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Jon Byrne + Support

Venue: Studio 2 Parr Street
Town: Liverpool
Date: 18th May
Website: http://jonbyrne.co.uk/

Jon Byrne practically leaped into the stage in Liverpool to give us music from his new album "Built by Angels". Unfortunately for Jon, the audience for the gig was quite small all things considered; however, he certainly did not let this let him down as he did a fantastic job of being downright entertaining! Many of his on stage mannerisms, both whilst singing and generally talking, reminded me a lot of John Cleese.

I must note here, that he had the added benefit of two fantastic support acts, Simon McKellen and John Wishart gave us four warm up tracks each, just to loosen the original atmosphere for Jon to then step forward and take control.

Jon slightly eccentric and 'colourful' character had the audience captivated during song and highly amused and entertained between songs with funny anecdotes and silly comments. Even the world of animate objects decided to join in as Jon's enthusiastic box stomping caused his microphone stand to gradually drop the microphone causing him to stand at what looked like extremely uncomfortable angles to continue singing. He certainly must be given credit for making sure the show went on!

As for the music we got a good range of acoustic with some western and bluegrass styled songs with supporting banjo to more indie, deeper singing which went over to an electric guitar backing. His own playing was very mixed with each of his tunes keeping things interesting by changing from slow plucking or steady strumming to fast playing and energetic stomping.

The tune 'Nothing new' reminded me a lot of a new Bruce Springsteen style of tune only to then surprise is with the addition of a harmonica during the a wide variety of his other song selections. We get then more rock/indie tracks with 'Tears without feeling' that gives us the polar end of the genre to what he would be playing the tune before.

My absolute favourite tune must of course be 'Cigarette' which has a hilarious storyline which Jon went into detail over before playing the tune, and I think this was a good move as the audience was able to really put an image to the lyrics.

Overall I had a fantastic night seeing Jon Byrne it was just a shame there was not a bigger turn out for the gig but as far as I could see it was everyone else's loss as Jon thrived on the stage and gave everyone the good night they had come for.

Paul Rawcliffe