Baking Day  

In other circumstances we might never have heard this gift of a debut album from Jackie Conn. Despite catching the folk bug early in life, Jackie drifted into a period when, she says, “for many years there was no music in my life, and I was deeply unhappy. Starting to sing again bought me back to life”. That journey continued online during the pandemic, with streamed performances and led to Jackie taking part in songwriting workshops – including with Boo Hewardine (who gets a co-writing credit on the album’s title track), culminating in the recording of this album.  

That long formative period has allowed Jackie to develop a confident but understated and deceptively simple songwriting style. Both lyrics and music are carefully crafted throughout the album’s ten tracks, each of which is described as a snapshot from Jackie’s family album. The stories told encompass Jackie’s own experiences of growing up in a Durham mining village, as well as family history – some uncovered by Jackie whilst researching her family tree, others presumably well- trodden family anecdotes. Whilst the subject matter is personal this songwriting quickly draws us in. We become invested in the story of a gamekeeper’s son pulled away from their cottage to the First World War in The Gamekeeper’s Lad, in the housewife and mother finding an escape in the weekly village dance (Make Believe Mondays), and in the  nine year old boy beginning ‘sixty years in endless night, working at the mine” (Richard’s Song).  

Jackie matches her simple vocal delivery with her acoustic guitar. On record this has been enriched on some tracks by some sensitive string arrangements, steel guitar and great production throughout which never overwhelms the storytelling which is at the heart of this record. This is an engaging and thoughtful album and hopefully the first of many more. 

Available from: https://jackieconn.bandcamp.com/album/baking-day

this review was first published in the Feb/March 2026 edition of Folk London Magazine