"This is a dream come true," announced Lien De Greef, aka Lady Linn, with a broad grin, to a capacity audience at Werchter on 5 July, the last day of the festival. The welcome from the thousands that had gathered in the marquee was deafening, and the Lady was visibly overwhelmed as she took to the stage, guided by her seven-piece band. Those who couldn't get in were standing in the sudden deluge of rain outside, looking up at the concert being televised on a big screen outside the marquee.
Unlike most of the bands appearing at Werchter, Linn and the boys are classically trained and met while they were studying at the conservatory in Ghent. De Greef went on to front electro-pop group Bolchi and hip-hop band Skeemz.
But De Greef had studied jazz and went back to her schoolmates to form a band that could take on her old favourites, like "Tampico", written by Gene Roland and a hit for American jazz singer June Christy in 1945.
After three years of singing jazz covers and releasing two albums, De Greef decided to raise the bar and write her own stuff. Released in 2008, the third album, Here We Go Again, hit the number two spot in the Belgian top 50 album chart. It has now been in the charts for the last 47 weeks and gone gold.
The album contains a collection of original, upbeat material suffused with wry humour and sharp observations on daily life. The compositions are a modern take on the post-war big-band sound, blending double bass and electric guitars with a drum kit and a cut down brass section.
The only cover on the album is a version of Eddy Grant's soft reggae hit "I Don't Wanna Dance". It was a highlight of the Werchter performance. Standing in a little red dress, belting it out with a big voice, cascades of indigo-lit rainwater rippling down the sides of the marquee and thousands of people singing along, it brought the house down.
The band was an unexpected surprise to the Werchter-goers who hadn't heard them before. "You wouldn't really think it, but that slow beat and the big sound of all the instruments was infectious," one Werchterine told me after the concert. "It's not something like Placebo or Kings of Leon, like I came to see. But it just makes you feel good."
Lady Linn and Her Magnificent Seven play the Ghent Jazz Festival on 19 July, Kneistival in Knokke-Heist on 20 July and Turnhoutse Vrijdagen on 24 July. Check their site for lots more concerts this summer
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