A year after her trip to York Barbican with Fairground Attraction, reformed in the wake of drummer Roy Dodds’ recent illness, Eddi Reader returns for a more intimate visit to the Citadel, formerly the home of York’s Salvation Army outpost.
By Miles Salter
Photos by Stuart Duthie
The building, beautifully restored and updated, has an old-style balcony, where parishioners once sang the Lord’s praises and avoided alcohol. The singing continues, but these days, there’s a little more booze on offer. The venue met with Reader’s approval – a singer who has always had more than a sliver of a spiritual awareness.
Reader was accompanied by four musicians, including husband, long term collaborator and Trash Can Sinatras singer John Douglas, songwriter and guitarist Boo Hewerdine, accordion player Alan Kelly, and double bass player Kevin McGuire. These players knew their place: Reader dominates the show with her voice and stories, but they’re brought forward for individual contributions: Douglas sings the delicate Lost while Hewerdine breathes life into his song The Patience Of Angels, a song about the mundane and the transcendent that Reader sang in 1994 on her debut solo album.
Introducing the tune, and the singalong section, Hewerdine says the first time he got people to join in the results were disastrous; ‘it was like a fire in a pet shop’, he deadpans.
Elsewhere there’s Charlie is My Darling from Reader’s take on the songs of Robbie Burns, which won her accolades and plaudits in her native Scotland.
Several songs recall the glory years with Fairground Attraction and their romantic, jazz-folk-pop masterpiece First Of A Million Kisses. Comedy Waltz gets a cheer from the audience, and Reader tells a nice story about the song that gave the band their name. In the 80s, while doing session singing, she often visited fortune tellers. Mark Nevin, the band’s gifted songwriter, took Reader’s confession and turned it into something vaguely sinister but definitely superb. ‘Children with candy floss and prizes of goldfish / Young men kill tin ducks in sharpshooter poses,’ sings Reader.
The evening closes with Reader transporting us to a Glasgow home, where a family party with booze and cigarettes is underway. She acts out her Aunt Jean, who would resist calls to sing, before caving in. Reader then slips into Moon River, an imaginary fag in her/Jean’s hand. One imagines the ten-year-old Eddi beholding this with wonder. For her, singing, fantasy and the imagination are tied together, providing a means to transforming a life, taking her from Glasgow to Top Of The Pops.
The band slip away before returning for the encore – Perfect, the jolly acoustic smash that brought Fairground Attraction fame in 1988.
I must have seen Reader six or seven times over the last twenty-five years. She’s one of the best singers out there, always spirited and charming, a dominating but warm performer. When she lives in a song, there’s a presence in the room, a light. A church is a good place to hear her sing.
Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. He contributes regularly to York Calling and fronts the band Miles and The Chain Gang.
Eddi Reader played at York Citadel on 16 October 2025