BY MICHAEL CHOWNE
Wednesday 19th August 2026 was one of those beautifully unique evenings that could only really happen on the London independent music scene.
Danni Nicholls is from Bedford, UK but has lived in Nashville, Tennessee for a few years now and this was the 3rd of a seven date UK Summer tour but she’d clearly given a lot of thought to the setlist for this one, tailoring it to the extraordinary surroundings.
The venue was The Golden Hinde on London’s Bankside, 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 provided some wonderful acoustics as Danni played solo with her guitar amongst the wooden beams.
There were plenty of songs with references to water, treasure and even wreckage as Danni gave us several tracks from her recent ‘Making Moves’ album, along with many from her back catalogue. No support, two sets of Danni’s beautifully smooth voice across over 2 hours.
Whilst Danni describes herself as an americana, folk and roots singer-songwriter, she is rooted in country music through her special family history – her grandma was brought up listening to country music in, of all places, Madras (now Chennai), India. Her 2024 album ‘Under The Neem Plum Tree’ was specifically released to help her grandma with dementia and alzheimers and it was lovely to hear some of the vintage country from that album, including a superb version of ‘Blue Bayou’.
Songs from the new album included my 3 favourites ‘The Wreckage’, ‘I’ll Carry On’ (written over Zoom with Michele Stodart Official during the Covid times) and ‘Honey’. ‘Beautifully Broken’ from Danni’s 2015 ‘Mockingbird Lane’ album was played as a special request, whilst the lyrics of ‘A Little Redemption’ sounded even more needed in current times.
This was an evening beyond parallel of live music with Danni regaling us with tales from her life throughout to an appreciative crowd in an intimate setting.