Thursday, December 04, 2014

Dan Baird & Homemade Sin - Wednesday 3rd December - St Pancras Old Church

So, this is the year of the acoustic shows. I've seen Bryan Adams and Status Quo recently "unplugged", but there's probably none more surprising to see in this format than Dan Baird & Homemade Sin, playing their first ever acoustic concert.

The setting is the St Pancras Old Church - a real operating church with a seated capacity of 110!

We got there early before the doors opened and were able to grab a front row seat on surprisingly low church chairs. The evening was to be split into 2 sets (to allow an interval to use the outside portaloos!) and gather drinks from the "refreshment table".

The sound was good, although maybe the drums had a bit of an echo - it must be a nightmare being the sound guy somewhere like this. The material was obviously carefully chosen to match the instrumentation (guitars borrowed from Ian Hunter apparently), although there were a number where Warner E. Hodges swapped to an electric telecaster. His playing was exemplary as normal, as was the rest of the band, although they all fell about on the odd occasion there was a mistake. You got a true sense of the band enjoying playing together.

The second half got off to an emotional start as Dan had just received word that Faces musician and friend Ian McLagan had died in the US, one day after another friend, Bobby Keys. A solo version of "Another Chance" was a fitting tribute.

The rest of the set was really enjoyable. If you were ultra-picky, you could say that a couple of songs were a bit too long and others could have been added if they'd been shorter, but I didn't see any faces who didn't seem to have really enjoyed the evening. Dan and Warner were kind enough to sign CDs and setlists at the end too. Top guys one and all.

Setlist
Myth of Love
Little Darlin
Crooked Smile
Trivial As The Truth
Love And Rockets (Mauro on vocals, Dan on Drums!)
Knocked Up
Runnin' Outta Time
Younger Face
Thousand Little Pieces
Six Years Gone
+
Another Chance (Dan solo)
Golden Light
Two For Tuesday
Sweet Blue Midnight
Hell To Pay
Long Way Down
Hard Luck Boy
Lazy Monday
Julie & Lucky
Damn Thing To Be Done / Goin' Down The Road

No comments: