Great to return to this A list venue after a 3 year break. Our last gig there had been a stormer, with the place being maxed out on a lovely sunny day. this time the whole frame and context for this show was darker. The rain was crashing down and the wonderful Rob who runs this fantastic music club is unwell (we were so sorry to hear that)…
This time the crowd numbers were unfortunately down. However, in the context of a venue in an area with some of the highest unemployment in the Country, it was a great crowd. I some times get overwhelmed with how people love our music enough to either make long journeys to see us or are local but still have to find the £8.00 entrance fee.
It was a historic and in some ways difficult gig for the Band as due to the increase in my own personal health isssues we have been playing less, and after this show are coming off the road for 3 months in order to facilitate my surgery on the 8th May. We plan to restart gigging in August.
We tried to hit the ground running on this gig and opened with ‘Too Tired to Pray’ followed by ‘Rainmaker’. The feedback at the half time break was that the sound for these first two numbers was deadful. Apparently, it improved for Ria and Mandie’s solo outings of the ‘Lying Game’ and ‘House of the Rising Sun’. Up to this point though vocally precise my lead playing had been poor, so I changed the set and we went into ‘All Along the Watchtower’ which featured some amazing playing from Danny. I used the song to play myself into guitar form (and was very proud of my solo). ‘No Place to Hide’ was spot on and from there the night turned into a really good one.
The second set was a blast and after the encore we were feeling totalled by the blast of energy required to play those songs. the great crowd at Millers would not let us away with that, and a second encore was demanded. After the traditional toast with the crowd we played a really good version of ‘Working Class Gospel Drinking Blues’, which now seems to be a regular second or third encore number. A really high energy performance by the whole Band.
Post performance I was knocked out by the amazing amount of people that wished me well for the forthcoming operation. Its made me even more determined to come back stronger and complete a new CD which we would hope to release in 2013.
A good night, thanks again for your support
Gary