The last gig of 2013! It was a nippy night when my friend & colleague Craig Hughes & I ventured over the border to England to the City of Bristol to Thelka. The Thekla is one of the most unusual venues that I've ever been to. It's a boat with the hold containing a music venue. We had come to see Jonathan Wilson. Booked the tickets months ago and as he was only playing a handful of gigs in the UK, it was too good to miss.
First up was a young man called Omar. He played some decent singer/songwriter fare and was quite an accomplished guitarist. Only later, when he took to the stage with Jonathan Wilson, we discovered he was Jonathan's guitarist in his band! Luckily I suppose, he had a good reception.
As anyone who has heard it already, Jonathan Wilson's new album Fanfare is one of the albums of 2013. It is a brilliant album and builds on his full debut release Gentle Spirit. You can read about it earlier in the blog. Quite a few of the songs on Fanfare are piano based and JW made the decision, as he mostly played his vintage Telecaster, to stick to the more guitar based songs on the album, as seen in the mainly stuck to set list below.
With Omar on guitar, a bass player, drummer & organ/keyboard player, Jonathan played a 2hr 20minute set that was sensational.
He played many of the songs from the Gentle Spirit & Fanfare albums - and even better, he extended many of the songs to showcase his excellent guitar skills.
The softly spoken Mr Wilson even managed to sneak in a new song, although I didn't quite manage to get the name of it. But here it is :)
With a change in the arrangements to the songs, the gig proved to be much rockier and guitar based than the albums.
I waited for this one - my favourite Jonathan Wilson song. And he didn't let me down.
Twitter - @songsofjw
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