Royal Concert Hall
Glasgow
18 January 2007
Recorded using Sony PCM-M1 DAT with AT 800 Series Microphones
through a Low-Z to Hi-Z Input Transformer.
Mastered from DAT to Pioneer PDR-609 Stand alone CDR > CD Wave >
FLACfrontend > flac
CD One
1. Why Shouldn't We?
2. Passionate Kisses
3. Stones In The Road
4. King Of Love
5. Elysium
6. I Take My Chances
7. Houston
8. Twilight
9. Shut Up And Kiss Me
10.Band Introduction
11.On With The Song
CD Two
1. The Hard Way
2. He Thinks He'll Keep Her
3. The Calling
4. Grand Central Station
5. This Shirt
6. I Feel Lucky
Lets start with the simple part.
This was the first Mary Chapin gig in the UK since 2001. Six years
was far too long to wait and I cannot understand why she failed to
tour here on the back of her last CD "Between Here and Gone" which
is, I believe, to be her best album so far. Suffice that she has
now made her way back to the UK and as you will here in this recording
promises to return "for an extended period of time" in the fall.
The hard part here was getting to Glasgow on the worst day for gale
force winds and nature at its January harshest in years.
Our train journey was relatively painless considering the day and we
completed the journey only an hour late.
Others were not so lucky. Planes were grounded and delayed and anyone
coming from further south had real problems. Others had flown in from
the USA.
After all the trouble we took to get to Glasgow we were to be in for
a special night.
This was basically Mary Chapin in acoustic mode. Similar in setup to
her fabulour gig at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in 1994 she was
accompanied by John Jennings on bass and Jon Carroll on piano. She was
also this time accompanied by Kevin Barry on electric guitar.
She premiered 5 songs off the yet to be released new CD "The Calling"
which is due in March. All the new songs sounded great especially the
title track and "On With The Song" The latter will I fear not get much
airplay in the current political climate in the USA. However since there
is at least some sign of sense returning to the US public you never know.
The rest of the set was made up of older material. Two tracks were very
welcomely from "Between Here and Gone" whilst the lions share were from
her UK breakthrough album "Come On Come On".
She has such a diverse and wonderful body of work now that to pick at what
she didn't play would be both easy and pointless. Suffice to say she was well
worth the two standing ovations she received.
Her voice is still a thing of beauty which makes you want to melt as its
tones wrap round you. Her lyrical insight is as acute as ever too. She is,
in my opinion, one of the few singer songwriter today, and the only female
one, who bears comparison to Bruce springsteen. They share an economy of words
which whilst being deceptively simple do not pull their emotional punch in the
way they depict images in ones mind.
I fell in love with her all over again last Thursday night in Glasgow as I did
when I first heard her back in 1991.
This recording came out really sweet with no out of place audience noise to
spoil the performance.
Enjoy
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