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“Some day when I’m awfully low, and the world is cold, I will feel a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight.” — “The Way You Look Tonight” Written by Jerome Kern & Dorothy Fields. Sinatra’s version is my favorite!
In my recent “Reflections” story, I cited the contrasts of past and future, place & time. I was definitely feeling ‘some kind of way’ when I shot this photo. It was October 2016. I’d just come back from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I spent the summer studying Irish History and Culture at historic Queens University. It would take days for me to recount the magical and enriching moments I experienced that are indelibly etched onto my heart. Including a “Stella…” -style romance. My fondest memory is of me and him strolling arm in arm along the wet cobblestoned streets, nestled by a balmy fog, on our way from a luscious jazz club. Where the quintet sang my favorite jazz song, “The Way You Look Tonight” with a smoky Irish lilt. The hopeful romantic in me can easily summon the tingle of the mist on my cheeks, as I pen this. Like every summer romance abroad, it was fraught with mystery and complications. So when I shot this photo, I pining hard. But I’ll save the climax and resolution of this rendezvous for the novella I’ve been toying around with, and get back to this photo.
I had the honor of shadowing the brilliant and kind actor/director/producer Eric Stoltz on an episode of the series “Madam Secretary”. During a night shoot in Queens, when we broke for lunch around 9:30, a dense fog rolled in off the bay, as the crew made our way back to base camp to eat. It was the thickest fog I’ve ever been caught in; and watching bodies amble through the mist was surreal. Part “Night of the Living Dead”. Part “Interstellar”. As I was gratefully caught up in the wonder of this magical moment, my phone dinged with a text from my Irish bloke, and sent my heart pining again. Oh, the irony.
Which is why I was inspired to use this photo as the album cover for mythical Black Irish folk singer, Ovella McQueen’s “Bad Weather Inside”. Ovella was born in Belfast in March 1971, at the height of the Northern Ireland “Troubles” to a Black British soldier and Irish Catholic English student. When her father was removed from his military duties for allegedly being loose with curfews, he returned to his pungent Brixton neighborhood in London — sending for Ovella and her mother shortly afterwards. Committed to supporting his family, her father worked a pre-dawn shift in city sanitation, then joined her grandmother cooking the lunch and supper shifts at their Jamaican cafe, a gathering place for poets, musicians and artists. While her mother worked part time at the library to pay for her university tuition to study journalism, Ovella relished spending afternoons helping serve jerk chicken, while listening to vibrant, pulsating reggae music.
When her father was hospitalized after being beaten by the police (oh, the irony) during the Brixton riots in September of 1985, 14-year old, Ovella started composing and performing her own songs to channel her rage. Her growing legion of fans, started recording her passionate busking sets in Hyde Park and Notting Hill coffee shops. One devoted listener slipped a cassette to a local radio DJ, who started playing her earthy anthem, “I am Witness” in heavy rotation. Which also caught the attention of a record company executive. Though she signed a deal to write and record her music at 16, she followed her parents counsel, and only toured in the UK, until she was 18. Dubbed the “British Tracy Chapman”, Ovella’s folky soulful 2nd album hit the US charts in 1989, followed by international acclaim. For “Bad Weather Inside” she leaned into her reverence for Nina Simone, weaving a tapestry of songs that cajole, inspire and delight listeners. After a 15 year hiatus, Ovella is writing the soundtrack for a BBC limited series, “Suppertime in Brixton” based on the tumultuous, yet fervently creative days in the Brixton of her youth.
Thank you so much for taking the time to partake in another one of my “Imaginary Bands & their Fake Ass Songs” stories. Next time I’ll be taking you back home with me to Wade, North Carolina to visit Uncle Charles.
Until then, Big Peace!
© 2025 Carolyn McDonald All rights reserved.
