BY MICHAEL CHOWNE
Another wonderful night on Wednesday 23rd September 2026 as our fabulous friend Brooke Law packed out The Golden Hinde on London’s Bankside.
Now in dry dock, this is a full-size reconstruction of Sir Francis Drake’s 16th Century Elizabethan galleon, the first English ship to circumnavigate the globe. Built in 1973 as a touring museum, it has been moored in Southwark since 1996 and is an epic place, full of history, to watch live music.
In this small space Brooke played with a truncated version of her band The Outlaws, with David Blomiley on electric guitar and Kris Rich on cajon and the three of them had a lot of fun throughout.
It was lovely to see Brooke so relaxed, confident and assured towards the start of the second half of her ‘Naked Heart’ tour, celebrating her debut album that was released in November last year. In the first half of the show we were presented with a complete run through of the album – what an album that is!
For the second half, we had old favourites, newer singles (that may appear on the next album), a couple of covers and even a pirate based nursery rhyme during which Brooke reverted to her nursery school day job and ensured everyone was joining in, hand actions and all! Brooke’s latest marketing strategy was also to tell everyone to buy merch or they’d be walking the plank – adorable!
I was pleased that the electric guitar was not too loud to overpower Brooke’s admittedly powerful voice, though it did ramp up a bit in the second half as the evening really got going, with David taking his guitar on his trademark walk about whilst playing – we nearly lost the sound for a moment as he ventured up to the middle deck!
There was a poignant moment for some of us in the room as Brooke sung ‘We All Need Saving’ – a single from 2022 that she sung beautifully at a funeral last week that I attended. Nice touch, Brooke, Andy will have been looking down in admiration.
I was surprised when Brooke’s ‘last song’ was the singalong ‘Boomerang’, which often serves as the encore, but Brooke wasn’t finished there bringing the party. She had everyone up and dancing for Tina Turner’s version of ‘Proud Mary’ to cap what had been a joyful night.
It was so heart-warming too to speak to some people sitting behind us who were seeing Brooke for the very first time – pleased to report that they said they’ll be back for her full band performance at The Grace on Wednesday 7th October. If you’re outside of London, check out the rest of the tour dates on Brooke’s website – this is certainly one artist you don’t want to miss seeing live!
