen. Collins bore lively witness to that fertile period for singer/songwriters. However, her own songs, such as The Blizzard, with its prosaic and protracted account of a snowbound encounter, tended to the sentimental and slightly maudlin.

Though one of her signature tunes, Sondheim's melodramatic Send In The Clowns felt like it belonged to a different show, yet served as a testament to a career which has been as broad as it has long.